Action Required: What You Need to Know (and Do) to Prepare for the New SAP Community

As Gali Kling Schneider announced in her recent blog, we are making the move from SCN to the new community platform on October 10.

Any move requires packing — and maybe even leaving some things behind. The doors may also be locked for a little bit.

We’ll handle the bulk of moving — loading and unloading. We’re working to ensure that SCN URLs redirect to the appropriate places within the SAP community. (Setting up the forwarding addresses, to stick with the moving metaphor.)

But you should be aware of the following and prepare as necessary before the moving vans hit the road. (OK, maybe I’m taking the moving metaphor too far now. Sorry.)

For starters, this list identifies which content you might need to save and add back to the new community after it goes live. These bullets also indicate where some content types will end up in the new platform — and situations where you may need to do a little extra work with migrated content.

• SCN avatars: Your picture won’t make the move. You’ll need to upload a picture in your new Former Member. You should save your SCN profile picture…or maybe take this opportunity to get a brand-new headshot. You can save your SCN avatar pic by going to your profile page, choosing your “bio” tab, right clicking the image, and selecting “Save image as…” (UPDATE: An earlier version of this post stated that profile pics in the beta platform will be wiped. This is not correct. All beta profile information — including the profile pic — will remain in the new platform.)

• SCN blogs: We will migrate SCN blog posts written by members to the new blog solution. In many cases, these blogs will receive tags based on the spaces where they resided — so people can browse for them via topic. If an appropriate tag is not available (such as with personal blogs not associated with a space), the author will need to retag with one of the new primary tags. Please note that only public, published SCN posts will be migrated. Blogs in draft stage, awaiting moderation, scheduled to publish after migration, etc., will be lost, so please save them. Also, a post’s likes and views won’t be migrated, and the star-rating system is not part of the new platform.

• SCN discussions: All SCN discussions with replies will move to the new community archive as read-only content, and they will be part of the Questions & Answers search. SCN discussions without replies won’t be migrated, so if you have a question still awaiting a response, please save it and enter it as a new question in the SAP community.

• SCN direct messages: Your DMs in SCN won’t migrate to the new platform.
  

• SCN spaces: SCN spaces, as they exist today, won’t be part of the new community experience. The new SAP community takes advantage of tagging to serve up content based on specific topics. To find the type of information you accessed in your favorite spaces, please browse for tags related to topics. In some cases, you may find community topic pages dedicated to the tags that interest you most. (Check your favorite space to see whether the new tag is mentioned there.) Please read the Spaces and Community Topics Pages page for more information.

• Beta blogs: Please note that any content added during the beta phase will be wiped out when we move to the new community platform. So if you’ve written blogs in beta that you would like to make available once the platform goes live, you’ll need to save the content and post again after October 10. (As noted above, SCN blogs will be migrated.)

• Beta questions and answers: Please note that any content added during the beta phase will be wiped out when we move to the new community platform. So if you’ve posted questions that you would like to make available once the platform goes live, you’ll need to save the content and post again after October 10. As noted earlier, SCN discussions with replies will migrate to the new community archive as read-only content, and they will be part of the Questions & Answers search.

• Beta profile: Any information that you entered in your beta profile — such as your profile pic and bio — will remain when the new community launches.The User Profile page provides more details about profiles in the new community.
  

• Content from SAP employees and representatives: Over the years, SAP employees, contractors, and other representatives have uploaded a great deal of material to SCN. Depending on the information and how often members accessed it, the content will be migrated as a blog, added to the archive, or recreated within the community wiki. We also worked with content owners to delete any outdated materials.

• Non-English communities and content: Since the new community won’t have spaces, SCN’s language-specific spaces won’t be part of the new experience. It will, however, have language tags. Please read Non-English Languages in the New Community to find out how language-specific content works in the new platform — and learn how to save your non-English content (so it won’t be lost during the transition from SCN).

• Gamification: You have until 12:00 p.m. PT on October 3 to complete all SCN missions. You can also continue to earn points until October 7. The new community missions will be available in the new platform in November — although the exact date has not yet been determined. All previously earned SCN badges will be visible in your new community platform. Please see SCN Missions Coming to a Close for more information.

• People and content you follow: If you follow someone in SCN, you’ll automatically follow him in the SAP community (as part of the migration). The SCN content you follow, however, won’t be part of your profile. After migration, you’ll need to begin to follow content from scratch. If you want to continue to follow something, please make a note of it now and search for it in the new community after launch. (To learn how to follow things in the new community, please read the Activity Stream and Notifications page.) You can also bookmark the page in your browser, as a redirect should take you to the new page. (For more about bookmarking, please see the next section of bullets.)
• View counts, likes, and star ratings: As mentioned in the earlier “SCN blogs” bullet, view counts and likes will not migrate along with the content with which they are associated. Also, the new platform doesn’t support the star-rating system for content. The content itself, however, will migrate, as outlined in bullets above.

• Status updates and @mentions: These won’t migrate from SCN.

That covers everything that you need to save, move, or find again in the new community.

Some SCN functionality won’t be available at all in the new community, and there are no plans to provide any equivalent features:

• RSS: Since RSS won’t be available in the new community, your SCN feeds won’t migrate. To learn how to get updates about content that interests you in the new community, please read the Activity Stream and Notifications page.

• Polls: The new community environment doesn’t support polling.

• Internal bookmarking: You won’t be able to bookmark content within the new community, and any internal SCN bookmarks won’t be migrated. If you’d like to continue bookmarking SCN content, please do so with your browser manually. SCN URLs should redirect to the new location of the content.

Since we’re not moving until October 10, you may wish to continue to put stuff in our current SCN home. Please note, however, that packing will begin before the 10th, and we will begin to limit access to SCN in the days leading up to launch.

• Registration for SCN will freeze on October 6…although if you’re reading this, that’s likely not an issue for you. People can register for SAP.com, which will give them access to the SAP community as well (when the new platform launches on October 10).

• The SCN site will freeze on October 7. You’ll still be able to access content, but you’ll be unable to post anything or send anything. You’ll be able to do these things again in the new community when it launches on October 10.

And speaking of October 10…we hope you’ll stop by when we throw open the doors to the new community.