Influence the future of the new SCN
So…
When you read this, you have noticed that the old SCN with all its comforts is no more. A new platform has been taken into use. “SCN is dead, long live SCN” I read somewhere.
Yes?
The new platform is really just that, a platform. It is not yet fully developed, and SAP is working hard on making it usable for as large a user base as possible. To this purpose they (must) have kept many a meeting, drawn up a plethora of plans, and deliberated what it is that we the users want and need from it.
Well, good.
Yes, however, how do they know what we the users want and need from the platform? We were not consulted, and as is the problem with most engineering, the people designing it are usually not the people using it, and to use a German proverb:
One fool can ask more questions than seven wise men can answer.
Okay?
Indeed, good news is, SAP has established another platform for us to tell them what we want, the site formerly known as SAP Idea Place. A place with sections for each of our favorite SAP products, and also for example the new SCN, where we the users can weigh in on the development of them.
Great, so what is this all about?
Well, the problem with the Idea Place is, that very few people are aware of its existence. With that I mean that there are hundreds of thousands of users active on SCN, but only a handful on most sections in the Idea Place. A quick glance will tell you that most are SAP employees and in the case of the SCN, moderators.
So the future of the new SCN is currently being influenced mostly by the people who designed it, with preconceived ideas, and people who probably have different interests than the average none-SAP-employee, run-of-the-mill user, be they active or not so much.
Okay, but what do you want from me?
Glad we are getting onto the same page here. What I am hoping that you will invest a couple of minutes of your valuable time in, is visiting the Idea Place for the new SCN, and voting for ideas that you find in sync with your own.
Sounds good, but now I want more
Obviously, if you feel that some good idea of yours has not been mentioned, please by all means, post it. It is the best way to bring your opinions and wishes to the attention of SAP. Please do make sure though that your idea was not already posted by someone else, and that your idea is not actually a bug instead of missing functionality.
Also please take a look first at the BETA feedback to see that an idea isn’t already in the pipeline.
So…
Without further ado, please visit the Idea Place for the new SCN, and vote!
Great blog, Johan!
Is there a chance you can edit in the link to the BETA feedback somewhere, so that ideas on there are not (again) posted as an idea. Because the team is already aware of those.
Regards,
Steffi.
PS: As far as I know, the ideas from the link will not be added as ideas to vote on in Idea Place.
Done !
P.S. If SAP isn't sure about some idea themselves, they should put it up on Idea Place themselves. If nothing else, they might get some good comments.
Maybe they'll do that after the storm calms down. ^^
It's a good voting tool IMO. Can't hurt to use it the other way around, too.
One more thing worth mentioning - this time you won't get points and shiny badges when you submit or up-vote/down-vote ideas.
Now the reward is bigger - a chance to get the website experience, which we all deserve.
So, please, be responsible when voting and choose wisely!
Which reminds me, the reputation section in the profile doesn't show anything yet (besides the old badges and stuff), is it not operational yet, or do you need to rack up a certain amount of achievements first?
The new missions are still being worked on. You can see on the reputation page (Under "Community > About the Community") what will come next and soon. A lot of nice things to look forward to. 🙂
Regards,
Steffi.
Realy nice, thanks for pointing to Idea Place and motivating on using it!
Edit: I now also wrote something on that topic: https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/13/bring-ideas-ideaplace-promote/
I was in doubt right now, I know it did not help much on the platform tests, but I had given some ideas on "old" SCN, they were in limbo?
BR,
Raphael.
Hi Raphael,
Any feedback you gave during the live beta, is still available in the archive, however, I have now idea if the dev team themselves can find all this info, or if they look at it anymore.
Please take a look at the BETA feedback to see if your idea has already been planned, and otherwise check out Idea Place and vote or submit your idea again.
Regards,
Johan
I'm a bit tired of keep repeating myself: i've already posted feedbacks on the old scn space and now i've to post them AGAIN?
No way, sorry... I agree we can influence the future, but honestly i do not believe at all looking back how things gone with the launch.
Nobody said anything about posting it again. 😉 See the list from the beta feedback. There is no real need to create an idea for those, because they are already knows. This is about giving ideas to improve the platform, that were not already brought up by anyone in writing before.
Regards,
Steffi.
If I remember well (forgive me if I do not do a search, Steffi), there is a critical mass of "ideas" which were already pointed out in the feedbacks.
So, what am i missing? 😮
I don't know. Do you think, we can only have so many ideas? I don't know about you, but a number does not stop my brain from finding new stuff to improve. 😉
And I agree, but i prefer to think about new stuff after the old ones are implemented and the bug fixed.
2 things pretty far at the horizon 😉
I was begging and pleading for a second round of beta, to give the developers time to address the long bug list, but unfortunately this is live round 2...
Well, I like noting those ideas down, that come to my mind. Why not immediatly, if I have the time. It does not matter, if they implemented a year from now, at least they are there.
The one thing you perhaps are missing is that when you told SAP your ideas earlier, it was just you, and perhaps a couple of people commenting.
With Idea Place your votes also let SAP know how much certain improvements are needed.
So indeed no need to post all ideas again (even though that is happening on Idea Place anyway), but at least please go and have a vote. At the very least we can make sure that ideas for important improvements are not moved to the bottom of the priority list, or even discarded outright, just because a SAP engineer's educated guess is, that nobody cares.
And will I be paid to do their job? I pay a good fee each year for SAP products...
SAP's job is to do what you want. If you want them to do their job well, you have to tell them what that is.
You don't have to write down all your ideas again. Please just check out the Idea Place and vote. Let SAP know what is important to you.
P.S. Just so that there are no misunderstandings here, I am a SAP customer too.
Johan, it's what i'm doing, but i feel unlistened at all (like many others) so... what I've to do more? Trying with a chicken sacrifice in a full moon night?
No need, I already tried that. 🙂
But yeah, I feel your frustration. I don't know if you were active here when SDN (which worked perfectly) became SCN. It was the same thing, you will have to go through all the stages of grieving.
I was not so active (more lurking at that time 🙂 ): this means SAP did't learn the lesson?
The lesson being:
1. Have a marketing team decide that they know best
2. Only ask feedback from people attending big SAP events that are not attended by the actual bulk of the users of the SDN
3. Talk SAP tech people around by pointing out technical reason
4. Set deadline for design that considers costs, not feasibility.
5. Tell SAP tech people to realize bad design
6. Set deadline for go live that considers costs, not feasibility.
7. Lament all the difficulties, apologize for things not working, promise that it will be developed.
8. Wonder why people aren't using the new site the way the marketing team had envisioned.
that lesson?
Well, they learned somewhat from step 2, by this time around having an open beta, during which only technical issues were addressed, and moving on to step 6.
IMHO - the 559 discussion threads from the May-Oct beta should have already been added to the IdeaPlace...a laundry checklist of ideas is a nice summary, but lacks all the screen captures, dialog, and additional insight found in the discussion threads. It also doesn't have a link back to the original community member like the discussions, or how Idea Place works. We were tripping over ourselves reporting redundant issues that were unresolved during beta, and even now we have issues being reported a second time since the launch (Veselina can attest to this). IT has to have some of the VH critical issues at the top of the list and should be actively fixing them - we've seen this with the correction to the migration bug and the subsequent announcement. We have increased the active users by a substantial number (the volunteer period ended over the weekend and now we have all been forced into active duty), and no fault of their own, but they don't have the history or background in the bugs that remain unresolved. I agree with you Simone about how challenging and demoralizing it is to attempt to 'search' through the current items before posting a new one, and perhaps innocently enough, simply adding another repetitive issue to the list...
I’m adding a comment with the hope that some folks following me might see this blog and go add their votes to the idea blog. Cause I do believe the idea place is only being used by a handful of people. And I really do believe that this is an important assest to many people.
With that said, the OLD SCN idea place had numerous things that were desired and voted on back then. i understand it’s a new platform and new design but some of those things should have been taken into consideration for this new platform design.
For instance, limiting the number of allowed open questions as a measn to help encourage members to close threads and help moderators out.
Auto locking of threads after a certain period of activity.
Inactivating accounts after a ceratin period of activity.
And then some simple things that we had in SCN that weren’t put in place here. (Honestly? How basic is a spell check requirement in a blog/discussion centric product and no own thought to make that a basic requirement of go-live??)
It almost seems to me that two new people came in and were just told to go design a new system in WordPress for the exchange of ideas to support SAP. And they never learned or used the old system and off they went and designed it. Then 6 months later they delivered and regardless of the beta testing, someone said, “well yeah, we wish we had some of these other things but it has to be released by the end of the year cause its in our goals. It’s too late and too expensive to go back and do any redevelopment or pick another product so we’ll just make it work and work out the issues later”.
Geez.. that sounds like a lot of what I hear from project managers anymore!
I know that might not be fair to the folks that I know spent a lot of time on this project. But as a user, it’s how I view it.
But please, do go and vote in the idea place so there is some feedback available,
Craig
Regarding spell check…
.
.
It’s on the list, so with time… comes spell check?
Yes. I know it's on the list.
But why is it on the list?
This is a blog centric product. It's what WordPress does. I know they have spell checks available. I use WordPress on a website I manage. It has a spell checker!!
There really is no excuse for not delivering a spell checker in the initial version of this. Maybe everyone thought it was such a basic functionality no one specified it in the user requirements?
Craig
And why are my carriage returns and paragraphing spacing messed up today?
I put in a blank line just before this sentence.
Craig
Don't get me started on the editor(s). I use "." inflationary to get line breaks, so my posts are a bit more structured. -.-