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Author's profile photo Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)

SAP HANA Cloud Platform login, user name, account id, name or display name: you are lost? Not anymore!

I received a number of questions around the account and credentials terminology for SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) after publishing my first set of tutorials available on the SAP Developer Center, but also while staffing the TechEd AppSpace last year,

First of all, the SAP HANA Cloud Platform delegates the authentication and identity management to an Identity Provider (IdP).

Therefore, none of your account details and credentials are physically stored on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. By default, SAP HANA Cloud Platform including the Developer Trial uses the same IdP as most of SAP’s web sites, a SAP Cloud Identity server (http://accounts.sap.com).

This means that if you can “login” to any other SAP’s web site that uses this IdP, you will not need to create a new account for the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, but reuse your existing account and just agree to the “Terms and Conditions” of use, as well as the “SAPs privacy statement” while accessing it for the first time.

For more around information about the “Identity and Access Management” functionality for the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, use the following link:
https://help.hana.ondemand.com/help/frameset.htm?e6b196abbb5710148c8ec6a698441b1e.html 

But let’s take a step back, and let’s have a look at the SAP HANA Cloud Platform login process.

Login to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform

To login to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, you will need credentials. This is probably what confuse most users as the user name can be multiple for a single user.

For example, you can use the following user names:

  • an email address
  • a user id (as an SAP employee I have my I-number)
  • a login name (a chosen identifier)

Now, let’s see what’s yours! Open the following address in your browser: https://accounts.sap.com

So now, you know what to use to connect to your SAP HANA Cloud Platform account.

As stated earlier, I’m an SAP employee in France so my “User ID” starts with an “I”, some of my colleagues have ones that starts with a “C” or a “D”. I tend to use this one (my User ID) to login as it’s way shorter than the others.

But as I’m not expecting only SAP people to read this, so here what our HCP developers and users should be using:

  • If you are an SAP customer or partner, you will probably already have an “S” user that allows you connect to various system at SAP
  • For those without any relations with SAP (yet), you will most likely have a trial account that starts with a “P”. This is provided to you after you used the “Register” link for the first time.

These will be fairly long numbers (at least 8 to 12 number long), and many don’t remember them. So my advice here is to use your email address or the login name you have set (which can be changed in the IdP if you want as long as it remains unique in the IdP).

Now let’s have a look at the SAP HANA Cloud Platform Developer Trial account.

SAP HANA Cloud Platform Developer Trial

The SAP HANA Cloud Platform Developer Trial is accessible at the following URL:

https://account.hanatrial.ondemand.com/cockpit#/welcome/overview

Once you have logged in to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, you will first access the SAP HANA Cloud Platform Cockpit “overview”.

The Developer Trial is located in the Europe (Trial) landscape (sorry for the folks around the world, but all developer trial accounts are in Europe for now).

Now, what is my SAP HANA Cloud Platform account name on the Developer Trial landscape?

So based on the screenshot above, my account name is my “User Id” (as listed in the IdP) followed by trial, so in my case iXXXXXtrial (where XXXXXX is my I-number).

Actually no, it’s not! It’s just my account display name displayed here (above).

On the Developer Trial, the account display name & the account name are the same by default when you create your account, but you can update your account display name using the “pen” icon.

Let’s click on the account display name which will get you to your account dashboard:

The account dashboard include a tile at the bottom showing you your account name and the account display name.

You can also notice that the URL in your browser address bar always includes your account name:

https://account.hanatrial.ondemand.com/cockpit#/acc/xyztrial/accountdashboard

Ok, now you may say: “what’s the difference with productive accounts?”

SAP HANA Cloud Platform productive account

On the productive landscapes side (and we now have 6 of them around the world), the approach is slightly different.

As a customer (or partner), you will first get access to your “global account” on the productive landscape that you choose to work on.
This “global account” will be provisioned with a set of resources (services, Java units, database instances etc.).

Just like on the Developer Trial, your global account will have a display name and an identifier (look at the address bar), but these are not really used, only the accounts that you will create within the global account will.

So inside of the “global account”, you will be able to create as many accounts as you’d like.

When you create an account within your “global account”, you will be able to provide the display name, but an account name will be generated and assigned automatically.
The generated account name is made of 9 alpha numeric characters and will be included in the URL everywhere. Later, you will be able to change the display name but not the account name (and this is probably why people refers to it as the account id).

For example, this is a productive account I’m currently working on. The global account is named “Developer Destination”.

If I click on the “global account” name, I’ll be redirected to the “overview” where we have created one account:

The account display name is “Developer Relations Account”, and if you use the flip icon on the bottom right corner of the tile you will be able to see the account name:

And finally if you click on the account display name (now you have no excuses to search which one it is), you will get access to your account dashboard where your account information are displayed (account display name and account name):

 

I hope this little blog will help you find your way in the SAP HANA Cloud Platform account related terminology, and facilitate your experience with the Developer Center tutorials around SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

As usual, feedbacks, comments and proposals are very welcome!

 

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      13 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Moya Watson
      Moya Watson

      Great tips! thanks for sharing!

      Author's profile photo Yüksel Tiryaki
      Yüksel Tiryaki

      Indeed it was an issue 🙂 Many Thanks

       

      Author's profile photo DJ Adams
      DJ Adams

      Thanks Abdel, this has been a useful post. I have one question though – my experience doesn’t quite match what you describe above for the trial account, and I’m wondering why. You state that the cloud platform account name display is iXXXXXtrial … ie the “display name” in the account details that are stored in the SCI IdP for you.

       

      However, looking at the (blurred out) pattern for your display name in the SCI screenshot, and the (semi-blurred out) pattern for your account name on the trial landscape, the patterns are not the same shape. And so it is for me also:

       

      The “display name” for my personal account on SCI is “DJ Adams P481810” but the account name showing on the trial landscape for that account is just “DJ Adams”.

       

      Can you please explain? Is there some significance to this mismatch?

       

      thanks

      dj

       

       

      Author's profile photo Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Blog Post Author

      Hi DJ Adams,

      I see where is the confusion here which I wrote based on a past and outdated assumption as it seems.

      The trial allows you to change the account display name (and my mistake was that I thought it was not possible :-(). My bad!

      So in your case, you probably used the "pen" icon on the "overview" page to change it at some point

      Thanks for raising this to me!

      @bdel

      PS: from now on, in order to measure the engagement on blog posts, I'll voluntarily include one mistake, and see who spots it first! 😉 That could be an idea for a 1DX mission/badge.

      Author's profile photo Srikanth Chandru
      Srikanth Chandru

      Hi Abdel,

      Thanks for this resourceful blog.

      I am currently at a client location who already has enterprise licenses for SAP cloud platform. There is nobody here at the client who understand all the terminologies around the kind of license they bought. I am seeing that the Databases are missing as part of the global account, and I wonder if they even bought the subscription or not. Is there a way to tell what was included in the license by going some where in the cock pit or anywhere? Any guidance is appreciated.

       

      Thanks,
      Srikanth

      Author's profile photo Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      Sorry for the late reply but I was on vacation these days.

      You should see your database instances under your account > SAP HANA / SAP ASE > Database Systems in the Cockpit.

      As I'm not part of the sales organization, I won't be able to discuss much of the details as I don't have them.

      However, there is a pricing document online on the https://cloudplatform.sap.com/pricing.html page for more details I think. You can also contact your customer sales representative for further discussion.

      Regards

      Abdel

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I am unable to configure Cloud to On premise for an S4 Hana System, I was able to connect to several other system. The only diff for this system is that it requires SAP Router.

      I have provided SAP Router string also same as we use in SAP GUI connections use RFC Protocol.

      Is thee anything that needs to be enabled in SAP System so that Cloud connector can be used to connect that SAP System

      Author's profile photo Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Former Member,

       

      I'm a bit confused by your comment. Can you elaborate?

       

      Thanks

       

      Abdel

      Author's profile photo Ian McCallum
      Ian McCallum

      Hello Adbel:

      This blog helped quite a bit, thank you.

       

      Author's profile photo Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Abdel DADOUCHE (SAP)
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ian McCallum

       

      As an SAP employee, you can use your I number as your user name.

      You can use the following user names:

      • an email address
      • a user id (as an SAP employee I have my I-number)
      • a login name (a chosen identifier)

      Open the following address in your browser: https://accounts.sap.com and you should get your login name too.

      Hope this helps.

       

      @bdel

      Author's profile photo Shreesha Pillangere Ramachandra
      Shreesha Pillangere Ramachandra

      Hello Adbel,

      Thanks a lot. It is of great help.

      Regards

      Shreesha

       

      Author's profile photo jake martin
      jake martin

      Hi,

      Can anyone suggest tips & help guide for configuring SAML SSO in SAP HANA cloud platform?

      Author's profile photo Preeti Agarwal
      Preeti Agarwal

      HI,

       

      We have an issue where User name IDP and S4H does not matched. We changed the User name manully in S4H but somehow its resetting again back to old one,