PLEASE SAP – Fix the problem with ID’s and SCN registration
Please read all of this to understand where I am coming from on this. It’s lengthy, but the history is important.
This all started on at the end of September of 2015 when my company completed a split into two pieces. This is not unprecedented, and as a matter of fact companies larger than ours (Xerox in particular since it is local to me) decided to do the same thing recently as well. It happens in business and even my family dental firm (two brothers) decided that since their practice got too large to manage they would split. There’s more to that story, but I digress.
It took a while to sort out all the contract details – that happens with contracts for large pieces of software in that it takes time to sort things out to make sure everyone is happy on both ends. If you never have been involved in one of these, I suggest that before you make any legal jokes or nasty comments about lawyers that you think twice because there are a LOT of little details that can make or break a relationship – just ask anyone in a relationship about that. I was involved in one for an unrelated product and it took awhile and after going through the process, I’m glad I did because I learned a lot about the software industry and got exposed to how things are licensed and paid for.
So that entire process of getting a new license took awhile. It got successfully resolved, both sides are happy to my knowledge, and I’m not here to bash either side about what they agreed upon. I don’t know all the details nor do I need to and that’s not the point about this and I’m purposely saying this to make sure people understand it’s not the point.
However, there was one fallout over all of this and I am BEGGING SAP to fix it. That issue is when an S-ID is tied to a person and they used it for years to get into what was SDN, then SCN, and now it’s a federated login.
In my half, we had to be issued all new S-ID numbers. This note is being written under my old one because I wanted people to see I have history here. I’ve asked questions, helped others, attended Tech-Ed’s, etc, and all that history is there. Up until now, people could see what I’ve done, what I’ve asked, and where I’ve helped. I have people following me, and I am following certain people as well.
Now because there is no way to “merge” or “move” or “whatever you want to call it” about S-ID’,s I am going to lose much of my past history unless something is done. Unlike others who voluntarily left a job to work for another firm, that isn’t what happened to us. The only thing that really changed was some legal entity things that the lawyers had to sort out, fix up contracts (see above), and change some email addresses. Our systems stayed with us, they didn’t change other than we all needed to re-register as developers for those of us with developer ID’s.
So unless this is fixed, this is goodbye for me under this ID. Sure one can re-follow people, but I can’t transfer any legacy karma or badges. If someone finally answers one of my more detailed questions about how CDHDR record keys get created, I probably will never know it unless I choose to find all of the old posts and follow them.
I’ve read in various Q’s and A’s that there is no “fix” for this, I am very surprised by this, I would have thought that this issue would have been resolved years ago. People change jobs all the time, why should they have to start over on SCN just because of an S-ID tied to their account.
So I am asking that this be fixed. I can see a number of ways of doing this:
1 – build a merge or transfer function
2 – Let people change the S-ID on their account
3 – Don’t key accounts by S-ID at all and remove it entirely from the SCN accounts
4 – Create a separate company ID (C-ID) and then make the people in charge of the companies manage who gets to do what with their C-ID and what S-ID’s it ties to
By the way, I lost all my history for OSS notes too for the same reason. Thankfully I documented the important ones and I can look them up again (the ones about how to build network shares are fantastic by the way – 080266 and 117395)
There has to be a better way for this.
Thank you for your time
Bruce Hartley
PS – Any suggestions on how to build an account that “goes with you” would be appreciated. I’m thinking it would be tied to a personal dedicated email account unrelated to work and that I would leave the company field blank.
I feel your pain, Bruce. My account was linked to an s-id at a former employer. About 10 years after I left the s-id was locked and I couldn't get back into SCN.
When I created a new account I made sure it wasn't linked to an s-id at all. I agree that it should definitely be possible to 'migrate' your account to another s-id.
Another problem comes with SAP Cloud Platform (as raised by DJ Adams) . If you are logged into SCP and you try to open SAP Community it forces you to sign in with the same account. You have to use another browser, which is a pain.
Mike;
Thank you for the mention of that issue with SCP and SCN – I will add that to this when I post it to idea.sap.com (see next comment below).
And I've seen that happen with support.sap.com as well. Before all of this happened we had two sets of S-ID's because we acquired a company that had existing SAP systems and they had their own contract and I saw this same thing years ago with that too. What I did in that case was always make sure that I was in this ID before going into SCN.
Hi Bruce!
I do not know is feasible or if it does not already have, but already commenting, why do not you put this idea on idea.sap.com site as improvement?
BR,
Raphael Pacheco.
Raphael - thank you! - I will do that today or very soon.
I went to https://support.sap.com/home.html and logged in.
there I clicked the drop down arrow next to my name and select "change my password"
on the next page I scrolled down to My Data section and clicked the button "view my data"
And then I saw this mile long list of service providers
And now I can imagine that this requested merging of IDs must be a hell of work.
Hi,
There are two user id - one is P-user id and other is S-user id. S-user id is very good to search for SAP notes etc, as those are provided by corporation you work for, and P-user id is good for posting question and answer, and reading blog. That why I never use S-user id to do any of this activity rather than looking for SAP notes, as S-user id is not given to me but to corporation.
Thanks,
Nishan
But you cannot use SAP Passport (SSO) with the P-User, can you?
Some newer members probably do not know this, but when SCN started there was no "P" number concept.
If there had been then obviously everyone would have used a P number, to avoid the problems described above. But we had no choice. We had to use our S number, there was no other option.
My company got taken over as well, thus I was issued a new S number, as now we had a new global agreement with SAP. So I had to create a new account with a P number.
There is no point raising this on idea place or anywhere as SAP already know. At the time I got the new number, I was allowed to add myself to the waiting list of people who wanted their old account content migrated to the new P number. That was just over a year ago.
To make matters worse, when logging into the SAP Support Portal, the login is first attempted with my P number automatically, which of course does not work, and then I type my S number details in. The workaround is to use internet explorer for the SAP Support Portal and Chrome for whatever the SCN is called these days....
I am actually using P-number account registered back in 2006 during the SDN-days!
SCN started around 2001 as I recall.
I looked up the date that SAP told me they were going to merge old accounts with new accounts and would I like to be put on the list?
It was in 2015 but more importantly.....
It was April 1st!
I feel your pain but this is a known issue (so no need to post any ideas) and someone has been "working on it" for about 5 years, I believe. Pretty much obvious by this time that it ain't gonna happen.