The SAP Community is Sick, Tired, and Quickly losing people
Sick
There are less and less people here who are commenting. They aren’t asking questions. They aren’t answering questions. There are less blogs. A lot less fun blogs to read. It’s like a gigantic whale slowing bleeding out. Each person that leaves is a part of the blood.
Tired
Tired of writing blogs and having no idea what to select for an SAP tag. Tired of being interested in development and getting everything mixed up in the blogs. Tired of being beat up for “old” technology. SAP GUI. Bad words. At least ABAP isn’t a bad word anymore. Tired of links that don’t work, because that question was archived. And yes, tired of the marketing that is shamelessly out there. I often find myself wading through it.
Losing people / High frustration
Of course see the above. I might be wrong. I don’t have charts. But see above. They may still be members. But may not be contributing members or worse members that have just changed to another forum.
Is it that the gaming system is gone? I don’t think so
Is it that we can’t find what we want? YES
Is it that we end up finding it someplace else? YES – of course the archives are a good place to find things.
Is it that blogs and entire pages are devoted to promoting this or that SAP product? YES!
Is it… Well you the community could probably add more.
I as many people just got back from Teched. I also listened to many conversations – even the ones I wasn’t involved in. People are frustrated.
Fix?
I hope so. Maybe we need a different URL for technical, functional and shameless marketing?
Or even if we could get to what we want quickly would be nice.
I know our mentors are looking at things. Asking questions and trying to ask for change. So I’m crossing my fingers that we end up with something a little better.
By the way, and obviously, I still use SAP Community. (not SCN, not SDN) Sigh. Just started using it again. I was talked into it. Mmmmm…. Maybe they could look at UX / UI in Open SAP. To do that there would have to be a sub-set of users to work through it, not just SAP Employees.
So I hope this meets the rules and is not taken down. What frustrates you when trying to get what you want from the SAP Community platform?
Well said Michelle as SAP has managed to kill their crown jewel with multiple re-platforms and very poor strategic decisions but wait, per leadership it was going to be fixed by SAPTechEd 2017 but alas another false promise. As a test, post this on LinkedIn and my guess is you will get 5X as many views.
On a side, less people coming to the community means that less people read SAP’s marketing blogs but a bigger side effect is less consultants/customers answering questions which means more Support tickets for SAP and we all know that customer support has been a pain-point for years.
Will repost my comment on Jelena Perfiljeva Jelena Perfiljeva (two ID’s came up) and was wondering why but just noticed that I have 3 SCN ID’s great blog you referenced above as still holds very true.
“I could go on a rant with all the ways SAP has went backwards on the each of the various platform moves (which in theory should have made it better) and sad that a software company didnt see/want to protect and improve one of their crown jewels but that is for another day.
Bloggers/writers will go where their content is read by their target audience which for the SAP community used to be SAP SCN but no longer. I have moved to the Linkedin Platform and am getting 20X the views and 50X the engagement there + still hitting the target audience of SAP/SF customers (due to how I am promoting it in LI groups, social media and other places). On a side note, more decision makers are active on Linkedin than SCN so there is that angle as well. There was a time 4-5 years ago where SAP SCN was 20X vs Linkedin which tells you know much things have changed. On a side, the fact this this blog only has ~900 views is a shame as if you had put in on LI you would have gotten more than that (even though the topic is another blogging platform).
On a side note, once people leave they never come back which is why all the after the fact fixes are not going to work and SCN is in a downward spiral as without fresh INDEPENDENT content it becomes just another marketing arm of SAP which combined with the very poor usability and accessibility (Is SAP EVER going to fix their horrible log in issues (I have 25-30 different IDs for SAP/SF websites) is never going to drive customers which is ultimately the target audience for many blogs.”
And so... What can I say - I agree. I have taken many Open SAP courses. One was on UI / UX design. They said that it should be an easy platform to use. I believe the word was enjoyable!
Sigh - yes it's been a while since there has been positive movement. But I really have to check after Stefan's comments.
Have a good one!
Michelle
The other day I was looking at the Capra picture caption contest blog and was wondering why Jamie Oswald (the winner) didn't just post his entry on SCN. At first I thought he might have been too busy and it was just easier and faster to reply on Twitter. But then I looked up his name and here we go:
And what looks like his second account (pretty much like I had to create another one) has a rather interesting name I totally agree with: https://people.sap.com/cloudidentitysucks
Hello Michelle,
I am absolutely not your opinion.
The whole community had the opportunity to influence and to design the change process from SCN to SAP Community. Only a few have done it. The most do what they ever do - nothing and grumble. You can find a post from one year ago here, and as far as I can see, nothing has changed. Citation: "But if I look in past of the SCN and look at the behaviour of the members I see that hundreds of members read the posts, but only max. 1% write comments or rate the posts."
Sorry but in my eyes it is not a question of the hoster or the operators, it is a question to us, to the community. We should see the possiblities of the new environment and not what it seems that we have lost. It is our task to fill this community with life. There is no reason to be frustrated.
Cheers
Stefan
I'm sorry Stefan but I feel you might have been misinformed on this. We had the opportunity and took it and our input was ignored. SAP Marketing wanted very much to announce New SCN at TechEd and they allowed to release a half-baked product. I hope we can finally be frank about it a year later. You'll find a lot of evidence to that effect on SCN, although most of it is now in the archives.
Of course, participation has been a problem on SCN for the last 10 years. People always moaned and groaned about the abandoned questions, point hunters, lack of feedback, etc. Even 1% from 100 and from 1000 is a different number. And 1% from 0 is still 0. Unfortunately, from what I see, currently participation has dropped to the critically low levels. E.g. check Q&A in SD (one of the most popular modules) - most questions have 0 replies. And I don't see the regulars anymore who used to answer the questions there. No new members to replace them either. You have correctly asked in the old post - what is the motivation?
As far as "possibilities" that we should see - not sure I understand what you mean. Could you be more specific? What exactly do you think is "underutilized"?
Couldn't agree more Jelena Perfiljeva and remember back in 2011 where they delayed the launch when they realized it wasn't ready but unfortunately that strong leadership and understanding of the damage of a failed launch would have longer term was not present in 2016 even though there were red flags galore. Here are the details on 2011 launch delay.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-delays-launch-of-new-community-provides-no-insights/
The delay in 2012 was just 5 months. Did you know that this launch was actually 10 months delayed.
I lost track that the most current SCN launch was 10 months delayed which is even a bigger wow when I see what the "finished" go-live offering was.
If you haven't seen my reply - please look below in the comments. Sorry about missing the reply button.
Hi Stefan,
"The whole community had the opportunity to influence and to design the change process from SCN to SAP Community."
You are mistaken or perhaps misinformed. What the whole community had was the opportunity to provide feedback. That feedback was then mostly ignored. There was a strong recommendation that go-live be postponed until the most egregious bugs and missing functionality be addressed. That recommendation, like the feedback, was also ignored
There are quite a few of the people posting here who have provided massive amounts of feedback going back to well before the Open Beta testing began in May, 2016. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We can provide feedback in great detail with strong suggestions for improvements. We can't make the people in charge of the community actually pay any attention at all to the recommendations. Did you really think these frustrated posters did nothing to prevent this fiasco? It very much is the fault and responsibility of the hosters and operators who have been ignoring the community input for well over a year now.
Unless and until that changes, griping is about as productive as any of our other efforts have been.
Hi Stefan,
I love opposite views! I honestly think this may have been happening gradually for a long time.
Yes - as you can see I'm trying to fill it up with more information from my area. Who do we talk to make it better? Yes content is good. BUT finding the content is even better!
So when you write a blog what do you pick? This is generally a rant. More on the technical side because that is what I do. I picked NW Netweaver ABAP. Why? Because I didn't find a good spot to add this.
I'm also having trouble with us filling it with better data. If we do - the idea is that all the people who moved on will come back?? Or your thought is that no one moved on? Again maybe I need better stats. I'm going to search for a blog that has them.
I love it and I'm going to try to post more!
Michelle
Well, Stefan might not see it because you didn’t reply on his comment directly and he won’t get notified. In the good old days we used to get automatically notified of any new comments. But not anymore. Now you can’t just post a comment and say “thanks, y’all, for your input!”. At least not if you want others to actually see what you wrote.
The air is thick with irony here...
<Sigh> Crazy.
Hello Michelle,
excellent, your opinion is refreshing, you are not suffering. I wait for your posts and will be a permanently reader of it.
Best regards
Stefan
Thank you!
I was reluctant to comment, even though I came across the blog earlier, because I have read quite a few blogs like this one, where promises have been made in comments and nothing really happened, but Stefan's and Jelena's comments kind of provoked me...
I am not frustrated anymore, just worried and disappointed. You cannot keep anger for more than a year, it is not healthy.
I am disappointed and disillusioned, because it has been a year and I am not much better at utilizing the site to my advantage than I was in November. I use a custom CSS, custom search engines, RSS, I type search URLs in notepad to filter content, I press CTRL+C every time before posting, I use Helmut's app and the old Excel file that I kept as a backup, I use notepad++ instead of the available editors to format longer replies or when I need to do some copy/pasting... Other than playing with Greasemonkey (not fully supported in my main browser), I cannot think of anything else that I can do on my end to fix the broken experience.
And I am worried, because many good people have left since the go-live, that I rarely encounter new knowledgeable people, that I seldom find new interesting content, that the quality of questions in my areas of interest has reached the point, where I learn nothing by figuring out an answer... If I gain no knowledge by participating and if I get no personalized display tailored to my preferences, there is little benefit to log in at all (and no, gamification cannot fix that).
I cannot understand this whole SAPGUI vs FIORI vs [insert whatever comes next] thing.
I am just a functional consultant, but users rarely complain about technology, they complain about poor design choices and bad UX.
There are good and not so good design solutions (and terrible ones, too). Yes, sometimes the answer is a FIORI app, but in others it can be Personas, or utilizing add-ons, or writing a report, or even revising the whole solution...
A small hint to Michelle Crapo (5 userIDs - that is impressive):
If you wish to receive notifications (kind of) for all comments to your blog, you can add the following in your RSS feed: https://blogs.sap.com/2017/10/03/the-sap-community-is-sick-tired-and-quickly-losing-people/feed/. Only the last 10 comments can be retrieved in this way, but if you use RSS during the day, it is a viable option.
Hi Veselina,
I know what you mean. I do have to try to work around the issues. I have just recently taken the time (thanks to some mentors I talked to) to get back on SAP.
GUI vs. FIORI vs. next thing. Yes, I can see your point from the functional side. But you have made some interesting comments. Even from the functional side you have had a hard time working with the new platform.
Actually if you haven't been there the Open SAP section has some great UX courses. That's one of the nice places to go. There are some marketing courses, but when I start those, I just drop them. I really love that part of the SAP community.
I'm going to have to read your blogs! They share about how to navigate this platform.
Thank you!
Michelle
Hey Michelle,
well, I'm still around (somehow), and I do still do read blogs (some tags), and I also still comment (sometimes).
But I do get your point.
Not sure what else exactly I should say here, but did want to write a comment.
best
Joachim
PS: primary tag "NW ABAP Runtime Environment" - is that to prove the point that tag-choosing is not easy? Or have something "ABAB", as it's not dead? 😉
🙂 I couldn't find the right tag. So I grabbed any that was even close!
Thank you for the comment. I'm trying to keep track between Linkedin and here. I posted the same blog there.
Michelle
Hi Michelle,
There is a saying in many languages about if you try to please everyone, then no one will like it.
This might be the only logical conclusion when you want to try the 1DX way,
The brave thing to do would be to reinstate SCN catered for SAP professionals and use SAP community for marketing needs. I don't believe SAP is brave enough to do this though.
The professional SAP community will find other spaces to fulfil their needs.
Cheers, Rob Dielemans
Hi Rob,
Sadly, I agree with you. If it could be split it would be wonderful.
Thank you for the comment,
Michelle
WHEN oh WHEN will I LEARN!!!!!!!
Wrote a post and got an error message:
Something like “Could not post for security reason”.
ARGGHHHHHHH. another lost post and ten minutes I'll never get back. I wish I could send SAP a bill every time that happens for my time!!
Oops see the next comment.
So you included a link in your reply, didn't you? That was my "mistake" the last time I got the security message.
No.. I'm pretty sure I didn't. 🙁
OK - now when I comment- I'm copying it. That way if I lose it because of a security error, I just paste it again. Sadly, that did work. So I saved - security error message. Pasted - worked. Same exact text.
I've gotten a couple of those!!!! Crazy - I'm not really sure why I got them.
To all,
So far tracking 1400+ in Linkedin. Um, 430+ in SAP Community... Linkedin is winning by a lot!!!
Oh boy - that's scary.
Michelle
Wow this is getting bad. For the curious, this was read 460+ here, 2480+ Linkedin.
I didn't think there would be that much of a difference.
Ouch... that hurts.
It will be an interesting experiment if you could post a technical blog on both sites and make comparison.
Try this a different way - my last one couldn't be loaded because of security concerns. I'll try putting a technical blog out there next.
And you got Bill’s feedback not here, but on LI.
<Sigh> Yes I didn't want to add it here. Amazing. He was pulled in by someone else directly though. Isn't that community at work?
Status between here and Linkedin - last one because it is getting depressing:
582 here, 4470 Linkedin
I just got a security message - no links in this. I'm copying this time in case I get another one.
When I just read (= quickly flew over) this blog(no need to read the blog, just the last paragraph), I immediately thought about your issue:
--> (some) SAP folks not only seem to prefer to comment on LinkedIn rather the here at their own SAP Community, they are actively asking to "message me on LinkedIn"?!
Don't get me wrong, a call to action at the end of a blog is a great thing, but it should be "leave a comment here!" (=leave and generate the audience here) not "message me on some other platform" (=actively drawing attention AWAY!).
Best
Joachim
Yes - I should have sent them here. Then the comments would all be displayed.
I started working on new SAP projects after long time( 3 yrs after) with new product road maps and find SCN in archive grave having questions available only before 2016.Previously I used to subscribe Questions & Answers asked in communities to keep myself up to date but now seeing subscribe to feed is absent. Blogs and Q&A hanging together. Really frustrated ....
I've heard that before. I've also heard the new sap community feels like it is all "HANA" type things.
Hopefully - keeping my fingers crossed - the new role out will help. And if not, then the next one. This community is really a large group of "end users" to try to get all the requirements. BUT when the same thing comes up multiple times (Subscribe), that's when it should get attention.
Things are changing. I've been e-mailing the people I knew personally who I don't see posts from. They have different reasons not to come back and post. I have gotten a few maybes. The community is only as good as the people are. The platform can't be bad enough that people aren't here anymore.
So Nitesh Sharma - thank you from me to you - for being one of the people who are here. (You wrote a comment so you are here a little bit)
I'm trying to be positive lately.
Michelle