If you’re new to the SAP Community, or even if you’ve been around a while but have mostly stayed behind the scenes, "lurking," your profile may look a lot like this:
As I wrote about in my blog post Hello World! Three Easy Ways to Get Started with SAP Community, starting to fill out your profile is a good way to get your feet wet in community. First steps include things like uploading a profile photo, which I describe in this Tip in a Minute video:
(See more tip videos on this resource page for SAP Community.)
But that’s just the beginning. If you really want to take advantage of all the Community has to offer, you’ll want to do more in your profile: you’ll want to fill out more information, and you’ll want to take advantage of some settings that are stored there as well.
Let’s talk first about key elements of your profile to fill out that will help other members get to know who you are and help them connect with you.
This is called “About Me” and lives in the Personal Info section of your profile. Here you can provide a brief synopsis of yourself. You don’t have to write much; a simple paragraph will do. Just tell the community how you’re connected to the SAP ecosystem. Are you a developer? Do you work in a partner company? Have you worked with SAP products for a long time? Do you have expertise in a particular area of SAP? This is the place to let others know.
This is called “Elsewhere”, which also resides in the Personal Info section. Here you can enter any URLs to important pages like your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter page, or maybe a URL to a Blog It Forward post you wrote about yourself here in the community.
If you have multiple accounts, and you have content and reputation associated with them, another item you will likely want to fill out is the Profile Linking section of the profile.
In this section, you can connect the profiles of your various accounts together, so that if another Community member finds one of your profiles, they will also be able to see the other ones.
Here is an example of how this looks on a profile, in this case tammy.powlas3 profile:
(Note that even if the account you want to link is no longer active and you cannot reset the password, you can send an email to sapnetwork@sap.com to request guidance; there may still be a way to link your accounts.)
Filling out these important sections helps you show the Community who you are, and if you contribute content, it helps them understand your background and how much expertise you might have in the subject matter you’ve written about.
Now let’s talk about other parts of your profile that you should also want to take full advantage of.
This set of controls lives in the “Public visibility” area of the Privacy section in your profile. In addition to the main switch for turning your entire profile visibility on so that your profile is publicly visible at all and you can participate in the Community, this section contains controls for determining which specific information in your profile should be visible to other members, such as your email address, your About me bio paragraph, your Elsewhere links, and so on. (Note that the type of account you have may impact which visibility settings are available to you.)
The set of controls for determining which email notifications you receive for Community content and activities are located in the Communications section of your profile. Here you are given quite granular control over the kinds of things you wish to receive email notifications about, such as direct messages, content in tags you follow, or content you’ve been @-mentioned in.
This ends our tour of key parts of the universal profile. If you follow the suggestions provided in this post, you will be that much closer to getting the most out of this rich community environment. Don’t miss out! Fill out your profile today!
As I wrote about in my blog post Hello World! Three Easy Ways to Get Started with SAP Community, starting to fill out your profile is a good way to get your feet wet in community. First steps include things like uploading a profile photo, which I describe in this Tip in a Minute video:
(See more tip videos on this resource page for SAP Community.)
But that’s just the beginning. If you really want to take advantage of all the Community has to offer, you’ll want to do more in your profile: you’ll want to fill out more information, and you’ll want to take advantage of some settings that are stored there as well.
Let’s talk first about key elements of your profile to fill out that will help other members get to know who you are and help them connect with you.
Your bio
This is called “About Me” and lives in the Personal Info section of your profile. Here you can provide a brief synopsis of yourself. You don’t have to write much; a simple paragraph will do. Just tell the community how you’re connected to the SAP ecosystem. Are you a developer? Do you work in a partner company? Have you worked with SAP products for a long time? Do you have expertise in a particular area of SAP? This is the place to let others know.
Important webpages about you
This is called “Elsewhere”, which also resides in the Personal Info section. Here you can enter any URLs to important pages like your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter page, or maybe a URL to a Blog It Forward post you wrote about yourself here in the community.
Other SAP Community profiles you may have
If you have multiple accounts, and you have content and reputation associated with them, another item you will likely want to fill out is the Profile Linking section of the profile.
In this section, you can connect the profiles of your various accounts together, so that if another Community member finds one of your profiles, they will also be able to see the other ones.
Here is an example of how this looks on a profile, in this case tammy.powlas3 profile:
(Note that even if the account you want to link is no longer active and you cannot reset the password, you can send an email to sapnetwork@sap.com to request guidance; there may still be a way to link your accounts.)
Filling out these important sections helps you show the Community who you are, and if you contribute content, it helps them understand your background and how much expertise you might have in the subject matter you’ve written about.
Now let’s talk about other parts of your profile that you should also want to take full advantage of.
Settings for public visibility of your information
This set of controls lives in the “Public visibility” area of the Privacy section in your profile. In addition to the main switch for turning your entire profile visibility on so that your profile is publicly visible at all and you can participate in the Community, this section contains controls for determining which specific information in your profile should be visible to other members, such as your email address, your About me bio paragraph, your Elsewhere links, and so on. (Note that the type of account you have may impact which visibility settings are available to you.)
Communication settings, for receiving email notifications and newsletters
The set of controls for determining which email notifications you receive for Community content and activities are located in the Communications section of your profile. Here you are given quite granular control over the kinds of things you wish to receive email notifications about, such as direct messages, content in tags you follow, or content you’ve been @-mentioned in.
This ends our tour of key parts of the universal profile. If you follow the suggestions provided in this post, you will be that much closer to getting the most out of this rich community environment. Don’t miss out! Fill out your profile today!
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