Spotlight: SAP Help Portal URL changes

For all the SAP HANA bloggers out there, the format of SAP Help Portal URLs has changed — and for the better!

What is this about, and why do I need to know?

Previously, SAP Help Portal URLs buried helpful variables like the locale and version number somewhere along the path. Now, you’ll find these variables appended to the end of the URL, after a question mark (‘?’).

Here’s an example of what pointing to the ‘latest’ version of a topic looked like before vs now, with the differences in bold:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/f9c5015e72e04fffa14d7d4f7267d897/latest/5b35402c47b344d882ac13c661aff1c0.html
https://help.sap.com/docs/HANA_CLOUD_DATABASE/f9c5015e72e04fffa14d7d4f7267d897/5b35402c47b344d882ac13c661aff1c0.html?version=latest

And actually, you don’t even need to specify ‘latest‘; SAP Help Portal just assumes you want that unless you tell it otherwise.

If you do want to point to a specific version of a topic, you still can. Here’s an example of what pointing to a specific version of a topic looked like before vs now:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/c1d3f60099654ecfb3fe36ac93c121bb/2021_4_QRC/b4b0eec1968f41a099c828a4a6c8ca0f.html
https://help.sap.com/docs/HANA_CLOUD_DATABASE/c1d3f60099654ecfb3fe36ac93c121bb/b4b0eec1968f41a099c828a4a6c8ca0f.html?version=2021_4_QRC

You’ve probably also spotted that the new format also has the advantage of having a nice, human-readable SAP Help Portal product page name embedded within it (e.g., HANA_CLOUD_DATABASE). This serves as a really handy mnemonic device when scanning a list of URLs.

What do I need to do?

Adopt the new format going forward, but don’t worry; the old format will still resolve. You don’t have to worry about converting all the links in your old blog posts. When processing a URL of the old format, SAP Help Portal automatically converts it to the new format (a convenient way to grab an updated link when you blog!).

While you’re at it, during your next SAP Help Portal visit, check the full list of improvements that have just been rolled out in SAP Help Portal, or find them described here in this blog post by Sophia Marx.

You can also leave feedback about your experience using the Tell us what you think link provided in the top right corner of SAP Help Portal (shown with a red dot in the screen capture above).

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