Explained: SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers

What’s the big deal?

What’s hiding behind this new SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers? A lot of new opportunities for getting the right enablement content to the right people at the right time! 

This add-on will allow customers to make their custom enablement content available via SAP Companion to a much broader audience, namely external workers who either don’t have a user in the target system or are not in the employee identity provider. SAP Companion allows customers to support continuous learning by providing access to support content and in-application guidance, within the actual application.

I’d like to explain how this new add-on for the SAP Enable Now cloud edition can benefit your company, what it encompasses, and how it works.

What’s in it for you?

In short – you can now offer in-app help via SAP Companion to almost any user of your IT landscape!

The SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers was developed with a specific use case in mind, which I would like to tell you about.

Many customers have created awesome enablement content of various formats not only for their internal employees but also for other types of employees like temporal workers, contingent workers, or even just visitors of a website. These users would either not be in any kind of user directory, would change very often, or would be in a different directory from the internal employees.

These customers asked us to find a way for them to use the great SAP Enable Now functionality of in-app help delivery via SAP Companion for a larger, sometimes anonymous audience.

Previous to the 2206 release of SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, all users of SAP Companion had to be authenticated using Single Sign On (SSO) so every user had to have their own SAP Enable Now user account because access to SAP Enable Now is via a named user license.

The SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers add-on provides a way to reach large external audiences with SAP Companion without having to take care of the Single Sign On availability for them.

Using the concurrent connection model, customers can now provide access to their training content via SAP Companion to users who do not need to be authenticated. This means the users can be either anonymous or just not in the customers main employee user store.

Although the team had a specific use case in mind when developing this add-on, there might be other use cases for the functionality.

What’s in a name?

This add-on might have a long name, but it will make the enablement of external users much easier. I will explain each part of the name below:

“SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers”

First of all, this add-on is available only for the SAP Enable Now, cloud edition. It is not available on-premise and the prerequisite is the minimum amount of SAP Enable Now, cloud edition licenses.

It will be available from today onwards via your SAP sales representative.

“SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers”

The new functionality is available for SAP Companion users only, and only for consumption. Consumption means the consumption of content via SAP Companion, in this case excluding SAP Companion for desktop.

Other ways of consuming content like the direct library link, learner view in the SAP Enable Now Manager, or SAP Companion for desktop, are not available for users via the add-on.

Content creation will also not be possible for users licensed via this option.

“SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers”

The target audience for this add-on are external workers, in this case defined as users of the target application who are not in a customers identity provider. This means are either

• anonymous and don’t sign in, like visitors of a website, or
• they have a username and password but cannot access the target application via Single Sign On.

SAP Companion for External Workers

In short, anyone who cannot be authenticated via the identity provider configured to work with Single Sign On for everyone else in the SAP Enable Now Manager.

Please be aware that, using the concurrent connection model, you will not be able to get detailed user based tracking results. This means that details about the consumed content will be visible, but there will be not details about the user that has consumed the content. This is an inherent drawback of the anonymous access.

What’s a concurrent connection?

The SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers is utilizing a new license type called the concurrent connections license.

The concurrent connections license allows customers to provide access to Enable Now content, through SAP Companion (excluding SAP Companion for desktop), for their external workforce, without the need for the external workers to authenticate.

The number of concurrent connections is defined as “highest number of concurrent connections to the cloud service of SAP Enable Now”. This means that the highest number of concurrent users that are accessing SAP Companion content at the same time will be the basis for pricing.

Authenticated users using named user licenses are not included in these calculations, they will be licensed as before via the active user metric and do not count against the concurrent connection metric.

This measurement is calculated automatically by SAP Companion on a daily basis. Customers will be able to check their external usage via self-service within the SAP Enable Now Manager.

What’s the hold-up?

I’m sure lots of you see a use case for this add-on in your company – whether you are already an SAP Enable Now customer or not – so please get in touch with your SAP representative and ask them about this new add-on.

If you have any questions, be it commercial or technical, feel free to post it directly below this blog or as a community question. Of course you can also reach out to your assigned Customer Success Partner or join one of the Ask the Expert sessions (EMEA/NA or APJ).

Take Care and Stay Safe,

Kristina

Service Hint – If the name is too long to type, copy it from here: SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, consumption option for external workers 😉