Technical Articles
Happy Anniversary, SAP Community! Let’s Merge Those Accounts!
Two decades ago, our community began officially with the launch of the SAP Developer Network (SDN). In the 20 years that followed, I’ve been part of the community’s constant evolution — sometimes involved directly, other times contributing peripherally, but never far away. I watched SDN become SAP Community Network (SCN), witnessed SCN transform into the platform known as SAP Community, saw SAP Community expand even further with the addition of groups.
My personal community journey perhaps culminated in 2018, when I took on the leadership role for the Community & Influencers team. And in the 4 years that followed — not to mention the 16 years that came before — I’ve seen my share of ups and downs with community features and activity, as well as familiar names come and go…and even come back.
With 20 years of rich history, the community — whether known as SDN, SCN, or SAP Community — has always sought to provide a home for the best and the brightest of the SAP world, many of whom have gone through their own personal community journeys following their own individual career paths. And when these long-time members suddenly found themselves stepping away from SAP for a while before returning — or remaining within the industry, but with a new employer — they may have had to create a new community profile to replace an inactive account.
For the longest time, we have heard great contributors bemoan the loss of an account — along with its accomplishments — when they’ve been forced to start over in the community with a new profile. Account linking offered some remedy by showcasing badges previously earned and content previously published, but it could not replace what members really wanted: the ability to merge their accounts into one active profile.
As a team, we have pursued the ability to merge account for years, but with limited success, and often relying on manual efforts by very generous folks behind the scenes…
That is until now!
In 2023, the year we celebrate our community’s 20th anniversary, I’m happy to announce that we can also now celebrate the arrival of account merging. If you have more than one SAP Community profile, you can now merge them into a single account leveraging your SAP Universal ID.
With the new process, you can now merge the content associated with your community accounts (S/P) into a single account. To start the process you can access it through your SAP Universal ID.
What is SAP Universal ID?
SAP Universal ID provides a single, life-long access point to SAP systems. It allows you to link your existing SAP legacy accounts (S/P users) under a single profile and take control of your personal SAP identity. With SAP Universal ID, you maintain one account, even if you change roles or employers.
Click here for more information about SAP Universal ID and to set up your profile.
What about merging accounts?
The account merging process is a tool to merge the content associated with your different community accounts (S/P) into a single account. To use the tool, you must:
- Have an SAP Universal ID
- Link the accounts that you want to consolidate
- You should have at least one P account
- You should have logged in to SAP Community Answers with your P account at least once
Get started with merging those accounts
Account consolidation is a three-step process:
- Link your profiles: you can link your profiles via your SAP Universal ID Account Manager or via the ‘profile linking’ feature in your SAP Community profile.
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- SAP Universal ID Account Manager: only active accounts can be linked, and you should have access to the email that is linked to your account to authenticate yourself if needed.
- SAP Community profile: inactive accounts (inactive, non-deleted) can be linked provided you have your user ID and password.
- SAP Community IT support can help link inactive accounts if you don’t remember your credentials.
- Select a primary account: you can select your primary account in the Account Consolidation area. You can only have one primary account and once you make your selection, it cannot be reversed. The primary account can only be an account associated with a P user-ID since you have control over who accesses your account.
- Select the account to be merged and trigger the merge process: you can select one or multiple accounts to be merged at a time.
For more information about the process, click here.
Important information for S-users
If you are an S-user, please note S-user accounts are set to expire since SAP Universal ID will be THE default authentication method of the future when logging into SAP sites and platforms. Therefore,
- If you are an S-user with one account: go ahead and create your SAP Universal ID now so you won’t lose the content and history associated with your current profile.
- If you are an S-user with multiple accounts: create your SAP Universal ID, link your S-user accounts as part of the setup process or via the SAP Universal ID Account Manager, and use the Account Consolidation tool to merge your accounts (see previous section).
For additional information, visit the SAP Community SAP Universal ID FAQs page.
What information will be consolidated?
Regardless of your type of user (S/P), consolidated information includes:
- Reputation: Karma credits, missions, badges, roles
- Content: blog posts, answers, questions, comments
- Activity: likes, votes
- People: followers, following
- Subscriptions: people, content (blog posts, questions), tags
Final considerations
- Content consolidation is a one-time, irreversible process.
- Once the merging process has started, you will not be able to access your accounts or create any content until the consolidation is completed. The process can take between 30 mins to 24 hours.
- You can merge one or more accounts at a time.
- If you need help with the consolidation process, please reach out to SAP Support.
As part of the SAP Community’s 20th anniversary, we’re excited to share this news with you! If you have multiple accounts, please follow the instructions above to merge them, then join us in celebrating 20 years of community! Look to connect with members in locations near you. Join the Community Spirit initiative. Share your favorite pictures and memories of your journey with the community. And stay tuned for additional updates and activities to celebrate the community’s anniversary this year.
Additionally, use your SAP Universal ID to log into SAP Learning and get started with your next Learning Journey. Because even though the community’s journey is 20 years old, the trip is far from over — and there are many, many more great years to come. I look forward to sharing them with you!
Great work! Looking forward to the next 20 years.
Hi Craig Cmehil ,
i´d like to use this, unfortunately when i go https://consolidation.community.sap.com/ to i get this error:
Very strange, can you try again? I just loaded it without a problem. I've informed the IT folks to have a look as well.
Marian Zeis I will contact you directly to discuss the issue.
We have applied a fix for the above issue. Marian Zeis thanks for raising and checking.
Thanks Mirko, is working now and I merged two Accounts.
Thanks for the quick fix!
Great ! Amazing feature =)
next step, be able to get to open.sap account certifications, record of achivement and badges avaible throught an API on the profile ! (like the recognition from developers.sap.com or those from learning hug !
Thank you Craig Cmehil
That is a cool idea - why don't you request the APIs with SAP Community Influence project? If you do, make sure to ping me, as I'll definitely vote for it.
Hello from my newly merged profile !
Thank you for working on this. I had been talking about this issue for years with multiple SAP folks and I'm quite glad it is finally solved!
Thank you Craig Cmehil
The merge tool worked really well for me. Kudos on getting this out and congratulations on the anniversary 😀
Hello,
very cool and successful. After I heard about the project half a year ago I was curious. The implementation is also good. The result is very professional.
Regards
Marco
Unfortunately it doesn't work for expired (non-deleted) One time account that was permanently unlinked
Marssel Vilaça I have sent you a mail to follow up.
KR Mirko
Marssel Vilaça I have added your account. It should appear within in Account Merge UI. Let me know if there are any additional issues
KR Mirko
Hi Mirko, Hi Craig,
can you help me merge my Account S0007042004. It shows This account is not active yet and cannot be merged. (Contributor 64 Answers 23 Blog Posts 107 Karma Points 38 Followers 127 Badges)
The Acount has many badges and it took a lot of time to acquire them. I would be very happy.
Leider wurde er daktiviert.
Regards
Marco
Marco Büscher I will send you a mail to follow up directly,
kr Mirko
Hi Craig,
I have been looking to merge my account which I have been using since the beginning of SDN and have seen it transforming to SCN and then to SAP Community.
With your post, I saw a glimmer of hope but since I posted all my blogs with S user ID and not with any P user ID, this merging is not working for me.
I have been using S user ID for the last 20 years and suddenly I was told that it's going to expire ! Adding salt to the wound, my S user ID didn't had any administrator who can extend the expiry date. I followed up with SAP desperately but at last I had to loose my prized possession of 20 years !!
My organization where I work now created a new S user ID but I lost access to edit my own blogpost!!
I would be extremely grateful to you if you could help me merge my accounts.
Warm Regards,
Firoz Ashraf
PS: Please note the following User ID
S0002818988 Created 20 years ago and used till last year. Can't access this anymore.
S0009598165 Created and used from last year
P2006610130 Created today
I wish to merge mainly S0002818988 (and possibly S0009598165 ) with P2006610130.
HI Firoz Ashraf,
can you still profile link(see https://people.sap.com/#profile_linking) the S-users (you need to have access to the email addresses of the S-users). If not, just reply and I will check what can be done.
kr Mirko
Hi Mirko,
Thanks for your response.
Sorry to say, I am not able to link the profile.
Getting the error "Failed to link profile. Please refresh the page".
Regards,
Firoz Ashraf
Hi Firoz Ashraf,
can you open Account Merge tool again and check if the two accounts are available? I have profile linked them for you.
KR Mirko
Hi Mirko,
Yes, I can see that both the profiles have been linked now (although one is inactive)
Many thanks.
Firoz Ashraf
Congratulations!!! And good step forward. Cheers to the next 20, 30 years!
Hi Craig Cmehil
I have some old stuff from almost that time, by the way I do not know why I still have it, haha.
Regards
Mauricio
Hi, I merged my accounts and realised it's irreversible, but can the Primary Account be switched to one of my other merged accounts? Thanks.
I do not believe it is reversible however, best to have someone on the technical side chime in.
No, all content has been merged into the selected primary account
Just for clarification: Is the new recommendation to have one account (probably the S-User) for everything? In the past it was recommended to have a P-User for the community and the S-User for the official stuff.
The goal is that everyone uses a single Universal ID that links and connects their multiple other accounts.
So I don't have to choose the account I want to use after logging in with Universal ID anymore?
You still have to select which account to use after the login. You are presented with a list of accounts after the first login. You then select which one to use. It adds a couple additional steps.
Thanks Greg! I already use Universal ID and I know the account selection. Till now I'm using a p-user for community and my s-user for the other stuff. Which leads to the problem that I cannot do both within the same browser session. But I understand now, it's recommended to use a s-user also for the community.
As I do not have to deal with several s-users, this makes it easier for me. It is clear to me, that s-user cannot be easily merged, as they might belong to different companies.
Not all S-ID accounts can be merged but I began using Universal ID several years ago.
Oh wow - if this (merging of accounts) actually works, that would be awesome!
Having 3 or 4 accounts, maybe I'll give it a try one day ...
Thanks!
Unfortunatly the profile merging is not working for me..
https://account.sap.com/manage/accounts#linked is showing 5 accounts linked to my SAP Universal ID (correct).
https://consolidation.community.sap.com/?continue only shows 2 P-users.. All S-users are not available.. What can I do here?
hi Timo,
Please log out and then log in again. We fixed something in the background and hopefully this should allow you to see and merge all your users.
BR,
Yaniv
No change unfortunately..That is my primary account btw (within the same universal id).
Timo Stark We will contact you directly to check some more details
kr Mirko
I finally got around to merging my accounts and it worked fine. Just had to "copy" the information from my previous to my current profile once the process had completed.
What would have been nice: to get a confirmation email once the merge had been completed.
And, something I noticed with the "elsewhere" section after the merge when updating my profile information (but don't really remember how it looked like before):
When entering the links, there is a field for "Title" to go with the link:
But when I display my profile page, only the links show up without the expected title:
This doesn't quite look like expected behaviour to me (or am I missing something?).
Thanks much and Cheers
Bärbel
Unfortunately i am not able to track my old posts / points etc here. Not able to reach to any one on this.
Hello Satheeshkumar,
I am sorry you have not been able to reach anyone with your issue. Please send an email to sapnetwork@sap.com.
Kind regards,
Anne
Thanks,
I am dropping an email as part of the merger , universal id etc lot of my old post, reputation all are lost will be glad if you can help. This is strange after contributing to so many years our data are lost. Trust team will find a way to link all of them back.
Br,
dsk
Anne Kathrine Yojana Petteroe : Need your help, I have my unisersal id, I have merged all account and have made my P-User as primary , now when I access https://groups.community.sap.com/ It is asking me to create again a new user id. When I create a new user id, all my previous stuffs are lost. Is migration from SCN >> GROUPS not done yet?
Vivek Hegde Until the migration to Khoros groups has taken place later this year, everyone needs to register with a new username first time they log on to Groups. The username you need to enter here is a display name. Which means the underlying Universal ID will stay the same, and I can assure you that no content will be lost, your account on community.sap.com stays the same.
I hope this helps 🙂
Thanks Anne, that is reassuring !
Great ! Thanks for sharing .
Hello.
Will it ever be possible to transfer or merge certifications from an S account to a P account?
Thank you!
Great question and one we will have to come back to you on.