For those that follow me on Twitter they would already know from my post of last week that described a problem I found while helping one of my clients on an LSMW they had written to update Purchase pricing records. In the last number of years my focus has been on architecting applications built on SAP Cloud Platform as well as mobile applications. While I have provided the solution design to a lot of the applications we have built where SAP ERP is the backend it has not been diagnosing issues with LSMW. This I did in a past life! ? But occasionally I do get involved in diagnosing issues within the SAP ERP system. This was one such time.
My twitter post looked like this and I was blown away by the response.I think this emanated with a lot of people - the feeling that posts in the SAP Community have a longevity to them. Posts within the SAP Community keep giving back - time after time. I did think hard about the title of this blog post but the responses I received from my twitter response were the same - that the SAP Community rocks so I had to use it! Thanks nabheet.madan3 for the idea.
The focus of my post was that even 5 years after the question had been posted the answers and comments provided in the post helped me out and eventually resolved the issue. The other thought I had at the time was – “How could I identify this somewhere on the question?” Sure, I could upvote the Best Answer plus any other comments I found helpful but the impact of this I thought would be minimal. Why? Well, because this is a seriously old post from 5 years ago so there is no activity really going on with it. My further thought was that there is something missing here – once there is a Best Answer provided for a question the motivation to again keep upvoting it was pretty low – even though it may solve a problem of another 100 people that view the question. Additionally, further comments on this question really would be a bit weird – even if it was to say – “Hey, thanks – this helped me out 5 years later”. My last thought was – wouldn’t it be great to identify that this particular question helped another 100 people over the course of the last 5 years! That would be awesome!
So, the challenge is – how can people provide an update to a question to say – Thanks – this solved my problem.
The number of views may go someway in identifying how many people may have been assisted however it is a pretty rough number. The other challenge is that most people googling for questions are not logged in so any recording of a button press they would need to login for. Hmmmm...
At the moment the following exists for a Question:
To push for my idea even further I visited the Customer influence site – specifically checking out all of the improvements for the SAP Community tag. You can check it out yourself.
https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/campaign/896/ideas
There were a lot of great ideas and a lot of them have been put into play and exist in the SAP Community today…but I did not find my idea. Awesome! I created a new improvement request here https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/233743. Feel free to vote for it - no pressure.
Here is a little mock up I created for the improvement idea. UX designers - no judging please!
Now for the clincher. On a day to day basis I believe there are hundreds of thousands of questions and answers (also blog posts of course) that assist people all around the globe. So, a question a SAP Community member posts today may help hundreds of people over a 2 year period, possibly thousands over a 5-10 year period. Posts from 10 years ago are still in the SAP Community and can be referenced, looked up via Google depending on the question being asked. This is simply AMAZING! and seriously POWERFUL! I still receive some questions on some of the blog posts I have written years after and I really dig this, I would love more SAP Community members to do this.
So, if you have a question to ask - Ask It! If you also know answers to some of the questions posted in topics of your choice then you are contributing to an overall vibrant and super helpful SAP Community that helps people for the long term. It helps others, it helps your colleagues and it helps YOU! Who knows, a question you ask today may help someone tomorrow and what a great feeling that would be.
Get Involved!!! Post a question, check out other questions and see if you can answer them. If you think of improvements, then log them in the Customer influence site.
Lastly, I do keep hearing people complain about having to login to do anything on the SAP Community but any Community I know of requires a login so not sure why people keep on about it. To me, any contributions that are valued by the members within it are happy to be identified and are happy to know their contributions are making an impact. So, SAP Community members let's get over this login issue and provide positive impacts within the SAP Community.
Thanks for reading and if you are interested here are links to my other SAP Community related blog posts. Enjoy!
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/30/housekeeping-in-the-sap-community/
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/12/like...follow...comment...repeat...like...follow...comment/
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/02/24/influence-sap-now-how-to-submit-a-new-improvement-request/
Do you have any ideas on how to make the SAP Community better? If so, would be great to hear your feedback. Add a comment below or navigate to the customer influence site included above and vote for topics, OR create a new improvement request.
Don't forget to Like or Follow this blog post to meet your #LikeSAPBlogChallenge #FollowSAPBlogChallenge challenges!
My twitter post looked like this and I was blown away by the response.I think this emanated with a lot of people - the feeling that posts in the SAP Community have a longevity to them. Posts within the SAP Community keep giving back - time after time. I did think hard about the title of this blog post but the responses I received from my twitter response were the same - that the SAP Community rocks so I had to use it! Thanks nabheet.madan3 for the idea.
The focus of my post was that even 5 years after the question had been posted the answers and comments provided in the post helped me out and eventually resolved the issue. The other thought I had at the time was – “How could I identify this somewhere on the question?” Sure, I could upvote the Best Answer plus any other comments I found helpful but the impact of this I thought would be minimal. Why? Well, because this is a seriously old post from 5 years ago so there is no activity really going on with it. My further thought was that there is something missing here – once there is a Best Answer provided for a question the motivation to again keep upvoting it was pretty low – even though it may solve a problem of another 100 people that view the question. Additionally, further comments on this question really would be a bit weird – even if it was to say – “Hey, thanks – this helped me out 5 years later”. My last thought was – wouldn’t it be great to identify that this particular question helped another 100 people over the course of the last 5 years! That would be awesome!
So, the challenge is – how can people provide an update to a question to say – Thanks – this solved my problem.
IMO – I believe there would be thousands of people that benefit from questions posted from years ago however there is no real way of identifying this or a button for them to press to say “This Solved my Problem!”, especially once a Best Answer exists.
The number of views may go someway in identifying how many people may have been assisted however it is a pretty rough number. The other challenge is that most people googling for questions are not logged in so any recording of a button press they would need to login for. Hmmmm...
At the moment the following exists for a Question:
- As a SAP Community member you can Upvote the question.You can also downvote.
- As a SAP Community member you can Upvote any answers that are provided. You can also downvote on any answer that is provided.
- As a SAP Community member you can Like any comments provided to answers and any comments to the question itself.
- As a SAP Community member I can [Follow] a question. I have not really understood this option but it is there.
- As a SAP Community member publishing a question, the person can select the [Best Answer].
To push for my idea even further I visited the Customer influence site – specifically checking out all of the improvements for the SAP Community tag. You can check it out yourself.
https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/campaign/896/ideas
There were a lot of great ideas and a lot of them have been put into play and exist in the SAP Community today…but I did not find my idea. Awesome! I created a new improvement request here https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/233743. Feel free to vote for it - no pressure.
Here is a little mock up I created for the improvement idea. UX designers - no judging please!
Now for the clincher. On a day to day basis I believe there are hundreds of thousands of questions and answers (also blog posts of course) that assist people all around the globe. So, a question a SAP Community member posts today may help hundreds of people over a 2 year period, possibly thousands over a 5-10 year period. Posts from 10 years ago are still in the SAP Community and can be referenced, looked up via Google depending on the question being asked. This is simply AMAZING! and seriously POWERFUL! I still receive some questions on some of the blog posts I have written years after and I really dig this, I would love more SAP Community members to do this.
So, if you have a question to ask - Ask It! If you also know answers to some of the questions posted in topics of your choice then you are contributing to an overall vibrant and super helpful SAP Community that helps people for the long term. It helps others, it helps your colleagues and it helps YOU! Who knows, a question you ask today may help someone tomorrow and what a great feeling that would be.
Get Involved!!! Post a question, check out other questions and see if you can answer them. If you think of improvements, then log them in the Customer influence site.
You never know what positive impact you can have on the SAP Community but it can only happen if you involve yourself.
Lastly, I do keep hearing people complain about having to login to do anything on the SAP Community but any Community I know of requires a login so not sure why people keep on about it. To me, any contributions that are valued by the members within it are happy to be identified and are happy to know their contributions are making an impact. So, SAP Community members let's get over this login issue and provide positive impacts within the SAP Community.
As I often quote, the SAP Community is only as good as the people and members within it - their effort, their involvement, their positive attitude, their powerful impacts! SAP Community rocks because of all of the contributors within it!
Thanks for reading and if you are interested here are links to my other SAP Community related blog posts. Enjoy!
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/30/housekeeping-in-the-sap-community/
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/12/like...follow...comment...repeat...like...follow...comment/
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/02/24/influence-sap-now-how-to-submit-a-new-improvement-request/
Do you have any ideas on how to make the SAP Community better? If so, would be great to hear your feedback. Add a comment below or navigate to the customer influence site included above and vote for topics, OR create a new improvement request.
Don't forget to Like or Follow this blog post to meet your #LikeSAPBlogChallenge #FollowSAPBlogChallenge challenges!
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