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New or not to the SAP Community, share your story!

craigcmehil
Community Manager
Community Manager

For some of us the SAP Community started off way back in 2003/2004 as the SAP Developer Network (SDN). Later after the Business Objects Community and others merged together it became the SAP Community Network (SCN) - then in 2016 it simply became the SAP Community.

I've personally seen a lot of changes to the environment over all these years but one thing has always remained constant - this is a place where you can come to ask questions, meet others and exchange knowledge.

Over the years we've had things like "Blog it Forward" that let people introduce themselves to each other. We've also had over the years forum threads and things like that to say hello.

We've even created some tutorials to help new comers as well as those like myself take more advantage of the community. Have you taken these 4 tutorials?

  • Tour the SAP Community, Explore the various features of SAP Community, familiarize yourself with community guidelines, discover how to get the most out of your membership, and earn the Tour the Community badge.
  • Ask and Answer Questions on SAP Community, Want to ask questions on SAP Community, but not sure how to start? This tutorial will help you get to know the Questions and Answers section, processes and guidelines, so you can more easily gain and share knowledge.
  • Writing and Publishing Blog Posts on SAP Community, By taking this tutorial, you'll discover how to prepare and manage your blog posts on SAP Community, get tips for better blogging, and learn how to interact with readers. You'll also earn the Blogging Savvy badge.
  • Update and Maintain Your SAP Profile at people.sap.com, By taking this tutorial, you'll explore, set up, and manage the sections of your SAP profile (people.sap.com). You'll also earn the Profile Savvy badge.

Would you be willing to introduce yourself to your fellow community members here?

Me? Well I started my path into the SAP way back in 2002/2003 when my company told me to learn it so I could install it when I cam back from my project in Germany. I'm sure some noticed the odd bit about that statement. Needless to say I dove in and as luck would have it, SAP had just launched their beta of a Community (SDN) so coming from a web application background I felt at home to go figure things out.

@Former Member Was actually one of the first people who helped me to figure things out, my question asking left a lot to be desired as I had no clue about terminology or anything else in the SAP world. Then it was a post by @qmacro about RSS and RFC's that really got me more comfortable and then I just went crazy sharing my experiences and learnings via the blog posts.

I started a series on BSP and "mini WAS" - 

I even presented at my first SAP TechEd event.

BoF, TechEd Munich ’04 – RSS, HTTP and BSP

So it's been a crazy start into the SAP world that resulted in me getting a job with SAP, learning that you don't just "install it" 😉 and now I have the pleasure of trying to help others day to day!

Start your own thread or reply here, what's your story? Who are you?



81 REPLIES 81

DellSC
Active Contributor

I came in to SCN from the Crystal Developers Network after SAP bought BusinessObjects.  I've been working in Crystal Reports since version 4.5, when it was owned by Seagate Info.  They spun it off into Crystal Decisions, which was then bought by BusinessObjects @2003-2004-ish.  In 2005, I merged 9 Seagate Info (SI) systems, which were used to schedule Crystal reports and deliver them to clients, into a single BusinessObjects XI_r2 (BOBJ) cluster.  At that time I also re-wrote our code that scheduled reports so that it used C# and the BOBJ .NET SDK plus added modules to our web app to provide user management in BOBJ. 

When I started consulting in 2011, my "Dell needs to learn Java" project was a re-write of a utility I'd written in C# that pulls a bunch of info out of the CMS and spits it out to .csv files.  That project has grown considerably and is now used for our clients by a number of my co-workers.  Since then I've done beta testing for SAP when there are changes to the BOBJ SDKs because I have a wealth of code in both C# and Java that uses the SDKs.

In the SAP Community, I'm primarily known for answering questions about SAP Crystal Reports and its .NET SDK.  I've written one blog about using Commands in Crystal (here) mainly because I got tired of typing all the information every time there was a question.  Yes, the blog was written in 2015, but all of the information is still good in newer versions of Crystal.

A while back I became a moderator so that I can help with re-tagging questions about Crystal (needs to be done frequently) and last fall I was asked to become an SAP Champion, advocating for the SAP Community.  I'm really excited to take on that role!

-Dell

Hi...I am Arun.I am Happy to join the SAP community.... 

0 Kudos

Hi @arunsubu15 welcome to SAP Community - maybe you want to share more about you, your expertise, where are you from and what are you doing 😉


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Hello, I have been with SAP Dallas for 23 years. Here is a summary of my professional experience. I have worked in a multi-disciplinary capacity across customer lifecycle support and designed and executed programs for security, contract and regulatory compliance. I have delivered process transformation and automation initiatives, using an MVP approach and innovative technologies (e.g., AI/ML). I have established high-performance teams from the ground up and led them to operational excellence. I am interested in sharing my expertise with the extended SAP community.

@Geeta_Menon great to meet you in community! Looking forward to you parting your wisdom with community members. Did you get a chance to engage in this group Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - SAP Community? Be sure to join the group to stay up to the latest. Also, I want to introduce you to SAP Champion @SergioG_TX in case you don't yet know each other. Its pretty cool that you are coming at SAP in different ways and I bet you have a lot in common too. 😎#AI/ML 


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welcome to the group, nice to virtually meet you - join our local group  https://community.sap.com/t5/dallas/gh-p/dallas

stay tuned for our next get together, code jam or meet up to share knowledge and network with other Dallas people.

It's great to meet you Sergio and look forward to networking with the Dallas group.

Thanks for the warm welcome and the intro to Sergio. I have joined the groups  recommended and look forward to engaging with them.

StephanieMarley
Community Advocate
Community Advocate

Hello from SAP Americas HQ in Newtown Square, PA! I joined the community October 29, 2002. Until recently moving into a role within SAP Community as an influencer advocate, I made many visits to the community, most often as a spectator of content. To me, the community is a place that I would encourage anyone to go whether part of or even thinking of participating in the SAP ecosystem. Most recently I have enjoyed reading and responding to blogs, participating in Groups especially taking new online courses as well as following questions and answers for different products that I'm interested in. I look forward to engaging with all those already part of the community and new members. 

 


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Kartik_Dua
Contributor

Hello Neighbors & my extended SAP family!!
I live and work in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I have been in the SAP domain for about 10 years, initially worked as a Sales & Distribution consultant and now working with a EdTech company helping them scale and revolutionize their SAP financial system. I am Principal Business Analyst in my current role.
I have recently started participating in SAP community channels - Questions, Blogs and Coffee Corner. I write blogs for SAP communities and SAP Press. I am also amid writing a book for SAP Press. While my book and questions/answers are inclined towards connecting with fellow SAP pros on the technical front, my blogs are personal insights (sharing stories and lessons learnt).
I would love to make connections with people from whom I can learn or pass on my learnings by bonding with them as collogue, friend or a mentor. 🙂

kartikdua_0-1644263362527.png

thomas_jung
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

My journey is like @craigcmehil's and started around the same time way back at the birth of SDN - the SAP Developer Network. I had to look it up, but it was October 2003 when I answered my first question in SDN and it was in the ABAP forum:
Public PDF file | SAP Community

Converting OTF to PDF. By the way, OTF is the internal format of SAPScript. I wonder how many people remember OTF, much less SAPScript? I was reading the ABAP forums every day just to keep up on what people were asking and answering. There is so much to learn just by reading other people's problems. I started answering questions heavily, though, because we had a new infant at home which meant lots of late-night wake up calls.  I'd have problems going back to sleep so I would spend hours on the ABAP Forums in the middle of the night.

About this time, a hot new technology was emerging called BSP (Business Server Pages). It lets you use ABAP to create web sites with server-side scripting. The SAP Development Manager for BSP, Brian McKellar, was super active on SDN and using it to help people get started using BSP.  Through a few back-channel conversations with him, he convinced me to take some of what I was sharing in the forums via answers and turn them into Blog Posts. I wasn't an SAP employee but just an everyday developer at an SAP customer. So, I wrote about whatever our development team was working on or having problems with at the time. My first blog post was in June of 2004 and although not all the code and formatting parts have survived all the platform changes over the years; most of the content is still out there and readable.
BSP – a Developer’s Journal: Part I Introduction | SAP Blogs

The community was a little bit smaller in those early days.  I'll leave you with two examples in pictures.  Here was the first in person introduction I had to SDN at TechEd San Diego 2004. The entire presence was a table in the birds of a feather area with a small sign that read "SAP Developer Network"
sdn_1.jpg

The presence did get significantly larger the next year at TechEd Boston 2005.  There was a stand, with multiple signs and it was staffed by non-other than @craigcmehil. But that's a story for another day. 

DSC06681.JPG

 

Your presence to SAP is a gift to community Tom

qmacro
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

My involvement with the SAP community goes way back to 1995 where I started a mailing list for SAP practitioners around the world. I ran that mailing list for a year or two, and it was hard work; performing administration and maintenance tasks each evening, from my laptop in hotel rooms while I travelled around to different SAP customers while working as a consultant.

Why a mailing list? Well, the Web was still very new and very few folks had access to it, and to be honest, mailing lists *were* the vehicle for communities back then. You can read more about that mailing, and how it subsequently transformed into SAP-R3-L, in these posts: The SAP developer community 10 years on (note that this post is under my previous ID 'dj.adams') and Monday morning thoughts: community engagement.

Fast forward from there to 2002 where, having just written a book for O'Reilly, I got directly involved in a project that was staffed by folks from SAP and O'Reilly. The project was to conceive and bring to life a public community website for SAP folks - customers, partners and individual consultants and contractors. Over the next few months we worked on design, content areas and so on, and went through a couple of platform iterations. 

Finally, in early 2003 we were almost ready to launch. But we needed content, so I, along with some others, also got involved in writing content for the new site, to publish over the weeks and months after go-live. 

The site was launched in May 2003 and I wrote the first external blog post. I also then started to seed the site areas with content on various subjects.

As you may have guessed by now, this site was launched as the SAP Developer Network (SDN), later renamed SAP Community Network and now SAP Community. 

So that's my story.

 

qmacro
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

BTW, I came across this screenshot from early SDN days 🙂screenshot 2022-02-10 at 08.47.07.png

Look at that little "retro" RSS 1.0 badge 🙂



VXLozano
Active Contributor

'04 Summer or so. Just "finishing" an ABAP course where the teacher had too much work solving work issues to really teach us anything, so the "classes" were boring to the bone.

I decided to look for real troubles and learn from real solutions, and not silly exercises meant for newbies (I was in the development world for ten years or more). Found the SCN and few other sites.

The SCN had the same problems I have with the current Q&A, so I decided to put by brain into another place: SAPFans.

I came again from time to time, and if you check my blog history, the problem is recurrent:

2013: I tried to explain it kindly and took a leave

I came back few months ago, tried to restart the "thank you process" (returning part of the "wisdom" I gained through communities), but I got burned much faster than before. First, I tried to blow some steam in a useful way, having a link to throw at the face of leechers.

But you cannot post links to self-promote (and sadly, that blog post was mine, so to throw it to the face of leechers was -in a way- self-promoting), so I left again.

You must learn from past lessons, and to repeat the same thing when nothing has changed is a sign of foolishness. I want not to look like a foor, so I plan to keep that "nap" until leechers could be haunted away. It's not that easy: the best way should be to use and enforce "bad karma", but SAP must keep its customers, so to shame community members will not be something we will see soon.

I'll keep my butt here and will blog from time to time, keeping my brain away from Q&A. Luckily, there are people with much more patience than I have.

qmacro
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

Hi, while it's not out of the ordinary to express one's frustrations in any thread, I was surprised to see what you wrote here in this conversation that was originally (and still is) about encouraging folks to tell their story and a little bit about themselves.

Perhaps I'm naïve, but having invested a lot of time over the years to try to make this a welcoming place, seeing this comment here made me a little sad. This is me speaking as myself, but also someone proud to belong to a community of lovely people that's existed for a very long time. 

VolkerBarth
Active Participant

I might be wrong but IMHO Vincenç has certainly told a part of his own story with SCN and Q&A, and also about himself. I consider this on-topic.

VXLozano
Active Contributor

You asked for our story. I posted mine. A sweet and sour one, sadly.

But it's not your fault, and I never blamed the moderators nor the site builders. I have some needs, SAP has other ones, and I'm at your house, so I cannot blame you because the decoration.

BUT if you ask me how I feel it, it's too noisy for my taste, and because that, I decided to keep my butt in your coffee corner when I come here.

It's a great work, seriously, but you have some limitations that makes me feel uncomfortable in some parts of it.

nicoschoenteich
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

I love hearing about all of these cool stories!

I joined SAP in 2020, fresh out of university, which is why I don't have a 20-year-old story to tell. However, the SAP Community is not only a great place for veterans, but also for us rookies. Since starting out at SAP I have visited blogs and answers countless times looking for help on various topics, and more often than not, I found what I was looking for. A lot of times blog posts are even more detailed and "hands-on" than official product documentation, plus a blog post can compare products and/or solutions, which is great and a lot of the times exactly what I look for.

I started becoming more engaged in the SAP Community and submitting answers myself since joining the Developer Advocates team and I kind of regret not having done that earlier.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more cool stories. See you soon. 

Your story is a terrific one, thanks for sharing. I wish you the best in your SAP endeavors.


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mmcisme1
Active Contributor

Wellllll....   I was a lurker for many years.  Not sure when I really started with SDN.   I was splitting time between SDN and SAP Fans.  Then in 2009, I got brave and wrote a ranting blog about being JUST a developer.   I really miss that ranting category.       That's when I knew I was around "friends" who felt the same as I did.   I had fun meeting them in person.  I met so many different people.  So much fun.   I'm very introverted.  So it worked out best when they introduced themselves.

I did try to answer questions.  But I don't get to the deep problem I try to fix what the OP is asking.   Not good most of the time.  In fact I would get an answer and then I would try to answer two questions.  Back then it worked.   

Oh - and I should mention -  at my workplace I was called on to ask a lot of different questions for different people.  They didn't want to ask themselves.  And since the people here were so great, I had no problem asking questions.  So that was fun.

Jump forward some years, and I had the fun time presenting at Teched.   That completely had me hooked.

HOWEVER, like VXLozano, I did go through a period where I was just disillusioned and frustrated.   I think if you'll dig you'll see a blog about that.  Anyway I came back, determined that the community was in fact fun again, and growing, and decided to stay.  

Ah....   What can I say?  We all love things for a long time then we might put them down, only to find later that they have grown in value.  I'm back to loving the community spirit, the fun, and the people that understand and love/like/don't hate/hate SAP.  Only you could know that those feelings could easily be in one day.  And I bet most of you understand the days that I just want to throw my computer out the window.

Yes, I've been here awhile.   Right now, no plans on leaving.  I hope to see many, many, more people to move from lurker into participation.   That's when things really get fun!  But on the flip side - lurkers read and might be that one person who I help!

sandhyaduddela
Explorer

Dear all,

I have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and have 3 years of experience in programming language C#. 

I'm stopped working 5 years ago due to personal reasons. I now want to continue my career in SAP. 

In this regard, I'm doing a course on ABAP - Netweaver 7.5 from an Institution.

I did some research and found that having Fiori or  TM or Sales force for cloud or Extended warehouse management along with ABAP could possibly make my CV interesting.

As I'm new to this field, it would of great help if you could recommend or suggest some modules that could help me finding a job or make my CV interesting for recruiters. 

Thanks a lot in advance. 

Best regards, 

Sravani

 

 

Hi Sravani - you could take some free OpenSAP courses at open.sap.com - the labor market is short on S/4HANA talent, maybe start with those courses?

There are also free learning at learning.sap.com - perhaps low-code no code course?

HEIKEHARNACK
Discoverer
0 Kudos

Hallo,

schwer für Deutsche hier. Eigentlich suche ich nach Jemanden, den/die es auch stört, dass im Standard (!) MEDRUCK_PO das Feld BEDATXT mit dem Inhalt "Datum" zu kurz ist und damit ein unschöner Zeilenumbruch entsteht. Ich erwarte von SAP, dass Standardformulare wenigstens mal angesehen werden; zumindest nicht nur EN, mindestens DE (Wurzeln von SAP!), evtl. noch FR.

peterbarker
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Hallo Frau Harnack,
vielen Dank für die Frage.
Könnten Sie mir bitte mehr Infos über das Formular geben, z.B. zu welcher Anwendung gehört es? Je mehr Infos ich habe, umso wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass ich die jeweilige Anwendung finden kann.
Vielen Dank und Viele Grüße,
Peter Barker 

0 Kudos

Hallo Herr Parker,

ADOBE AIF MEDRUCK_PO gehört zu Bestellung, PurchaseOrder

Wenn man dies mit dem Standarddruckprogramm, Routine ENTRY_PDF an eine Bestell-Nachrichtenart hängt und druckt, hat man diese unschönen Effekte.

Auf Englisch wohl eher nicht, hier steht ja „DATE“, was ein Zeichen kürzer ist.

Ihre

Heike Harnack

matt
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

I can share what seems like the end of my story. I'm writing this from my S-linked account to https://people.sap.com/matthew.billingham

Recently had trouble logging in with a password request. However, the password (for my P account) stored in my keepass vault wasn't accepted. So I requested a password reset. That was sent to my old email address ....@yireh.ch
Thing is, last year, I requested that email address be replaced with my gmail.com address - as yireh.ch was soon to expire as a domain. I received notification this had been done. I even have that email!

MattAgain_0-1652100202958.png


Only now, when I seek help from itsm.notification-service@sap.com, they tell me it wasn't done. And my email address (required to reset the password) can't be changed. So no password reset for me!

I argued that, hey, look at my s-account. Clearly linked to that p-account. It's obviously mine. You can see it's mine. Here - look at the JSON download of my account - it shows we're one and the same.
Nope. "Our policy has changed".

I can still access my Universal SAP Id, but it appears my P account is forever inaccessible.

 

VolkerBarth
Active Participant

Looks like a horrible case of "Schach Matt", unfortunately.
Why is that all too often, companies introduce some "abstract improvement", which introduces new efforts for users to adapt to this, and in the rare case you think you at least are going to take advantage of this enhancement, it apparently wasn't one?

matt
Active Contributor

Well, it's gone to 2nd level support, so here's hoping! 😀

carpe_diem
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi, Matt,

Are your s-user and p-user accounts already linked to your Universal ID account (email)?
If you have both of them linked, then logging to Community with the UID account should allow you to select with which user you want to interact with the Community, so you wouldn't need to enter the P-user's password.

Also when you'll receive the 2nd level response, please share. We'll see what can be done in case their response will come negative.

matt
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

So, yes, they're linked. And prior to all this shenanigans, I could just choose which to log in with. 

Thanks for your support. Hopefully second level can sort it out. I'm a bit annoyed that my request for email address wasn't carried out,  I was really surprised to see my old email address come up!

matt
Active Contributor

Woo hoo! I'm back again. I've not had a response from 2nd level, but I saw your DM to me, clicked on the link, logged in and then I had to verify my email via a link.

Maybe 2nd level did something and haven't told me yet! 

matt
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

step 1 - chrome, delete all sap.com cookies
step 2 - answers.sap.com, click on the little empty person icon
step 3 - ooo, there's a certificate. But I don't want that, because that's my S-id, so cancel

MattAgain_0-1652124833825.png

step 4 - Log on form: enter my universal account email
step 5 - prompted for my password, which, in fact, while mucking around with this, I've changed to make sure that I really really know what it is. No doubt!
step 6 - password rejected... click on reset password - no email received (it's going to my old email address)
step 7 - go to accounts.sap.com login with the credentials I know
step 8 - accounts. my s-account email is shown, and my old p-account email is shown, that I requested nearly a year ago be changed because the domain expires.

 

carpe_diem
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi, Matt,

Can you reach out to me via DM here or on the messages.sap.com, I want to check your UID and accounts.sap.com data to understand why that is happening, but I'd need your email (old and new) and / or p and s user numbers.

Thanks,

Vladimir Gershanov

matt
Active Contributor

And this is the real me. 🙂

KlausMerx
Associate
Associate

I've just seen that my first and only contribution to SAP Community dates back to 2002. 

Due to my time-consuming tasks in the SAP Works Council (2006 - 2022) there is obviously a small gap in my "SAP Community" history. I will try to catch up. 

0 Kudos

We look forward to seeing you more 🙂



sanilbhandari
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Hello everyone  I started my sap career following up the SCN Community, especially Finance and have grown up ultimately joining SAP LABS in 2017. It has been one hell of a journey with support & guidance from lot of people on the community. Looking forward to many more years 

Sanil Bhandari