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Former Member

SAP Learning Solution is a well-known product of the SAP ERP HCM suite, as it is one of the first HCM module to have been web-enabled back in 2005 (if you allow me to forget about the good old ITS services), when SAP released the "Business package for Learning" in the SAP Portal. It also probably known by people who already registered for a SAP course as SAP is using it (under the motto "eat your own dog food") as a platform for managing their course offering (check out https://service.education.sap.com if you want to see it for yourself).

The Learning Solution is a great module, which has already been improved since 2005, most notably when SAP released the enhancement pack 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (with the introduction of portal roles for the course administrator and the instructor and of portal functionalities for managers). And I heard there will be more improvements to be released soon (I hope the folks who will attend Michael Maier session at the HR2012 event in Las Vegas will tell me the news). However, since I don't know much about these improvements yet, I decided to write my "wishlist for improvements" in this blog post. I hope you'll enjoy it and you will give me feedback!

Before I start I'd like to pay tribute to Martin Gillet for his inspiring blog post My wishlist to enhance and/or improve the Cross Application Time Sheet (CATS) and to Luke Marson for his encouraging post My 2012 SCN SAP HCM Wish list.

  • the case >> While LSO is a great tool allowing HR administrators to manage their "course catalog", not all the trainings followed by employees can be found in the catalog. Indeed, it happens in every company that a person wants to follow a very specific course given by some external company. In some cases, HR does not want to include this specific course in their catalog, e.g. because they believe that it will never be booked again in the near future or they do not want other employees to see this course in the catalog.
    the wish >> to have a standard form that employee can fill with all information about the course they want to follow (price, location, organizer, reason to follow the course, etc.). Upon sending of the form, it is sent to the manager for approval, and when approved, a course is automatically created in the database. 
  • the case >> As I said, the Learner Portal was one of first web-application to be released on the SAP portal for HR. However, as of this day, this application is one of the few remaining BSP-application in the HCM suite, whereas other modules like Performance Management or E-Recruiting have been "translated" to the Web Dynpro ABAP (WDA) technology. 
    the wish >> to have the learner pages in the WDA technology. In this way, the user experience will be better and unified (for companies running ESS in WDA).
  • the case >> In the new course administrator portal, some functionalities were delivered in the "ITS" technology (i.e. the back-end transactions were published on the portal "as is") like for instance the "manage catalog structure" functionality, and some are even not available in the portal (e.g. cancelling a course is not possible in the standard portal role). More missing functionalities are listed in the SAP note 1469228. 
    the wish >> to have all the functionalities from the back-end being available in the front-end, and also to "translate" all the admin functionalities to WDA technology (instead of the ITS technology which is still used in some iViews)
  • the case >> It takes too many clicks for an employee to book a course. 
    the wish >> Make the user interface easier to book a course. In particular, I would skip the screen showing the details of the course object (thus allowing to book the course from the "course type" page). Also, I would make visible from the catalog which courses are planned and which not (it is indeed disappointing for a user to click on a course from the catalog, and see that the course is not planned yet).

That's it for now! 

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