Hi,

I need some end user manuals of SAP Plant maintenance as well as customization document(SPRO) for my reference.

i need ist urgent. please help.

Regards

Sushant

SAP PM

I recently spoke at the Minnesota Chapter ASUG meeting about how companies can ensure user enablement and I wanted to share some of the highlights from that discussion with our online community.

The world is changing every day, driven significantly by the technology market, which is becoming more aware of people.  For instance, most people have at least one, if not more, mobile devices. The challenge for companies is getting people to adopt and fully leverage these tools in the workplace as they do personally. Done successfully, managing change and user adoption will drive return on investment.

A major misconception is that companies expect ongoing improvement in user performance without ongoing investment in people/training, etc. For example, companies can get 20% greater adoption by focusing on change management directly.  A typical barrier to training is that management teams have difficulty seeing the direct correlation between investments and results. Yet, employees say that without training, their skills decline. The good news is that it takes very little investment to make a difference – an increase of 1.5% investment in training can lead to 30% improvement in project success.  Survey results show that investment in people results in increased productivity and reduces turnover, both of which drive ROI.

The way employees can receive training is also changing, there is a shift in social and virtual learning which can further reduce training cost while providing more convenient options for employees. How people communicate and learn outside of work should correspond with how they communicate and learn inside of work. We don’t want a social collaborative experience in our personal lives and then a “dark ages” experience in our work environments.   Communities we work with are also broadening, and technology helps reach the broader audience.  

To summarize the meeting discussion

-          Innovation and speed of information are changing the way we do business and people/employees are behaving differently

-          Consumer/user expectations are changing

-          Resistance to change needs to be addressed in order to manage change and support adoption

-          All learning is social

These ideas spurred discussions amongst attendees and have provided the Minnesota Chapter with ideas for future meetings. I hope this information provides some “food for thought” for you as well.

The iconoclastic art critic Dave Hickey wrote one of the best treatises on the game of basketball, The Heresy of Zone Defense. In it, he explains the jazz-like quality of the game and how, when five players act in harmony with one another, some incredibly artistic and beautiful things can happen. If you ever had a chance to watch the Celtics or Lakers in the 80's, or the Bulls in the 90's, then you witnessed what he was talking about - players focused on doing those things that would lead to the optimal result. It meant that some players voluntarily took a backseat to others and sacrificed individual statistics for the sake of the team. But these players had a goal for their team and believed in a process. The result for those teams was a lot of success. A LOT.

(Photo courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times)

It would be easy to take this example, add some cliches ("There is no 'I' in team!"), and pawn it off as a simple unguent for all that ails groups. Certainly no one would argue that for any group to be successful, each member must showcase their strengths but also step back when it's time for others to shine. And of course, we've probably all seen this done at times, but more than likely we've also probably been a part of a group where people stepped on others' toes, egos were bruised, and the whole thing got repeatedly sidetracked. When you have a large project that requires the input of a lot of people, there are ample opportunities for this to happen - it's a challenge to keep everyone focused on the goal and refrain from acting solely out of self-interest.

As a member of the SAP Community Network team, and as one who was involved with working with our internal and external stakeholders on change and  education, I had the opportunity to be part of something that was very close to what Hickey describes, albeit on a much larger scale. Our "team" is made up not just of SCN team members, but of 700+ SAP employees and community members who volunteer their time and domain expertise to ensure that SCN spaces are optimized for users and that we're delivering the right content to help our users become smarter about SAP products and solutions. Some of these people have this as part of their job description, while others just want to ensure an active and useful community. Without these stakeholders there just is no SCN.

Collaborating with a large and vocal group brings its logistical challenges. While SCN team members are communicating with stakeholders daily, for the purposes of our migration, we needed to have a forum for all stakeholders to hear news and get educated, and needed to be done in the same channel. To do that, we held 16 one-hour sessions, each with it's own topic about the new platform, and used the time to explain new features, functionality and our hopes for stakeholder involvement. As an open forum, we also solicited questions and feedback. Much of the feedback from stakeholders went in informing our decisions about how to improve the platform and make it more useful. From these meetings came hundreds of smaller group meetings; in some cases we wanted to go deeper on a topic, in others, we needed our stakeholder experts to help us make better decisions.

(Photo courtesy of Chip Rodgers)

Our migration meant disruption and additional work for stakeholders. In the course of managing already demanding jobs, they were also being asked to help us create a better platform. It would have been easy for many to put this in the bucket labeled, "too busy", or to devolve the discussion into criticism, but we were able to avoid getting sidetracked because our collaborative team (SCN + stakeholders) worked together professionally and respectfully. Out of these discussions came feedback and suggestions that resulted in better space layouts, metadata structure, navigation, and a host of other issues. While some issues emerged when we launched the new SCN in February, we're continuing to collaborate with our stakeholders to find solutions to problems and identify new and better features we can implement in the future.

Rational thought, albeit at times punctuated with passion, ruled the day, and it was incredible to see that in this large group, self-interest didn't distract us. Our stakeholders, who continue to be active as Space Editors and Moderators, focused on what was best for the community. And the result is much like what you get from a great assist and selfless teamwork in basketball - you may give up individual statistics, but you drastically increase your odds of success.

For anyone interested in search, Google has released the Penguin update over the past week.  This is the first major update to Google's ranking factor and search result algorithm since the Panda release just over a year ago. 

In the official Google blog about this new update, it describes it as "another step to reward high-quality sites." In other words, Penguin is just another effort at tackling what's now being called "black hat webspam:" the practice of trying to rank webpages higher with techniques like keyword stuffing and creating elaborate link schemes, among others.  The same blog clearly differentiates "white hat" from "back hat webspam" search engine optimization and emphasizes the importance of "white hat" SEO in improving site content, usability and performance (i.e. speed). 

I guess I don't need to mention that SCN is committed to white hat SEO.

Google's announcement came with a sigh of relief: over the past few weeks there was chatter about an "over-optimization penalty" forthcoming and no one was really sure what this means. I suppose it was easy to misinterpret what could mean and people were even more on edge after a glitch during a minor update two weeks ago. This glitch resulted in a huge drop in the number of indexed SCN URLs, which quickly bounced back after 24hrs. (SEO requires lots of patience...lots...) Overall, Penguin is just another attempt by Google to stay one step ahead of the webspammers and provide quality results for users.

Here are some good blogs about the Panda release that you should consider looking at:

• Another step to reward high-quality sites - Official Google Blog about Panda
• Google Penguin Update: 12 Tips Directly From Google - See: Google's not hiding anything! Well, someone already pointed out that these aren't always black and white...
  

Happy searching!

Hi all,

I created an HTML Page to track changes in SCN. There are a lot of RSS feeds. But I only added some RSS feeds. Because I couldn't find all RSS feeds. Page simply seperates "Discussions" and "Blogs". But now no blogs. Please feel free to tell me which content RSS want me to add. Or save the html page and use it on your pc.

And the url: nwturk.com/SCN

About 25 years ago, when I lived in San Francisco, I would frequent a wonderful bistro named “Lefty O’Doul’s.” Situated just off Union Square, near the theaters and shopping, Lefty O’Doul’s was the perfect place for a college student just scraping by. My husband and I would sidle through the cafeteria-style line past the glistening fresh carved turkey and beef, and head straight for the spaghetti special. Roughly $3.00 would buy a salad, pasta, dinner roll and drink. They had a big-screen television, and we’d buzz right through the line and be at our table exchanging small talk with other Giants fans before the national anthem. Lefty’s, named for a famous baseball player and plastered with baseball paraphernalia from front to back, has been in business since 1958. I am happy to say that they still have their spaghetti special although the price has risen to $5.49.

Across town on Nob Hill, another restaurant, Acquerello, opened about 22 years ago. You can get a three-course pasta dinner here as well, but it will cost you $70. Throw in tip, wine, valet parking and so on, and you’re looking at some serious cash. Granted, their bill of fare is somewhat different from Lefty’s’. The first course is pear and foie gras ravioli ― that’s “dry-farmed, organic Warren pears filled with truffled torchon of foie gras.” I’m fascinated by this for a number of reasons: I’d never heard of “dry farming”, I hadn’t realized “truffle” could be used as a verb, and I’m puzzled that an Italian restaurant features French “torchon of foie gras”.

Aside from these random musings, I find a great metaphor for marketing in this everyday conundrum, a common occurrence in my life. We hear a lot about innovation and I’m all for it, but we must beware getting caught up in innovating for innovation’s sake.

Just as an expensive restaurant doesn’t necessarily guarantee a palatable experience, innovation doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. That’s why our companies need us. Marketers are the equivalent of a concierge, guiding our prospects to the right experience.

Let’s look at one example ― virtual events. Is the ROI worth it? Well that depends on why we’re doing them. If frequency is key to our strategy, we’ll wear out our teams and budgets by piling on too many events. But if we want to capture a far-flung audience with “live content”, I’d absolutely add a webinar. But then I’d … “innovate”:

§  Ensure your platform can handle application sharing and include a live demo or stream a video so the event rises above the norm.

§  Use live Tweeting during the event.

§  Host a LinkedIn Discussion the following week to continue the conversation.

§  Post a scaled-back version of the PowerPoint on Slideshare.

§  Add short clips from the event to YouTube.

§  Follow up with a related article or white paper, AND insert that same piece in your content syndication.

My mother used to tell me that necessity was the mother of innovation. Mom was right. (Who knew?!)  Frequently, when looking for multipliers to extend our reach, budget and bandwidth constraints challenge us to be innovative. Social media tactics promise to stretch our imaginations even further because, like pre-game chatter at Lefty O’Doul’s, they offer us the opportunity to build a fan base along the way.

Say what you might about the New SCN, one thing that's for sure is that the new blogging tools and hosting has taken the community to a new level.  SCN blogs are now getting indexed by external search engines so that they now appear in search results and the text editor is light years ahead of the old one.  While getting into search results is one thing, getting to the top of those results is another.

With external search engines being a key source of site traffic, a higher search result ranking means more people will see your blogs and read them. Applying some basic principles of SEO (search engine optimization) will make you blogs easier to find and increase the chances of them appearing higher in search results.

I've broken this blog down into five parts that will guide you through the fundamentals of SEO for blogs on SCN. 

It's for People, After All

Never forget this: you're writing for other people, not Google. Google wants to be the best search engine in the world and that means giving users great results they can use.  To achieve this, Google is increasingly bringing human elements into its search algorithm.  Frightening as this may sound, it was inevitable given the sheer volume of user activity now being shared online and Moore's law that lets Google do increasingly more with that information.  Google's getting better at this and gone are the days where you can stuff a page full of keywords and link to it from all over and then see that page at the top of search results: Google's after quality pages and increasingly judging it based on human terms.

Choosing the Right Keywords

A keyword can be a single word or a combination of two or more terms.  Getting a high rank for a keyword is easy when no one is looking for that keyword so you have to anticipate what keywords your audience will be looking. 

Google's keyword tool provides you with keyword search statistics and synonym suggestions absolutely free. This is your playground to test keywords and their variations to make sure they're what people are searching for.  It can also be used to validate that Google has made the association between keywords and their various abbreviations, acronyms and synonyms.

I have to admit that keyword selection for SCN blogs will mostly be a no-brainer because you'll mostly be writing about specific topics or products and Google has already established the connection between their spelling variations. Still, this is a handy tool for when you're not sure.

Strategic Keyword Placement

Keywords are what people search for and a search engines job is to match those queried keywords to a webpage.  To help this process along, it's important to place keywords in highly visible, or weighted, positions: placing a keyword in the URL or title is more valuable than when it appears in the body text.  This makes sense after all: if you put a keyword in the URL or title, I guess that means you're blog is going to be about that!

Put extra attention when you compose the title of your blog: on SCN, the blog URL is generated from the title (they're the same).  Additional keywords should appear in headings within the body text, formatted as headers.  Don't forget some often missed opportunities like the file name fore an image you're embedding and adding tags to your blog (under Properties below the text editor).  Finally, don't overdo it: just add the keywords where it makes sense and don't go overboard!

Good Content

There are parts to this: you're writing and its formatting.

Writing & Composition

As I said earlier, you're writing for people: your audience wants to see fresh ideas, new insights and unique content that they can enjoy reading. Don't write for the sake of writing: write because you have a unique personal experience you want to share or have something valuable to bring to the community. And don't forget to inspire your readers: there's nothing like a great conversation happening at the bottom of a blog post!

Here are some basics:

• Compose an attractive title that encourages people to click it from search results
• Start with a brief introduction about what the blog is about
• Separate main ideas with descriptive headers that contain additional keywords
• Add links to other places and compose the linked text carefully (i.e. don't use Click Here)
  • This will also save you from having to re-hash something already explained elsewhere
• Conclude with some final thoughts and a call to action
• Proofread and use the spell checker

Text Formatting

Use correct formatting to make the text attractive to readers and ensure that search engine crawlers read the text for what it is: headers (<h2>), paragraph text (<p>), and so on.  Use the native formatting to avoid visual noise and clashing with other site content. I've already dedicated a blog to this where you can read more: SEO: The Devil is in the Detail

Generating Inbound Links

Sharing on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or wherever you hang out online also brings traffic to your blog. When other readers like, +1 or re-tweet, it provides search engines with quality signals about what people like and having your blog at the center of a trend will help boost its search rankings. At the same time, don't forget that no one wants to share boring or re-hashed information with their peers: they're looking for blogs that brings value to their lives, working or otherwise.

Truthfully, there's no magical formula for getting to the top of search results.  Google is in the business of providing its users with what they are looking for and your efforts should be concentrated on providing just that: fresh, original ideas that appeal to the SCN community.  Just don't forget to dot the "i"s and cross your "t"s in the process.

Wishing you good luck and bright wishes for your future and hope that you will achieve new heights and growth with a short time period.

This is good time have to share my personal experience of SAP Community.

When I was joined first time in SAP community, it was saying “You are coming to the right place”. But now all are saying “Go and see the new professional social network”. SCN help me to increasing the weight of my brain day by day. It helps to make us a simple person to an extra ordinary man. Feel free to use this and you should realize at the end of first month.

Its awesome ideas included in the new SCN and bring the extra light and bright features. SAP new community has proving new style of blogs, podcasting, discussions, profile management areas, following, bookmarks and communications, direct messages more informative things. It was some difficult to use but learn more things.

Thanks,