gali.klingschneider

My new test blog

Gali Kling Schneider — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 08:43:46 GMT

Please ignore as its just a test.

Come Meet the "M"s in Madrid Next Week

Gali Kling Schneider — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:08:42 GMT

I invite you to join a Moderator Meetup in Madrid! A chance to meet SCN's experts. You can ask questions, air issues and in general have a great conversation.

Topics we'd like to cover include:

The Upcoming SCN Migration
Members of the Month
2012 Moderator Council and Roundtable Sessions
? from the crowd...

We are open to adding additional ideas, so mark your calendars and let's meet up next week in ...

The Expert Lounge 7, Wednesday November 9, from 15:30-16:00.

From the Collaboration Team; Jeanne Carboni, Jason Cao, Marilyn Pratt and myself will all be in attendance so please come say hi!

Jive World 2011

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:21:29 GMT

We’re well on our way to migrating the SCN platform, as shared by Mark Yolton in his blog Jive 5 and SCN: The Right Content to the Right Person at the Right Time. Our team has been immersed in all that is jive throughout the past year in preparation for the new SCN. That is why it was a wonderful opportunity when last week I, along with some of my colleagues, attended Jive World 2011 for outstanding learnings and networking in Las Vegas! There were more than 1,000 attendees from varied customers and partners of Jive Software. Eight separate tracks including more than sixty sessions and events were offered. I attended multiple tracks as well as a roundtable session and sitting in on one of the Jive Hero Theater session (customer community sessions). The event was chock full of great content and companies sharing their experience with lessons learned, tips and tricks etc.

Each day started off with informative keynotes and great entertainment. From break dancing with Lil Buck to the astounding flute beat box of 15 year old Annie Wu. Two special talks to note were Maria Pinchevsky, SVP of Customer Service and Sales for T-Mobile and Gabe Zichermann, Gamification Expert.

Maria Pinchevsky shared that 20,000 T-Mobile service agents handle more than 540,000 calls a day using Jive! Jive also supports their 50,000 field sales representatives. T-Mobile is using jive both internally and externally and helped them go from 29 days to less than 24 hours to write and publish documents!

Gabe Zichermann’s talk on gamification was fascinating. He cited the need to transform a big negative into small positive reinforcements to change behavior in the desired direction. As a psychology major this certainly spoke to me. To showcase this, he cited an example, the Speed Camera Lottery, used to improve driving within Swedish speed limits. Drivers caught speeding were fined (usual negative discouragement) and the money placed in a lottery. At the same time, all the drivers driving within the speed limit were entered into the lottery (to encourage and reinforce behavior). At the end of the pilot the lottery money was awarded to a random winner. Speeding was cut dramatically. Positive encouragement is always better than negative!

Other talk highlights included the need for “social” to be where the people are - Facebook, LinkedIn, Outlook, Tablets, Mobile, etc. and that Jive is making advancements in community admin reporting, social search, stream building and more.

While I felt the preconference day was geared more toward potential customers than those of us who are already Jive believers, it did kick off a wonderful opportunity for networking. Meeting others who have used Jive for years or those who recently migrated and hearing their joys, concerns, challenges and benefits was the highlight of the event for me. They also helped me to realize that the migration may not be perfect from the get-go, but that with the communication of our strong community, we will get to where we want to be.

There were multiple networking opportunities throughout the conference: breaks, lunches and a specific networking dinner where all attendees were divided into one of the Cosmopolitan Hotel’s 7 restaurants. They even provided each attendee 50 Meet Meme trading cards to exchange throughout the conference (including QR codes).

Another big plus taken away from the event is the confirmation that our very own SCN team are on the right path. Directions we chose are those that other companies who went other routes came back and said – no this way is better. That was a great feeling. I’m very much looking forward to our go live and knowing that our community will gain so much in our move forward!

The conference ended on a high note with an unbelievable show by Sarah Jones, Tony award winner and TED speaker performing hilarious characters and then a final networking opportunity at the Cosmopolitan’s pool.

I’m so glad that I had a chance to attend the event; it was well worth the investment from both a learning and networking perspective.

Good Deeds Day 2011

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:21:03 GMT

April 5, 2011 was the 5^th annual Good Deeds Day in Israel. Thousands of Israelis volunteer in hundreds of good will projects, linking business and philanthropy.

Every year the SCN team in Israel takes time off from “our community” in order to lend a hand in our ‘local’ community. Together we decide where best to contribute. The team has packaged food for families in need, planted a garden to brighten a youth center and this year painted an art workshop for youth at risk.

We chose to contribute in a special high school located in a difficult neighborhood of Tel-Aviv. It is a ‘last chance’ for troubled youth. The school tries to provide skills for its students who will most likely not complete high school, no less see college. One of the skill set options provided is for artistic jewelry making. They create beautiful wares, taking pride in creation and later selling their merchandise through websites or local businesses, thus giving them basic training in entrepreneurship.

With our normal camaraderie we set to work refreshing their studio for the year ahead. They in turn spoiled us with brownies baked in the confectioner class!

4 hours later the job was done. A newly painted workshop, red window trimmings and all was drying nicely. I hope that when they come into their new workshop the fresh look inspires them to greater creation and that the thought that there were people in the community that cared enough to do so gives them hope.

Special thanks to our very own Omer and Idit for making this connection and the wonderful organization and encouragement throughout!

image credit to Idit :)

Change Has Come to the BusinessObjects Community Blogs and Wiki

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:50:11 GMT

In October, I shared Change Has Come to the BusinessObjects Community Forum that were made to the BusinessObjects Community Forums.

Today these changes continued in the SCN Blogs and Wiki, further aligning the site and bringing us closer in line with the way the rest of the SAP Solutions are presented.

The following modifications were made:

Blog Categories

Old Blog Category Name	New Blog Category Name
Business Intelligence (BI)	Enterprise Data Warehousing/Business Warehouse
Business Objects	Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects)
Crystal Reports	SAP Crystal Reports
Dashboard and Presentation Design (Xcelsius)	Dashboard Design (Xcelsius)
SAP BusinessObjects OnDemand	SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand
Web Intelligence	SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
Dear aBI	No Change
Governance, Risk and Compliance	No Change
Enterprise Performance Management	No Change
Postalsoft	No Change
SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio .NET	No Change
Analytics	No Change

Wiki Spaces

Old Wiki Name	New Wiki Name
Business Intelligence	SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
Business Objects	Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects)
CDI Home	Deleted due to inactivity
Starter Kits for SAP BusinessObjects Solutions	Deleted due to inactivity
Updating the Business Objects Enterprise Platform	Deleted due to inactivity

Please note that watch settings and RSS Feeds should not be affected and point categories have stayed the same.

SCN Blogs Go Mobile

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:06:52 GMT

I am happy to share SCN Blogs mobile version!

Check it out at http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/mobile/

Thanks to a new interface from our current weblog technology provider, our blogs can now also be read via mobile devices. The mobile interface was developed using the iphone-universal framework (http://code.google.com/p/iphone-universal/).

You can browse weblogs by category, list the 50 most recent blogs or view the top 25 most popular posts for the last month.

Menus, lists and individual blogs are all displayed using the framework, however some blogs with large images or code listings may not display correctly within the mobile browser using the framework, so we’ve included a [view detail] link on each blog that will display the blog page using the regular SCN layout (minus most SCN navigation).

Special thanks to Matthias Steiner for entering the request in Idea Place and Martin Lang for championing this improvement.

We hope you’ll find the new interface useful.

TechEd Berlin: My Angle

Gali Kling Schneider — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:34:56 GMT

There is no doubt that TechEd is a veritable SAPfest: tons of technological information, valuable innovation displayed and a serious quantity of SAP experts in one location.

I, however, love TechEd for an entirely unrelated reason. It's the one time a year where the community has a chance for a physical meet up on such a large scale. Meeting old friends and making new ones or in many cases getting to finally see face to face those who have been virtual friends all year ...

This year, I was able to finally meet: Otto Gold, Martin Gillet, Lior Schejter, Thomas Zloch, and numerous others. I also had the pleasure of seeing many old friends once again, such as Matthias Steiner (pictured below), Abesh Bhattacharjee and Julius Bussche.

A very special meet up was organized and hosted by the one of a kind Jim Spath, to meet the SCN moderators, at the expert networking lounge (as announced in his post). This interactive session was the place to ask questions, air issues and in general have a great conversation. Above all, it was a wonderful opportunity to thank all our amazing moderators for their daily work. We had an impressive crowd of caring community moderators and members actively participating. In fact we lapsed overtime since there was so much to cover!

TechEd and Innovation Weekend were awesome events on many levels. I was lucky to have had the chance to participate and represent the SCN team (along with my colleagues Marilyn & Laure). I had many wonderful experiences, learned so much and came back with homework. It was definitely an event to remember.

For those of you, currently in Vegas, I highly recommend taking advantage of the session set up and hosted by Stephan Johannes to Meet the SCN Moderators: Las Vegas today at 17:30.

This tweet (below) by Otto Gold (@OttoGold), I received when arriving home sums up my TechEd feeling nicely - a family reunion.

Change Has Come to the BusinessObjects Community Forum

Gali Kling Schneider — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:40:40 GMT

As communicated in my SNEAK PREVIEW: Significant Changes to the BusinessObjects Community Forums post, significant changes to the BusinessObjects Community forums have been made. These changes bring our forums closer in line with the way the rest of the SAP Solutions are presented, and align with the rest of the site.

Our previous 4 forum categories have now become 3:

Below is a mapping of the change based on our former categories (one table for each old forum category).

Business Objects Forum Category

Old Forum Name	New Forum Name
Business Objects General	Threads moved to the Other SAP BusinessObjects Products and Solutions forum
Universe Designer and Business Views Designer	Semantic Layer
BusinessObjects Enterprise Administration	BI Platform
Integration Kits - SAP	BusinessObjects Integration Kits
OnDemand	SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand
Integration Kits - Other	BusinessObjects Integration Kits
Enterprise Information Management	Data Services and Data Quality
Postalsoft	SAP Postalsoft
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence	SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
SAP BusinessObjects BI Solution Architecture	Business Intelligence Solution Architecture
BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence	SAP BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence
Legacy Products	SAP BusinessObjects BI Legacy Products
Other Business Objects Products	SAP BusinessObjects BI Legacy Products

Crystal Reports, Dashboard and Presentation Design (Xcelsius), Interactive Analysis Forum Category

*Old Forum Name*	*New Forum Name*
Crystal Reports Design	SAP Crystal Reports
Legacy Application Development SDKs	SAP Crystal Reports - Legacy SDKs
Dashboard and Presentation Design (Xcelsius)	SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
Data Connectivity - Crystal Reports	SAP Crystal Reports - Data Connectivity
.NET Development - Crystal Reports	SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio
Dashboard and Presentation Design (Xcelsius) SDK	Flex SDK Development
Java Development - Crystal Reports	SAP Crystal Reports, version for Eclipse
Interactive Analysis, OEM and Desktop edition	SAP Crystal Interactive Analysis

Business Intelligence Forum Category

*Old Forum Name*	*New Forum Name*
BI General	Business Intelligence Old Forum (Read Only Archive)
Business Planning	Business Planning
Business Content and Extractors	Business Content and Extractors
BI in SAP NetWeaver 2004s	/community [original link is broken]
Data Warehousing	Data Warehousing
SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator	SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator
BI Suite - Business Explorer	SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx)

BusinessObjects SDK Application Development Forum Category

*Old Forum Name*	*New Forum Name*
.NET Development - BusinessObjects Enterprise, BusinessObjects Edge, Crystal Reports Server	.NET SDK Application Development
Development - Other	SAP BusinessObjects BI Legacy Products
Java Development - BusinessObjects Enterprise, BusinessObjects Edge, Crystal Reports Server	Java SDK Application Development

In addition the SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management was moved from the SAP NetWeaver Category to the new Enterprise Information Management Forum Category.

Please note that watch settings should not be affected, except for the /community [original link is broken] and that point categories have stayed the same.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Significant Changes to the BusinessObjects Community Forums

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:28:21 GMT

On Monday, October 4th you'll be seeing significant changes to the BusinessObjects Community forums. Why the change? Earlier this spring we revised the navigation of many of the topic area pages to bring them closer in line with the way SAP solutions are presented.

Soon after this was completed, we started to look at the forums and how they were presented. Given that the forums are the most heavily used area of the community, we wanted to take our time to consult and think through the changes needed in order to minimize the disruption. We think you'll like what you'll be seeing on October 4th, although it will take a little time to get used to it. Here is a snapshot of what to expect at the forum category level (arrows indicate the forum distribution):

Please note that watch settings should not be affected, except for the /community [original link is broken].

What about my points? We realize that many of you have worked extremely hard earning recognition points, and therefore we decided to leave the points categories as they are until at least the end of the year.

SAP Inside Track Israel Wrap Up

Gali Kling Schneider — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:51:25 GMT

Yesterday was our first ever SAP Inside Track Israel event, what a great experience!

The event was hosted by SAP Labs Israel and began with networking over a light continental breakfast (yummy). I then had the pleasure of officially opening the day, welcoming everyone to what I hope will be the first of many such events to come. Two key note addresses followed: Mickey Steiner, Managing Director, SAP Labs Israel who spoke about SAP Labs in Israel, its history and how SAP is fostering innovation from product to the customer installation. The second keynote was our own, Amir Blich, Director Emerging Business, who talked about the SAP Ecosystem, SAP EcoHub, SCN and their value.

Attendees then chose from the following interesting sessions that made up 2 tracks:

Enterprise Workspaces - Personal and Team Business Content with Enterprise Workspaces - Aviad Rivlin
The making of an enhanced UI using CE and Flash Islands - Haguy Eis
SAP Sustainability Dual Strategy: SAP as Exemplar -Transform SAP into a role model for sustainability. SAP as Enabler - Lead the market of sustainability solutions. - Avi Shacham
What is SAP Research? What's hot at the SAP Research Center Raanana? Come see how we're contributing to SAP's product portfolio and extending its leading position in the market by identifying and shaping emerging IT trends in such areas as service consumption and predictive analysis. - Mor Sagmon
Gain Significant Business Value with Custom Mobile Application. Review current SAP technologies for developing Mobile applications, focusing on Mobile phones and real life examples. - Roy Rozenblum, Oren Shem Tov
Innovation in Architecture Delivery -Global Banking Architecture Group's innovative approach for delivering complex banking solution architecture concepts and SAP capabilities in a standard & cost effective manner for the different customer engagement lifecycle. - Nitzan Levi
uPods -The challenge of bringing innovation to existing install base customers is not an easy one. With Project "uPods" we believe we have an answer by delivering new User Productivity assets via an on-demand infrastructure, while maintaining security and low TCO - Yariv Zur
ESS Implementation at NESS Global, Design and Development While Changing and Use of SAP Standard ESS Solution for CATS - Tomer Patron, Constantine Reif
SAP Community Network Collaboration Today and Tomorrow. How can you benefit from and contribute to a global network of SAP experts - Gali Kling Schneider, Moshe Naveh

Sadly we had to cancel Innojagd as Craig Cmehil was unable to attend due to illness. We missed having Craig with us but we'll give him a chance to join a future Inside Track Israel event.

The day included lots of networking opportunities to renew old bonds and create new ones. It was a wonderful feeling to see our local community face to face!

You can find pictures from the event in the Inside Track Flickr Group. To see tweets from the day check out the twitter hash tag #sitil.

Thank you attendees and speakers for making this such a great day.

A big thank you also to the team here at SAP Labs Israel for all arrangements which were top notch and to everyone who volunteered to make this happen; especially Amir Blich and Moshe Naveh.

Looking forward to seeing you at the next SAP Inside Track Israel event!

SAP Inside Track Israel 2010

Gali Kling Schneider — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:43:01 GMT

Looking for a chance to meet up with your fellow Israeli community members? Want to show or see what the Israeli community is made of?

I'm very excited to share that the first ever SAP Inside Track in Israel will be held on Tuesday, July 13 in SAP Labs! Following its Community Day predecessor it will be an unconference community event, influenced by YOU deciding what topics should be shared /discussed. It will be THE event to mingle, exchange information and ideas.

In addition, we're taking advantage of SAP Mentor Craig Cmehil's visit to Israel and incorporating innojagd (your chance to show the world your cool innovation!) as part of our agenda. We'll have our own mini Demo Jam and as Craig shared in his SAP TechEd 2010 - Demo Jam, innojagd and you!, those presenting will have an "added advantage with the selection committee", the SAP TechEd Demo Jam committee that is which is an added bonus!

Check out our cool event logo! Special thanks to Joel Alcalay for designing it.

I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

My Personal Action Item

Gali Kling Schneider — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:15:21 GMT

We recently celebrated Ada Lovelace Day here on SCN, a day that celebrates women making important contributions in the fields of technology and science. Last Thursday, I had the opportunity (thank you Maya!) to meet some of today's women active in hi-tech, here in Israel, in Microsoft's Women Think Next 2010 conference.

We had a gorgeous day for networking outdoors over food & drinks in the first part of the day. We each received black and pink (well it IS for ladies) personalized business cards and were advised to ‘get rid of them' during the event. While I love the idea of personalized event business cards (my blue and white SAP ones stayed in my bag), I believe most people find it hard to simply walk up to someone or a group and introduce themselves. I think it's easier when a little guidance is given such as our speed networking rounds during Community Day. There members sit for short periods of time at topic tables of their choice and the topic at hand is an easy ice breaker. Mark Finnern explains the concept's history and speed dating influence in his Community Day Influence III: Speed Dating ;-).

The few hundred women then entered Microsoft's auditorium. The conference was incredibly interesting with an impressive speaker list. The women speakers included;

Dina Dublon, Microsoft Board Member; also on the board of Accenture, Ltd., PepsiCo, Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, the Global Fund for Women and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children.
Dr. Taly Weiss, Founder and CEO of TrendsSpotting .
Yoelle Maarek, from Yahoo! Research Israel and formerly from Google, leading innovation such as Google Suggest.
Orit Zukerman whose interactive portraits are amazing! Also an interesting tidbit is she co-founded uTok, an early blogging community.
The conference MC was Tali Heruti Sover, a journalist from The Marker.

They shared their personal stories as well as how they handled challenges facing a modern woman. Each one's story was different but it's true that we all have interconnecting lines.

I think women have come a long way over the years but still today woman in leadership roles are lacking. In Israel for example Maxine Fassberg is the General Manager of Intel Israel. Unfortunately as a woman leader in the world of Israeli Hi-Tec she is quite alone. I hope 2010 will add more to her ranks.

Dina Dublon, asked each one of us to think what we would take away from the day and what we would do differently because of it. I gave it some thought and this blog is one of the outcomes. While I love working with the community; usually my communication is quiet, behind the scenes. Private mails, calls, specific forums etc. Perhaps it's time to be more public.

There were many inspirational and thought provoking speeches, I'm still mulling it over in my mind and that for me is a sign of a good conference. That is stays with the attendee after they've left for the day.

BTW during the event large bottles and jugs of juice were available with cups for all. I believe it's an improvement on individual bottles of water but still a way to go from personalized thermoses. Well maybe next year. I do hope there will be a Women Think Next 2011.

2010s First Small Improvement

Gali Kling Schneider — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:39:30 GMT

SCN is full of useful professional content. Sometimes the richness of the information can be overwhelming. We do our best to help you navigate as easily as possible: for example, each homepage contains on the right side, links to related resources available: elearnings, blogs, forums, wiki, downloads etc.

At the end of 2009, in our very lively SCN Support (we read everything!) we received a suggestion from Prateek Raj Srivastava:

"...when we look at "Blogs by Category", could we have a display area for "Recent Wikis" on the same topic? This would promote the Wiki entries that remains much unnoticed as compared to the blog recognition."

We thought that was a great suggestion (as many are) so 2010's first community requested improvement is here!

The blog categories now display links to matching wiki spaces when available.

For example see ABAP:

The wiki space url is also provided on the specific blog category pages:

We hope that this too will help you find your way easier on the site.

For more SCN site navigation information for both newbies and the more experienced amongst us please see the SCN User Guide.

Wishing Everyone a Happy 2010!

Blog Moderation Handover

Gali Kling Schneider — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:10:47 GMT

Thanks to the excellent work of our forum moderators, the SCN Community Team can now take a step back from blog moderation to allow our moderators the same freedom with blogs. We started the handover a while back and would like to use this opportunity to acknowledge our great moderators who quickly and efficiently stepped up to the plate. We are confident that the time is right for a complete handover.

From now on only moderators will be releasing blogger posts (expert bloggers will still release independently) and only moderators will be awarding blog points. We expect that in the transitional period, releasing posts and awarding points might take a bit longer than usual and we ask for the community's patience and understanding.

We have complete faith in our amazing moderators, and are sure that they will soon be handling the blog queues with the same finesse and speed that they monitor our forums and abuse reports.

We request that all blog moderators list their name (linking to their wiki profiles or business card) in the Contributor Corner on the wiki and that is where you will be able to find you blog categories' moderators.

On behalf of the SCN Community Team and the entire SCN Community I would like to thank our dedicated moderators who invest from their time & expertise to help us all!!

Cast Your SCN '08 Vote Today!

Gali Kling Schneider — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:02:16 GMT

There are only 2 days left to 2008 so its the perfect time to head over to the wiki and cast your vote in our 7 blog and wiki categories for best SCN 2008 content!

As I wrote in my Nominations Are Now Open for the SCN 2008 Awards! that opened the nominations, voting is easy! Simply edit the voting page and add your choice (name & link), your name and save! So take 2 minutes to honor fellow community members by casting your vote here. Remember one vote, per person, per category.

Hats off to Blag who in addition to casting his vote, honored contributors by The specified item was not found. his personal favorites with an individual blog!

There have been a few end of year summary blogs, for BPX, SDN & Business Objects 2008 content. I hope you too take part, in helping your favorite community content shine by voting now!

Happy 2009 everyone! (I can't wait to see the content that awaits us in the new year...)