New job at another company - new SCN-account?

[Former Member]

Hello,

I was just wondering, what happens if someone starts to work in a new job at another company? What is happening to the SCN account and the nicely collected points?

I guess you can simply add your new email-address with the new S-user behind it?

Right?

Best regards,

Thomas Wagner

[stephenjohannes · Accepted solution]

It's too late now for most people, but if you are interested in retaining recognition points long-term, then you should never register with SCN using a S-userid.  Instead you should use your personal e-mail address for your SCN account.

The problem is that SCN no longer has any tools for migrating points between users due to an S-userid change.  If your old employer deletes your s-id then everything on SCN is gone.

This especially important for consultants for anyone who might change gigs on a more frequent basis.  It also is relevant for those people working as an FTE at company who then gets acquired or merger activity.  You may keep your job, but your S-number changes.

Finally I want to say that SCN Support Team from SAP has a bunch of great people who are stuck with some sub-optimal technology solutions that underly SCN in certain areas.  I have full confidence that if SAP's SCN Support Team(those employees that support SCN both in the community and behind the scenes), had better solutions in certain areas to fully solve these types of problem, they would do so.  I like the SCN Community(the people) and folks at SAP that run the community, I don't like tools that limit the potential of the community(jive, sap identify service, bunch ball, etc).

Take care,

Stephen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Ok, it seems so that I would loose my points (with some persons thinking otherwise). I have marked all helpful answers as helpful and set this thread to "assumed answered".

Thomas

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Stephen Johannes wrote:

It's too late now for most people, but if you are interested in retaining recognition points long-term, then you should never register with SCN using a S-userid.  Instead you should use your personal e-mail address for your SCN account.

Exactly. I wish this was made known when SCN migrated to the new platform. If I made a change at that point and even if I lost all previous points etc. it'd at least be much less painful than it could be now. It shouldn't even be allowed to use S-user on SCN, really.

There is an open discussion on this issue in the private Mentor space, so I can't share it with you, but perhaps could comment here since it affects everyone (the Mentors just have more to lose, obviously). From what I understand, there is a plan to have a solution in 2015, so just hang in there.

[former_member206422 · Accepted solution]

Hi Everyone,

I am the Product Owner for SAP ID Service.  My product provides the authentication and user management for SCN.  Of course, we, like SCN, have also inherited the S-User accounts.  As mentioned above, during 2015, we will introduce some tools with account merge/consolidation functionality. 

With this new functionality, our goal will be to be able let you also keep your points, badges and status post consolidation but it is early stages and that is not something that we can yet currently commit to.

During 2015Q1, I will setup a blog for the functionality and timelines.

Thanks,

Charles

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Charles,

I think, this is great news.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Charles,

Thank you for adding this information.

Just wanted to know, in the event this feature does become available, would users who have already left the organisation, or need to set another eMail ID as their primary SCN account ID be still able to make the change (given the fact that their old ID may be inactive by then)?

-Sid

[former_member206422 · Accepted solution]

Hi Sid,

Yes, this is functionality that we would like to provide.  We are still in early stages so I cannot yet commit to how things will work.  I will have some additional information by the end of February.

Thanks,

Charles

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hey Charles,

Thanks for your response.

-Sid

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Charles,

Are there any news about this topic? This could be important for me this year.

Best regards,

Thomas

[former_member206422 · Accepted solution]

Hi Thomas,

We are working on this functionality and will role this out gradually during the course of 2H2015.  It will also depend if you are changing from an S-User.

Thanks,

Charles

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Any news about this issue ?

I'm facing this issue right now (this S-user will be alive until 17.10.2015).

Was deactivated, and I was not able to access my SCN or anywhere really. Now is reactivated for a while. Is there anything I can do or change the way of authentication while I still have access, to  be able to access this account after S-user gets deactivated ?

Thank You !

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

I wonder if would have an update on this? 2015 is almost over.

It's an important subject for many SCN members in the volatile job market.

[former_member206422 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jelena,

Thanks for reaching out.  I unfortunately do not have great news on the timeline.  We are yes working on the solution but there are also many other system dependencies such as the Support Portal / Service Marketplace, Partner sites and yes the Community. 

At this time, I do not have any dates that I can share.

Thanks,

Charles

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I'm looking for solution where my reputation points, badges and just SCN content related to my S user will be assigned to newly created P user.

I believe that solution will work for all other users.

Since we want to preserve just SCN related objects.

When those object has been reassigned to P user, I don't care for old S user or dependencies it has with Support Portal / Service Marketplace or Partner sites. It can be deactivated.

Br,

Mario

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Charles, any updates on this topic?  Thanks!

[former_member197207 · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott,

I recently took over Product Owner responsibilities from Charles regarding SAP Cloud Identity. Fact is, that we are still working on a solution conceptional-wise and do not have any timelines yet we could share.

Thanks,

Folkert

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Folkert,

Thanks for the quick response!

Since I am unable to update S # and email ( they show locked in my profile ) which are tied to my current employer, any steps you can suggest to maybe best prepare my current account for future linkage?  Now, I do see a P # also tied to my current email ( not sure how that was created ) but it does not allow me to log in using that information.  Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,

Scott

[former_member197207 · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott,

I will ask someone from our support to get in contact with you.

Regards

Folkert

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Just want to add that Scott is not alone here.

It would be beneficial if the SCN team posted a blog or a document about this. The S-user account "mergers" have been a problem for a while and it's causing issues for all the SCN members. E.g. few months ago I wondered why I didn't see one person's content in my activity feed anymore and it turned out they had to open another account.

Some very good contributors don't post on SCN anymore because of the account issues. Obviously it was a very bad design to use S-user without the ability to migrate it to another S-user easily, but at least we deserve to know what is being done to correct this.

Thank you.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I fully agree with this.

A solution for this would really be appreciated.

Thomas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

The release of the merger procedure is taking years. I remember requesting this in 2012 and the response was that it was "work in progress" and today again I'm asking for the same. Also a semi-official timeline for the release was shared few times on SCN, but now we see that the team is still working on the concept.

It is hard to build a community and engage users with this kind of problem where a big part of the community has surely encountered this issue in the last years.

It seems to me that the issue wasn't given the kind of priority it deserves.

Kind regards,

Borut

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

And what is the most important, majority of the people doesn't need and doesn't want solution that works across all SAP servers. We need solution that will work just in community - where we invested our time to build our reputation.

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Mario and Borut - could not agree more with you. SCN puts a lot of emphasis on the reputation building - all those badges, points, levels, etc. But then your S-user changes (sometimes due to the reasons you cannot control) and suddenly it's all gone.

And I fully agree with Paul Hardy's comment in his MOM interview that such things should not be impossible these days. It certainly seems that this issue has not been given the right priority.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

A step forward would also be to just enable "detaching" of current e-mail and S-user information from the account.

Till the merging procedure is not finished, this would allow us to not lose the accounts because of terminated S-users.

[Former Member]

I will leave my current company end of july and it seems there is still no solution for this, right?

I am afraid that this will make me more reluctant to contribute to SCN with my new user.

Thomas

[Jelena]

It seems there is some solution at least in the new environment where SCN is going (away from Jive). Not sure what's the time frame for that migration. Maybe has an update?

For the time being one can only hope that your employer is just as bad as us with cleaning up the S-users - last week I deleted S-user for a person who left years ago.

[Former Member]

I resolved my issue this way:

Try what I have done...

Br,

Mario

[Former Member]

Hello Mario,

Thanks for your reply. It includes to be certified with your S-user but not everybody has this privilege. Still I mark it as an helpful answer.

Thanks,

Thomas

[Former Member]

True, but I would say if I invested so much time building reputation with that user, it makes sense to invest some money and little bit more time to earn certificate.

Of course, certification is always good.

Mario

[Jelena]

Hmm... I'm not interested in any certification at this point but if such option of preserving S-user exists then why it is not simply used for those who need it but without certification? Just add another flag that works the same way but says "SCN user" or something. If it's feasible for those with certification then it should be technically feasible for anyone else.

[Former Member]

I have not completely understood that certification thing. Does it mean the S-user cannot be deleted but eventually the old admins of the old employer can change the password which means I can't log in any more?

Still I am reluctant to pay a few thousand euros/dollars myself and go to a training including certification eventually during my holidays just to keep my S-user.

[Matt_Fraser]

This was my immediate thought. If the S-user can be detached from a corporate relationship, and the email association changed, if there's a certification associated with the S-user, then why oh why is it a problem to do this for all other S-users? The fact that Mario achieved this is enough to indicate that it obviously is technically feasible now, not only after the 1DX migration.

My guess here would be that SAP has been reluctant to do this for others (unless forced by the certification thing) because they really want a "cloud identity" global solution, and this probably is a restricted-scope solution. But, as others have said before in this thread, the vast majority of us are really only interested in an SCN solution.

Well, mostly. I would like my training history, etc, which is also associated with my S-user to follow me, too.

[Former Member]

I saw in your profile - you already have some certificates... Is that related to your S user?

If yes, you are safe...

When admins from your previous company delete your S user from company list, user will be removed from company but if it is related to some certificate, it cannot be removed from SAP servers completely. It will loose all right it had in all SAP servers but what is important to you is - you will preserve control over your S account in SCN. 

Of course, if you take care of those steps:

- assign password for your SCN account

- switch your SCN account from single sign on to password sign on

- change email from previous company email to your personal email.

[Former Member]

Hello Mario,

Yes, I have some certifications. But only one real from SAP training, done in 2001 when I was employed at the then SAP subsidiary SAP SI and as far as I remember I then had no S-user but a D-user. With my current employer and its S-user, my first and only one with a number of points, I only did a few free openSAP-online trainings and I am not sure if they maky my S-user un-deleteable (I am afraid they don't).

So this was my situation and this thread has 3k views of people who might also be interested and have their own situations.

Still I will try out your steps once I get closer to my quit-date. Let's see.

Best regards,

Thomas

[Former Member]

I fully agree with this point of view.

Thomas

[Former Member]

There is also possibility that you should make public your certification like I have done in

http://www.sapcredentialmanager.com/

http://www.sapconsultantregistry.com/

[Former Member]

I believe this happened to work just by coincidence...

Fortunate coincidence...

Mario

[Former Member]

Can somebody directly ask moderators of this space why this blog is rejected by an SCN moderator? I really don't understand what rule I broke in it?

How I preserved my S user account after leaving the company

[moshenaveh]

Hello Mario, I've sent you a moderation note related to this issue. Someone from SAP IT will reach out to you. Thank you, Moshe

[Former Member]

Ok, thanks.

Mario

[Jelena]

Thomas, the field that has S user in your screenshot is just a screen name, it's not where your S-ID is maintained. If you lose your S user ID you'll essentially lose your SCN account. It is a serious issue on SCN that still has not been resolved. In the Old SCN it was a tedious process but at least it was feasible (I got "guestified" at some point when changing jobs, that's why my join date is off).

@Farzana - If you don't use S-user to login to SCN then this issue does not affect you.

[Former Member]

Ok, I have contradicting replies from seemingly very experienced SCN-members. I marked them all as helpful. I will see what happens when I am in that situation.

Thomas

[moazzam_ali]

Hi Thomas

If you are using your official Email ID for your SCN account please don't test it. Change your email ID before you leave the company because aftwer leaving company if you'll try to change ID SCN will send email to your Email ID and you won't be able to verify that because you'll not have access to official email ID anymore. I have faced this situation and that is why I am warning you

Thank$

[Former Member]

Ok, cool, good advise.

Thomas

[archanapawar]

Yes... I also experienced the same. I left my first organization and I did not change my mail id, now, I can't verify my previous account and also can't access it. I can still see the point on that SCN account, but can't transfer them to my new account

[moazzam_ali]

This is not good. SCN must have some solution to this. I am also trying to change my email ID now but I am not able to. Lets see when SCN can get this functionality.

Thank$

[former_member183424]

Merging account was possible. But now this is not possible for some technical reason. I read some comments from Jason Sir previous.

[moazzam_ali]

Hi Dev

Yesterday I had a conversation in emails with SCN support on this. I have linked my official email ID with SCN account and my personal Gmail ID with S user ID. Now I want to use same personal email ID with SCN but this is not possible. They said gmail is already linked with S user ID so you have to use some other email ID for SCN. In other words I have to create another personal email ID for SCN which doesnt sound logical and good to me but since I am restricted now so I have to do it. . .

Thank$

[Jitendra_Kansal]

Just to add, points earned on previous SCN id would not be transferred to new one.

[Former Member]

Hello Jitendra,

But why? In my screenshot when I change the email address I can also change the S-user ID. It seems to be changeable. Then I have still the same SCN-ID and the points should remain.

Best regards,

Thomas