New SAP Help Portal Navigation

[Former Member]

We are pleased to announce that SAP Help Portal (http://help.sap.com/) has implemented a navigation structure according to product classifications in categories defined through the ONE Digital Experience (1DX) initiative. Aligned with SAP Corporate Taxonomy, these categories make it simpler to understand SAP’s portfolio and help all of our customers find what they need when they need it. Product classification allows us to link, label, and navigate through all of the offerings that we position, sell, deliver, and support based on a stable and sustainable foundation that matches user needs and tasks to content and capabilities. Product classification “labels” are intuitive and distinct, reflecting standard industry language verified via keyword research and external validation. Within these product classifications, such as “Analytics” or “Enterprise Management,” you will find all products belonging to this product class in alphabetical order.

With this new navigation, SAP Help Portal provides the same navigation as SAP.com, where you can also browse by products. This is an important step forward towards a harmonization across different SAP online channels – and a further step towards the ambitious aim: ONE Digital Experience at SAP.

Matthias Kammerer, Product Owner of SAP Help Portal
Amy Funderburk, Brand Voice/Naming, and David Noonan, SAP Experience

[Former Member]

Good

[deborah_tolley2]

Sorry, but your website is horrible.  Finding anything is next to impossible.  I've never used a more confusing, difficult site.  99.9% of the time, I can't find what I need.  There is nothing intuitive or easy to use about it.

[cfgh]

Hi Deborah,

Thanks for you're feedback. I'd like to better understand your concerns and will reach out to you directly.

Christine

[Former Member]

There is a critical problem in the help.sap.com navigation. If you follow the internal links proposed to read the ERP documentation, you get to ... nowhere.
The whole SAP documentation has disappeared !
Unbelievable !

[Former Member]

Hello,

Where did you click on which link? Is there a space in the link?

At least http://help.sap.com/erp607 is still there.

Best regards,

Matthias

[former_member158363]

Hello Matthias,

this is really bad, many main links stop working, all my colleagues get the same error as Christophe illustrated.

However, it is somehow browser related - we get the error for Internet Explorer (10,11), Firefox, but it works for Chrome...

Please, please, fix it, this real nuisance... 😞

Examples: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp03/helpdata/en/19/68a028d02b460fa899066d948ed3ab/frameset.htmL...

Thanks,

Dawood.

[Former Member]

Hello Dawood,

Thank you for the hint. I immediately raise a ticket for SAP IT. I'll keep you updated.

We are very sorry for any inconveniences caused.

Best regards,

Matthias

P.S.: The issue should be solved now. If you still encounter problems, please reload the page via Ctrl+F5.

[former_member158363]

Hi Matthias,

thanks a lot for your quick action :-).

You can contact me through SCN directly if you need a test feedback.

Another link is to SAP Contact Center: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_contact-center70/helpdata/en/2c/ce69b004ef40438f34a49d579d2508/frameset.... , this is also broken.

Regards,

Dawood.

[tim_martin2]

All search results return the same response...Sorry an unexpected error occurred during search.

[Former Member]

Hello,

I just checked it and it seems to work again - can you please check it on your side as well?

Best regards,

Matthias

[Former Member]

Hello,

I cannot find support packages schedule.

Could you please help me to find the link?

Regards,

Gonzalo

[Former Member]

Hello,

SAP Help Portal provides primarily product documentation. Other information can be found in one of the other portals from SAP.
In your case, the entry page for the support package schedules is: https://support.sap.com/release-upgrade-maintenance/maintenance-schedule.html.

Best regards, Matthias

[henrimuller]

Hello Matthias

I have the same horrible feeling. Finding what I am looking for is cumbersome

I depend on Google to find in this portal what I need but have not always success.

The most frustrating is to not find a hierarchy in the information. I never know at which level I am, top, intermediate or detailled level and how to navigate just one level up to get the other branches to explore if they seem to be interesting.

It is for me nothing else than unstructured, exactly the opposite of how an IT administrator brain works when he has to deliver solid content for unbreakable solutions like SAP systems are expected to work.

Is there any training material to learn how to search WITH SUCCESS in this portal ?

Best regards.

Henri

[cfgh]

Hi Henri,

I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing issues with search. I'd like to better understand your concerns and will reach out to you directly.

Christine

[former_member158363]

Hi Christine,

I must agree with Henri, though after 17 years of SAP consulting I consider myself as intermediate prospector info prospector...  Yes, there are gold nuggets of useful information in documentation but sometimes difficult to mine it..

Frustration can be divided into several areas:

* too many results - not possible to intuitivelly narrow search scope - for instance, searcing within SAP CRM area will for some keywords give many pages of BW Contect infoobjects. But I do not care how to report, I just want to get description pages related to SAP CRM only.

* page islands - no context. Sometimes the hit is correct but we will only see one page or substructure. But we do not see the context, either parent nodes or siblings.

* not hit by SAP search, only by Google - well, what more to say? :wink:

I have given up 15 years ago but I am glad to see that somebody cares... :smile:

Regards,

Dawood.

[Former Member]

Your system is so unbelievably user UNFRIENDLY, cumbersome and unnecessarily onerous.  I have no choice in using it. I have to say I really!!! don't like it. 

Sorry

[MTerence]

Hi Experts,

Can you please let me know how to navigate to below link in the new help.sap.com. I am finding it difficult to search how to navigate, i still use old post thread or bookmarks.

Project System (PS) - SAP Library

Well, this is not only for PS, but also for other modules.

Regards

Terence

[former_member158363]

Hi,

start at help.sap.com, Enterprise Management->open folder SAP ERP. Choose and click your ERP EHPx version. Click Application help, click the link. In the menu on left click SAP ERP Central Component and there you are. For example, the Project System (PS) is in Logistic folder.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Dawood.

[Former Member]

SAP,

I too find navigating SAP sites cumbersome, confusing and not intuitive at all. I think I'm headed in the right direction by clicking on a link only to find myself nowhere near the information I am seeking and instead I'm reading sales pitch links that don't provide anything useful. I used to go straight to SAP help many years ago but I too have been avoiding SAP sites recently because they waste my time. Instead, I rely on any other Google site to find the good stuff and sometimes they may even provide a link directly to what I actually want in SAP. SAP web developers/analysis's needs to reconsider their web site design. Currently it will certainly give you a lot of what I will call high level, selling documents easy but the real deal, solid, helpful information is lost and hard to find. I would rate your HELP portal site a ZERO. I am not saying your documentation is awful. I am saying it is not easy to find. I have tried to provide feedback whether this page was helpful or not because just when I think I'm getting close, I get a short little page of nothing valuable with no good leads to more helpful information so I give up on going back to rate each page as useless since that effort wastes my time even more. I leave your site completely frustrated. I find much better help elsewhere.

I apologize for the bad review but it has to be said.

Angela G

[MTerence]

Hi Dawood,

Thanks for the information.

But the link is not same as i am seeing earlier, this is showing about general PS information, but thus not give any information about scenario covered in PS

Do i miss anything ? I clicked the SAP ERP Centraol Component and Logistics - Project System

Regards

Terence

[former_member158363]

Hi Terence,

you are right, I tried several ways but I did not get there :sad: ...

There is also completelt missing earlier versions of SAP CRM, for instance - I have been doing some evaluation recently (functionality progress) and luckily I had the help files on CDs...

So preserve you links carefuly, I would suggest... this is one of page island I have mentioned in my previous comment...

Pitty that SAP does not maintain something like Previous versions link to old documentation... Especially when the documentation DOES exist there...

Regards,

Dawood.

[palmgrl]

How do you find your tickets that have been submitted and closed.  I refer to them frequently!

[Former Member]

The navigation is a disaster. We hear this on a daily basis from customers.

[dkle]

The whole site is buggy. 99 % of Google links are not working anymore.
Even internal links are not working, example:

1. Goto http://help.sap.com/nw74
2. Click on “Function oriented view (English)”, which is this link: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw74/helpdata/en/37/ef19f99d514fc486209421f4253dfb/frameset.htm
3. Enjoy the unexpected error.

It seems the site is trying to redirect to a different path (in above example from /saphelp_nw74 to /nw74) but fails.
Another example: https://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/de/42/f1825bfaf93255e10000000a1553f7/content.htm is trying to redirect to /erp600.

At least we have the Google Cache, so viewing the documentations is still possible if we can find them via Google.

Please make a global announcement on recent issues!

[Former Member]

I know this is another topic (SMP - customer SAP Service Market Place), but similar. I agree, since the so called new SMP it is terrible. On top of it, my authorities I had, was just taken away, and do not bother to call SAP Support to re-instate. The person that responds is a so called "associate", that has no idea on how to assist. I can see they have no idea, as they are not trained to do a proper job. I really feel sorry for customers, and feel their pain!. Many calls get re-directed to the local contracts office, very bad, as the support team is to assist.

It is not easy to use at all. I get numerous calls and emails from customers that cannot find their SW to download, that is if they are lucky enough to find the place to download. The SW search functionality is just as bad. The whole site is just plain unfriendly and many links do not take you anywhere?

The "old" previous support portal was a dream to work with.

Like the old technician is saying "if not broken, don't repair it!!"

 

[denis_konovalov]

how is going from supper easy hierarchical navigation to a search based one makes navigation better/easier ??

[former_member46472]

This is not the community for SAP Help Portal, isn't it? It's just a blog. I would appreciate a link to a real community on the Help Portal start page http://help-legacy.sap.com/home.

More than one year later, the "new" Help Portal Site still is a desaster, especially for SAP-internal users frequently working with the content who are used to navigate with SSO without any "Legal Disclaimer" sites which currently don't have any more a button to click away: http://help-legacy.sap.com/disclaimer. This doesn't help at all!

It takes me much luck and intelligence to navigate from the information in a user guide to the site I am searching for. We are used already for a long time not to be able to go with one click to the documents as these are moved constantly to new sites (favorites don't work a long time), but we expect that description in the user guides is user-friendly and complete!!!

I need to first type in manually the URL to Help Portal which is provided in the user guide as non-working link. Then I have to search at the shown site a path of usually a few clicks over some other pages until I finally arrive in the "right" SAP Documentation. I wonder why I can't search in this SAP Documentation at an earlier point in time.

For (new) customers this will be the hell! We as consultants don't know how to answer the questions about this strange behaviour of our documentation and, by the way, we were not asked before launching it, too. What a pity!