SAP learning exercises and more
I was using Google to find some information on how to publish an OData service. One of the search results looked very promising.
Clicking on links is something I think I did master some time ago, so I clicked the link. A page opened and showed me a learning exercise.
Learning Exercises
This tool seems to be for providing training content / exercises to learners. I think I have seen this tool before. Knowing how to click on Google search results is nowadays mandatory knowledge. Also mandatory to know is some basic understanding of URLs. Looking at the URL I wondered what happens when the parameter show is removed:
- With parameter: /education/pub/mmcp/index.html?show=project!PR_3BAC9CCEBE8D2B9B:uebung#2
- Without parameter: This gives: /education/pub/mmcp/index.html
An application opens. Not sure what MMCP stands for, but extending the item “Simulations” reveals more folders.
The names / abbreviations look familiar. The content made available by SAP are exercises for trainings. Behind many of the folders are exercices or demos. Navigation around, exploring some folders, shows that there is content available.
Exercises are available as demo (watch & learn) or as practice (click & learn).
I have no idea where these are used. Maybe these are the exercises for learning.sap.com? For the Quick Tours or other learnings? The URL of the services is /education/pub/>id>. Education should be the name of the responsible area (?) and pub I guess stands for public. The id is maybe the product for which the training material is provided? Is there more content than the one under mmcp? Of course, when the service is indexed in Google, you can use Google to search it. Just search using site:education.hana.ondemand.com to get a list of resources.
Besides mmcp, the search shows that there are also resources for e.g. qt, s4, scp, sfsf, tad and others. Content for Quick Tour is under qt, content regarding S/4HANA under s4? So for scp it is SAP Cloud / BTP related content and for SFSF it is SuccessFactors? So far, this is nice, but the context to make this kind of information valuable is missing. It is possible to access exercises directly without having to go through some learning material. Yet, without the context of the learning, what does this help? But it is good to see that there is a lot of training exercises available for online learning.
And more
Having the resources added to the Google index allow to explore the service and the information stored there. The learning exercises come with additional metadata. For S4D100 you get an extended course title (sort of) and the people involved: Name and/or SAP User ID (D/I User).
You can use this information to get a name behind a training. If you are interested to see if a person is still working at SAP or opted for ERP or otherwise left the company: LinkedIn is your friend. Going through some LinkedIn profiles it seems that SAP is rather abandoning (management speak could be: shifting focus, reorganizing portfolio) “normal” classroom style trainings and is focusing on online, virtual trainings. What is obvious: the SAP learning organization is busy in bringing training content to the online world. This seems to be done using the very same app / service accessible via Google search. For some exercises you can see draft (?) versions.
For some rather cryptic course names, the metadata contain a better name. The metadata might include additional data like names (and e-mail) and the role like course owner, SME, project lead, PM, LxD.
Exercises might have sub folders, providing more metadata.
Naming and metadata show how work is done and if course material is still being worked on.
Anyone remembers the sometimes lengthy ABAP source code version comments on top of ABAP coding? This kind of version history is not limited to ABAP code. Whoever wrote that comment: you are a legend.
Why did I click on a folder at all? I saw as name S4D100 and this is a name that looked familiar. Although I do not know S4D100. I know that there are course S4D400, S4D410,… There is a learning journey named similar (Learning the Basics of ABAP Programming on SAP BTP) or SAP education course S4Dev. Did I miss a course? A SAP Learning course for ABAP on S/4HANA would be great!
For the tool MMCP itself trainings are available.
LxD
For several items there is a property named LxD. Rather often it is filled with the name Dexler or TCS.
Seems that those are companies involved in providing the training material? At least at a Dexler company website SAP is listed as a reference.
Media
The training content is available under a product (?) and an app path:
https://education.hana.ondemand.com/education/pub/mmcp/index.html
Following the Google search results for site:…, some results are e.g. PDFs. The general format is something like /education/pub/<product>/media/<id>/document.pdf
URLs you can find using this approach are for instance:
https://education.hana.ondemand.com/education/pub/s4/media
https://education.hana.ondemand.com/education/pub/s4/project
Both return a JSON. Searching the JSON for e.g. PDF returns something like:
{ "uid": "M_5CE58E16D9C72D9A", "caption": "Posting Statistical Goods Receipts.pdf", … }
Using uid as input for the path gives: https://education.hana.ondemand.com/education/pub/tad/media/M_5CE58E16D9C72D9A/document.pdf
Nice, yet useless. The PDFs and trainings are available online for free. No need to download them or to know the direct URL. The training context is needed, and the content will change over time and needs to be updated.
Having the training exercises added to Google search index is nice as it allows everyone to find the exercises. Unfortunately, this is not of much value as the corresponding training content is missing. The information shared allows to see that SAP is investing in online training. Let’s see how this will transform SAP learning. My impression is that on the other side the life trainers for the classroom trainings is getting harder. Rumors are that SAP employees that worked on trainings and were instructors were welcomed to join the early retiree program ERP. Hopes to starting to have a successful 20+ year long career as an SAP classroom instructor are too optimistic?
I wonder why the app exposes the complete structure and folders. The result of the work done on the exercises can be part of a public accessible training, exposed as a simple link to the material. Knowing who has which role for a training, knowing the names, maybe SAP user id/e-mail, companies involved, seems to be a little bit too much information shared. Normally I’d get suspicious, but I was once informed that there is a security process in place and that SAP takes security seriously. And there was already something with a similar service named education3. Personally, I’d block access to everything that is not the training file. I’d show the metadata only to logged on users. I’d also not give everyone read access to the server where (as it seems) people are working on to create the trainings. I assume this is something better hidden behind a logon or internal only server. And have a different server that only hosts the final version of those files. In case the education server is the target server where the artifacts are deployed to: is the deploy working as designed? Checking what is added to the Google index should be done as well as validate regularly to what anonymous users have access. But I am not a security person.
1 Comment
Joel · January 15, 2025 at 17:10
TCS stands for Tata Consultancy Services, I think