Update sites and URLs, forget about links and references

I was searching for some UI information regarding S/4HANA. I ended up finding this SAP Help site: Overview of UI Technologies and Key Features. It is for release 2023 FPS03. Until the next S/4HANA release is available, this page is new enough. At the bottom of the page, you get informed where to find more information.

Unfortunately, the text only says where to find the road map, but does not include a link. The first task for the reader that wants to know more about the UI technology roadmap is to find the SAP Service Marketplace. Searching for “SAP Service Marketplace” in Bing and Google:

First search result indicates that SAP Service Marketplace is now called SAP Support Portal. What happened? At the bottom of the images a search result shows what SAP did: the SAP Service Marketplace is retired. The post is from May 2018. That’s 7 years ago. The SAP Help page is from 2025.

If you are in a hurry: short version of the post is: 7 years later, SAP Help documentation is referring to a site that does not exist any longer. SAP likes to rename products and other things frequently. As links are not updated, SAP outsources the task of finding information to you; including the time needed to find it.

For everyone that is not in a hurry, please continue reading.

Searching

Going through some pages you’ll find service.sap.com. Here you find an overview page listing where to find what or what was moved to SAP for me. SAP Help states to search for Cross-Topics > Product Road Maps > SAP User Interface Technologies. Searching for cross-topics shows nothing useful.

Searching for roadmap gives back a search result containing Roadmap Viewer.

Do not be too excited, as this is the ALM implementation roadmap which gives you access to the roadmap viewer in SAP Activate. It is not the roadmap mentioned by SAP Help.

The “Explore Cross-Topic” tile might sound like what SAP Help referes too (reminder: Cross-Topics > Product Road Maps > SAP User Interface Technologies), but is misleading.

Where are the roadmaps?

Ignore SAP Service Marketplace. SAP Support Portal is the starting point and it should be easy to find the roadmaps mentioned.

The menu entry for Maintenance includes a Roadmaps entry.

Click. Page scrolls to a section for Roadmaps. Because this is a link to a section that includes a link to roadmaps (as the title indicates) but also to the SAP S/4HANA Readiness Check (as the title does not indicate).

Here we have the link that opens the Road Map Explorer (is it roadmap or road map? SAP is using both). Here is the link so everyone can find it easily: https://roadmaps.sap.com

The SAP Road Map Explorer gives you the option to explore the roadmaps by product or industry (and processes, but only from the top navigation). The option to explore the roadmaps by technology is not offered. For this, you need to use the search box. Enter your technology, e.g. SAP User Interface Technologies and start your search.

This shows the roadmap for SAP User Interface Technologies. This was easy, right?

What happened to user friendly?

All that searching only because the SAP Help pages

• do not include a direct link to the SAP Road Map Explorer and
• refer to a retired SAP page instead of the (new) name SAP Support Portal

Why isn’t SAP including a link? Why not make life easier for their users? Let’s travel back in time. Start by selecting the 1809 release from the page header. This shows how the text was 7 years ago. There a link was still available (ignore the missing space after under).

The page for 2022 FPS01 does not contain the link, for 2022 does. The link was removed in an update of the documentation between 2022 and 2022 FPS01. It took SAP a few years to reflect the SAP Service Marketplace retirement and SAP Support Portal replacement change, but only by removing the link. Why not add a new link? Why not reflect the change where to find the roadmaps in the service naming? Can SAP not use placeholder for texts that get updated with the correct, current name and link? When the page is generated again, references get updated automatically. For the users, life will be easier. We can find information without having to spend time searching for it. Only SAP needs to invest some time to ensure that links and names get updated automatically.