SAP Community is a great place for SAP professionals to connect, collaborate, and build their reputations. For the best collective experience on SAP Community, we ask that members adhere to the rules of engagement. These rules of engagement are not intended to provide any legal advice, nor do they replace the terms of use. However, these give a good SAP Community overview of how to behave.
1. Log in and be yourself. To foster a feeling of community, please use your real identity to build your own personal brand. Upload a profile photo and share information about yourself in your profile -- such as your area of expertise. By logging into your account, you will be able to provide comments, likes, and votes to those who help you. You will also be able to post your own content, such as answers and blogs.
2. Protect your own and other’s privacy. Sharing your own or someone else’s contact information is prohibited. Please refrain from posting any personal data in the community in your content (e.g., blogs, questions, answers, comments, discussions). Content that includes images of others without their permission will be subject to moderation and might be removed. Do not publish identifying or private information related to your SAP Support experience. To protect the privacy of customers and support employees, the following will result in immediate removal: screenshots of support incidents, incident numbers, or other sensitive information.
3. Be professional and courteous. SAP Community members should treat each other respectfully. Therefore, we expect you to communicate professionally. Harassment of other members will not be tolerated. Please reach out to scnmoderators(at)sap.com if you need to report inappropriate behavior.
4. Choose the relevant language. There are many languages and cultures represented in the SAP Community. The main language of SAP Community is English. Slang phrases in one language may not translate well or accurately to other languages. Since not all tags are supported in all languages, please make sure you use the correct tag and provide an English version of your text.
5. Avoid solicitations. Promoting your or another company’s products and services -- such as by embedding links to promotional content in your posts -- is prohibited. The same applies to email solicitations and advertising. If you want community members to know your affiliation with your company, please put those details in your profile. If you want someone to trust you enough to buy what you offer, share your expertise so they can seek you out.
6. Share expertise transparently. The SAP Community encourages public knowledge sharing. This means that community members should be transparent about their source of knowledge. Plagiarism and links to closed content/webpages or restricted content/webpages that require subscription fees are prohibited.
7. Search before you post. There are many answers and helpful posts already in the SAP Community. Before posting a new question, please search the community to see if it has already been asked / answered. That is the fastest way to get your information. This also applies to writing blog posts. In preparation for creating a blog post, please search for blogs in the community to avoid redundancy and ensure that the content of your blog post is unique.
8. Be responsive. If a community member has answered your question correctly, please mark the answer as "accepted" and close the question. By doing so, other members can find answers more easily. In case you found the answer yourself please share the answer with the community, accept it as the correct answer and close your question.
9. Don't hijack or cross-post content. Don't post a different question to an existing question -- or post a question as a comment to an older blog post. Please create a new question and link to old/existing content, if relevant. Please also don’t post multiple questions or blog posts with different primary tags to raise awareness on your post.
10. Be patient when awaiting a response. It might take some time before another community member responds to you. We recommend that you remain patient while waiting for responses. Please refrain from using the “Alert a moderator” button to contact the content author or to ask for immediate support.
11. Provide support feedback through the correct channel. SAP Community is a place for conversation with SAP and other members, but it is not an official support channel. For escalations to SAP Support, please contact the Customer Interaction Center.
12. Report rule violations. Click the “Alert a moderator” button if you believe an SAP Community member or a piece of content, such as a blog post or question or comment, is violating these rules of engagement. Provide as much information as possible.
There are a few things you cannot do in SAP Community. These are actions that could lead to removal of your content. Please be diligent and avoid these behaviors.
1. Defaming another member: Posting content that discriminates against members based on any perceived differences, including but not limited to differences in culture, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and physical ability. Read more on SAP’s diversity values.
2. Copyright infringement: The Terms of Use require that all content submitted to SAP Community be original content created by the author or reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner.
More about Copyright
Copyright gives authors and creators the exclusive right to make copies, license, and/or otherwise exploit content, regardless of the media.
See www.copyright.gov for more information. Copying someone else’s work into your own post may violate copyright laws. Please do not copy other people's work without first gaining written permission from the original author or source. This includes SAP help files and training materials.
There are three general categories of copyright issues that typically occur in SAP Community. The table below describes these common scenarios as well as actions SAP may take:
| Scenario | Action |
| Someone copies another person’s content (from inside or outside SAP Community) and posts it as their own content in SAP Community. |
SAP may take action and remove the content in question. SAP Community Global Moderators may notify SAP Legal when the original content owner complains. |
| Someone copies a member’s content from SAP Community and posts it as their own content to another website outside of SAP Community. |
SAP is not authorized to take any action on behalf of individuals who are not SAP employees. Only the copyright owner of the material can take action when someone has copied content without permission. In the event that another site is copying SAP’s content from SAP Community, SAP Legal may be notified and may take action to protect SAP’s content. |
| Someone copies SAP-owned content (Help files, training materials, product documentation, etc.) and posts as their own on SAP Community or another website. |
SAP may take action to defend its copyrighted materials. This may result in legal actions against the member. SAP Community Global Moderators may notify SAP Legal about SAP content being copied without permission. |
| Action | |
| Someone copies another person’s content (from inside or outside SAP Community) and posts it as their own content in SAP Community. |
SAP may take action and remove the content in question. SAP Community Global Moderators may notify SAP Legal when the original content owner complains. |
| Someone copies a member’s content from SAP Community and posts it as their own content to another website outside of SAP Community. |
SAP is not authorized to take any action on behalf of individuals who are not SAP employees. Only the copyright owner of the material can take action when someone has copied content without permission. In the event that another site is copying SAP’s content from SAP Community, SAP Legal may be notified and may take action to protect SAP’s content. |
| Someone copies SAP-owned content (Help files, training materials, product documentation, etc.) and posts as their own on SAP Community or another website. |
SAP may take action to defend its copyrighted materials. This may result in legal actions against the member. SAP Community Global Moderators may notify SAP Legal about SAP content being copied without permission. |
If you are a copyright owner and someone has used your content without your permission please follow the instructions at SAP’s Copyrights and Copyright Agent, Disclaimer and Trademarks page.
Click the Alert Moderator button if you believe an SAP Community member is violating the rules of engagement. Select the appropriate type of alert when you report it, and provide a comment so that the moderator knows how to handle it.
