Stay Innovative With (SAP E-Learning Maps)

Introduction

The key to running a successful and productive organization is letting the employees know what you want them to do and how to do it. Most of the time this comes with your job description and on the job training, but this is not as simple as it sounds. This requires ample amount of time and effort being dedicated by the organization on the employee to make him fit for their environment. This effort comes through by trainings, learning materials, conducting seminars and so on. Knowing your role within an organization and best of all knowing how to perform the activities of this role leads to improved productivity and in turn a successful organization

Now lets put this all together in perspective of a ERP system like SAP, in which a business transaction screen e.g. Purchase Requisition looks like a galaxy of text fields and buttons, seeing this makes employee think that they should have asked for more KUANS ($$$$), and to top it all off the person who presented the requirements for configuration of this screen has resigned from the company, need not to worry we (the organization) had documented it all. But where are these learning material/training documents, a file cabinets, a file server, shared resource or on a local PC, which version do I use and etc. The possibilities of you never finding the document on time are limit less .SAP has realized this dilemma of managing and preparing the learning material and have come up with solution of E- Learning maps which is part of their SAP Solution Manager. The scope of my article is present to you some of the highlight the motivations of using this tool and also to provide you with the steps of how to go about preparing an E-Learning material and the distribution of these material with SAP Solution Manager 3.2.

The Process Flow

1. Develop a project or solution In SAP Solution Manager. For the project or solution we will associate training or learning documents with Business scenarios, processes and with process steps

2. The types of learning materials that can be area SIM tutorial, document created in SAP word editor or a URL to a website or etc.

3. Learning units are created from the project structure and its assigned learning material, and generate Learning Maps in HTML format, in the transaction Learning Maps Management.

4. Send a link to the learning map to end user.

5. The end users assess the learning units and the learning map and work through the learning units on their own.

6. Analyze the end user assessments.

Creating a Project

For E-Learning MAP’s to execute you need to have a project setup in your solution manager. The project configuration and management in SAP Solution Manager  is a complete series of article in it self which I would be presenting in the future publications but to get you giong on SAP E-Learning MAPS you I would present some baisc informatioan on setting up the project. Before going into configuring the project there are some pre-requisites that need to be meet

1. You Solution Landscape is configured in SAP Solution manager, e.g. Transaction SMSY. This is a configuration activity usually performed by the BASIS Administrator while setting up SAP Solution Manager.
2. You should have authorization to roles , the
   1. SAP _SOL_TRAINING_EDIT (as in Solution Manager 3.2 SP9)
   2. SAP_SOLAR_PM (as in Solution Manager 3.2 SP9)
   3. SAP_SUPPDESK_PROCESS_PM (as in Solution Manager 3.2 SP9)

After checking these pre-requisite items you can proceed to creating a project by going through these steps,

1. Logon to your SAP Solution Manager.
2. From you SAP Easy Access menu path go to Tools->SAP Solution Manager-> Project Administration (T-Code:Solar_Project_Admin).

Figure 1: SAP Easy Menu Path To Project Administration

1. From the Project Administration Screen , file menu select Project->Create

Figure 2: Create Project from SAP Project Administration Screen

1. In the create project window, enter project name, type and from the drop down list select your sap system landscape and click on the green tick. Now you would be asking what are the different types of projects in Solution Manager , so as in Solution Manager 3.2 there are 6 different project types

1. a. Implementation Project

A new project structure to implement a business processes in an SAP landscape.

1. b. Upgrade Project

A project to upgrade existing systems .In an upgrade project you can: Upgrade customizing: Upgrade existing functions and/or Delta customizing: Copy additional functions

1. c. Maintenance Project

A project for maintaining the SAP solution with Change Request Management, the project contains all maintenance activities and urgent corrections of a solution.

1. d. Optimization Project

A project to optimize the flow of business processes or the use of a software solution you can use optimization projects, for example, in SAP Services.

1. e. Safeguarding Project

Safeguarding projects show the reasons for a critical situation and coordinate the steps required to resolve the problems.

1. f. Template Project

A template makes your project structure, or parts of it, with its assigned objects (documentation, test cases, IMG activities), available to other projects. You can lock templates, completely or partially, against changes when they are used in other projects. To use templates in other systems, transport them. Template projects are especially suited to SAP partner solutions or global rollout.

Figure 3: Create Project Initial Screen.

1. Now in the project change screen you need to maintain the “General Data”.
   1. Enter project Title “E-Learning Implementation Project “
   2. Person Reponsible Customer and Consultant e.g “SOLMAN”
   3. Project Language e.g. “English”
   4. Project Status e.g. “Open”
   5. Plan Start Date e.g. “10.07.2006”

Figure 4: Maintaining General Project Data

1. From the file menu select Implementation Project->Save.If your project type would be Maintenance Project then it file menu would be Maintenance Project->Save and similarly for other project types .
2. Now this is all that you need to get going as far as project administration is concerned for E-Learning.

Learning Material For Your Project

In the true scenario you assign you learing material to your project structures e.g. Business Scenario,Business Processes and etc. But since we have just setup those project attributes to demonstrate the functionality of SAP E-Learning MAPS , I would just be adding all the project documents on the project root by following these steps,

1. From you SAP Easy Access menu path go to
   Tools->SAP Solution Manager->Configuartion (T-Code: SOLAR02).

Figure 5: E-Learning Configuration

1. In the Configuration change window goto File menu Configuration->Other Projects and then select your projects and press green tick as shown in figure 6.

Figure 6: Selecting a project for E-Learning Documents

1. In the project, select the root folder e.g. “E-Learning Implementation Project” and from the right pane select the “Training Materials” tab as shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: Switching to Project training tab.

1. Now from the “Training Material” tab press the “Insert Document” button as shown in figure 8.
2. In the popup window “Add Document “ as shown in figure 8 you would enter the title e.g. “Introduction to E-Learning Management”.
3. Now there are 3 option in “Add Document” window that needs explaining
   1. Document Type: Identifies which document template is called, depending on the document type. You can only use document types that either have a document template or a file name extension supported by the SAP Solution Manager. If a document type has no template or file name extension, the text editor is started.
   2. Status : Defines the processing state of the document.Only released documents can be published using E-Learning Maps.
   3. Lastly there are 5 document insertion types which are self explainatory e.g. Create New Document ,Link an existing Solution Manager Document,Copy a Solution Manager Document, Upload a document  and Web Link.

Figure 8: Insert document popup screen.

1. For this article we are just going to upload a documet to our project so, select the upload option and press the green tick.
2. In the file selection screen select your upload file and press “Open” as shown in figure 9.

Figure 9: Upload document popup screen.

1. The document is attached to you project , select the document and press change as shown in figure 10 to change the contents as well as the status of the document. Since the attached document is in MS Word (.doc) format sap would open the MS Word editor available on your PC to change this document.

Figure 10 : Change upload document status/contents

1. In the change window select status “Released” and press “Save Document” to make the document available for publishing as shown in figure 11.

Figure 11: Change document status.

1. Now you have sucessfully attached a document to your project, you can repeat the process to attach as many documents as you require.

We now have to distribute these documents to the end user for utilization, this is called Learning Maps which is explained in the next step.

Publishing Learning Material ( E-Learning MAPS).

You have previusly assigned the learning material to your project which you now need to publish for your end users training purposes.This is possible by creating a learning map (HTML format) for your end user based either on the project or production processing. In order to create learning map you need to execute the following steps,

1. From you SAP menu goto Tools->Solution Manager->Solar_Learning_Maps, as shown in figure 12.

Figure 12: Sap menu path For Learning Maps

1. On the learning map screen press the create button to create a new learing map for your project as show in figure 13.

Figure 13. Create learning maps.

1. In the create learning map popup window enter the Title for your learning map e.g. “E-Learning Online Training” and select the project for which you need develop the learning map e.g. “ZELP” as show in figure 14. Press green tick to create the project.

Figure 14: Create learning map popup screen

1. Now in the create learning maps screen woul d open with a basic structure of your learning map as shown in figure 15. The structure of a learning map comprises of a HEADER element which explains the entire scope of the learning matrial, a CHAPER element which is the logical grouping of documents ,a then the UNIT a container that actually hodls the documents. On each element you have to maintain a “Title” and “Description” . HEADER element  can only hold links and logos where as a CHAPTER element can only contain UNIT elements which in turn can hold the actual learning documents.

Figure 15:  Learning map strcuture overview

1. In the Change Learning Map window from the left pane select the Learning Map Header node and enter description of the learning map as shown in figure 16

Figure 16: Maintaing Learning Map header description

1. Righ click the Learning Map Header node and select either the Create Header Link, Create Logo or Create Support Link option and in the right pane enter the Title and URL e.g. “SAP  Help” and “http://help.sap.com” as shown in figure 17.

Figure 17: Maintaining learning map header items e.g. link and logo.

1. After maintain the header node select the Chapter nodes and enter the Title and Description to maintain a logical structure of your training material, as show in figure 18.

Figure 18: Maintaining Chapter title and description

1. Similalrly maintain all the chapter e.g. Introduction,Project Administration and Learning Maps.If you need to add more chapter right click on the learing map root node and select “Create Chapter” option as shown in figure 19.

Figure 19: Creating new Chapter for a learning map structure

1. Now to expand the any chapter and maintain the Unit element e.g. Introduction-> Unit1.Enter the Title and Description as shown in figure 20.

Figure 20: Maintaining Unit element title and description

1. Similalrly perform these steps on all chapters and if you need to add more units to a chapter simply right click the chpater node and select the Create Unit option as show in figure 21.

Figure 21: Creating new unit element in a chapter

1. Now as we mentioned earlier that learning documents can only be attached to a Unit element.To perform this select a unit element e.g. Introduction – > Introduction and Process Flow and from the right pane window select the List Display option as shown in figure 22. This would list all the learning documents that were attached to you project e.g ZELP which you now want to distrbute to the end users.

Figure 22: Changing project structure view.

1. From the document list select a document and press the “Assign Document” button to attach the document to the Unit element, as shown in figre 23.

Figure 23: Assigning document to Unit element of a Chapter

1. After attaching all the document go to menu “Learning MAP”-> Save, as shown in figure 24.

Figure 24: Saving E-Learning Map

1. You have now completed the development of your learning maps and is now ready for distribution to the end use . To distruibute the learning map to the users simply press the Send to Users button as shown in figure 25.

Figure 25 : Send Learning Map to End Users.

1. In the popup window “Learning Map Deployement” select the “Create Email and Copy Text to Clip Board Button “ as shown in figure 26.

Figure 26:  Creating e-mail with learning map link.

1. This action would open you local email composer with a web link to the Learning, as shown in figure 27, Press Send to email the web link of the learning map to your users.

Figure 27: Using email application to send web link of E-Learning Map to end users

Conclusion

In the above steps we have gone through the procedure of developing a E-Learning material using SAP Solution manager 3.2 .