Technical issues questions for proposal to join UA

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Our College of Business is putting together a proposal to join the SAP UA, which our Dean has to approve. Our IT department has a few questions that I have not been able to get adequate answers on so far and was wondering if someone in the community could help. Here are the questions about working with the hosted SAP service:

1. Our lab computer images are handled by the IT department, not individual faculty. What needs to be added to the image of the lab computers? We have had problems in the past with software that needs executables installed, such as MyITLab.

2. For each semester/class term, who handles setting up the student sign ons for the SAP material? Do individual faculty setup each student with a sign on? How much time does that process take?

3. How often does the hosted site patch the software? Has anyone had problems with the software during the semester which did not get fixed until the next patch, and problems with the class resulted?

Thank you all for helping us better understand these issuess.

Priscilla

(PBulldog)

[Former Member]

Dear Priscilla,

could you please tell us in which country your university is located?

Some of these issues may be handeled different in different regions.

Regards

Sonja

[Former Member]

Sonja,

We're in Indianapolis, Indiana USA, so the hosting will likely be from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee site.

Priscilla

[Former Member]

Hi Priscilla,

I try to answer your questions. Hope this helps.

Regards from Germany,

Tobias

1. Our lab computer images are handled by the IT department, not individual faculty. What needs to be added to the image of the lab computers? We have had problems in the past with software that needs executables installed, such as MyITLab.

-> In order to access the SAP systems hosted by UCC, you need the SAP Frontend software (= "SAP GUI") installed on your lab computers. (Maybe something like a Citrix Server may also be an option). You get SAP GUI DVD images from your UCC. Depending on the courses you want to teach, your SAP GUI installation needs different components (e.g. SAP BI frontend is not necessary if you only teach SAP ERP). So fa, we did not experience any problems with SAP GUI on our lab computer image.

2. For each semester/class term, who handles setting up the student sign ons for the SAP material? Do individual faculty setup each student with a sign on? How much time does that process take?

-> I assume that you mean the SAP users? There are various options here, depending on the number of students and your SAP curriculum. There are tools to generate many users for a classroom training in a few seconds. This can be done by your technical SAP person (in Europe you have to name one person in your organisation as technical contact for the UCC).

The SAP course material (excercises, ppts) has to be distributed separately by the lecturer.

3. How often does the hosted site patch the software? Has anyone had problems with the software during the semester which did not get fixed until the next patch, and problems with the class resulted?

-> From my experience, patches for the SAP Frontend are released a few times in a year. However, there is no need install all of them. We update our SAP Frontend typically once in a year or less.