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My first place award goes to SAP, which I have to use for time entry. The procedure for entering vacation time is "Put in the hours and the code for PTO. Now h

by lfowles 10y ago

My first place award goes to SAP, which I have to use for time entry. The procedure for entering vacation time is "Put in the hours and the code for PTO. Now hit enter. Yes, it'll all turn red and it'll display an error. Hit enter again. Everything else just autofilled." The procedure for changing an SAP password is to click New Password on the login screen[1]. No, not after logging in, if you accidentally did that you need to log out and try again. (Bonus: you can only tell it's a button after you hover over the innocuously placed text) I'm not familiar with SAP at all so maybe this is just a failure of a specific implementation and the curse of customization, but it bothers me immensely. Second place goes to the Jazz web interface for having page content reloads be distinct from page reloads. Oh you opened the work item again? It's still got the old version cached with the banner "The content of this page has changed, click here to refresh." [1]: Something like this https://technews.blog.olemiss.edu/files/2012/12/SAP-Logon.png https://technews.blog.olemiss.edu/files/2012/12/SAP-Logon.pn...

synicalx 10y ago
I'll have to say with SAP, it's really down to how it's implemented. I've seen AWFUL implementations of it (like the one you're describing) and I've seen amazing ones, generally the ones either done by SAP themselves or by their recommended partners are the best. Having said that, it's a gigantic beast so it's not surprising that there's a lot of broken implementations out there. Good SAP 'guys' aren't very common unfortunately.
- lfowles 10y ago
  Maybe you can clear up some confusion I have about SAP. All I know is that it is generally customized to the business. How extensive is that customization? Slapping on business logos? Checking boxes to match the logic to current business procedures? Writing custom code? Edit: Geeze, it has its own wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_implementation
  - synicalx 10y ago
    Oh it goes way deeper than that. I used to work at a mid-sized business, maybe 220 staff at peak and they wanted SAP as a straight up CRM - cost for the building was about $120k + licencing (I don't know how much that was). But there is a huge amount of customising you can do, the biggest part I've found is normally the integration with existing systems/data sets/data sources. As far as I'm aware, it will integrate with just about anything - I've seen it pull data from Access 2002 databases, proprietary analytics tools, in-house software that was completely undocumented etc etc. It costs many many $$'s though, good example of how throwing money at a problem can eventually fix it.
pahaat 10y ago
Fully agree on this. My dear old employer used to switch to SAP. I just needed it to file my working schedules. However, it took me thousands of clicks and shortcuts just to open up the window presenting the right form. Besides, I filed my hole schedules just once a monce, thus I always needed a windows VM and a tutorial all the time.
frik 10y ago
SAP timesheet "CATS" has the worst UI I ever used: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OucSQZo65RI/VPHGj4p4inI/AAAAAAAAdFY/ym3_sctVuH4/s1600/PLM200_Unit06EEE29_ConfirmWithCATTs_06.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OucSQZo65RI/VPHGj4p4inI/AAAAAAAAdF... It's designed for an 14" CRT, showing only like 10 days of 31 days months - happy scrolling in both axes with non standard scrollbars. You have to enter the hours per day in decimal minutes (1.00 = 60min, 0.25 = 15min) instead of the more human natural 60minutes. The table UI control is completely non-standard. The Save button doesn't work like expected, it automatically closes the page, or a popup comes up there is nothing to be save - how dare you that you even thought about clicking on the button. If you open the page, all your data is locked, and no one else can access your data. It's an 1980s nightmare program, that got reskinned in 1998 with "fancy" UI over ASCII char based UI elements.
- GordonS 10y ago
  I have to use the mySAP web-based version of CATS, which is at least as bad as the SAP GUI version, and even slower. Truly some of the worst software I've ever had the misfortune to use

by lfowles 10y ago

synicalx 10y ago

I'll have to say with SAP, it's really down to how it's implemented. I've seen AWFUL implementations of it (like the one you're describing) and I've seen amazing ones, generally the ones either done by SAP themselves or by their recommended partners are the best. Having said that, it's a gigantic beast so it's not surprising that there's a lot of broken implementations out there. Good SAP 'guys' aren't very common unfortunately.

lfowles 10y ago
Maybe you can clear up some confusion I have about SAP. All I know is that it is generally customized to the business. How extensive is that customization? Slapping on business logos? Checking boxes to match the logic to current business procedures? Writing custom code? Edit: Geeze, it has its own wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_implementation
- synicalx 10y ago
  Oh it goes way deeper than that. I used to work at a mid-sized business, maybe 220 staff at peak and they wanted SAP as a straight up CRM - cost for the building was about $120k + licencing (I don't know how much that was). But there is a huge amount of customising you can do, the biggest part I've found is normally the integration with existing systems/data sets/data sources. As far as I'm aware, it will integrate with just about anything - I've seen it pull data from Access 2002 databases, proprietary analytics tools, in-house software that was completely undocumented etc etc. It costs many many $$'s though, good example of how throwing money at a problem can eventually fix it.

pahaat 10y ago

Fully agree on this. My dear old employer used to switch to SAP. I just needed it to file my working schedules. However, it took me thousands of clicks and shortcuts just to open up the window presenting the right form. Besides, I filed my hole schedules just once a monce, thus I always needed a windows VM and a tutorial all the time.

frik 10y ago

SAP timesheet "CATS" has the worst UI I ever used: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OucSQZo65RI/VPHGj4p4inI/AAAAAAAAdFY/ym3_sctVuH4/s1600/PLM200_Unit06EEE29_ConfirmWithCATTs_06.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OucSQZo65RI/VPHGj4p4inI/AAAAAAAAdF... It's designed for an 14" CRT, showing only like 10 days of 31 days months - happy scrolling in both axes with non standard scrollbars. You have to enter the hours per day in decimal minutes (1.00 = 60min, 0.25 = 15min) instead of the more human natural 60minutes. The table UI control is completely non-standard. The Save button doesn't work like expected, it automatically closes the page, or a popup comes up there is nothing to be save - how dare you that you even thought about clicking on the button. If you open the page, all your data is locked, and no one else can access your data. It's an 1980s nightmare program, that got reskinned in 1998 with "fancy" UI over ASCII char based UI elements.

GordonS 10y ago
I have to use the mySAP web-based version of CATS, which is at least as bad as the SAP GUI version, and even slower. Truly some of the worst software I've ever had the misfortune to use