If you are experiencing issues getting SAP Companion to display your content in a supported SAP browser-based application, you are not on your own.  Whilst SAP Companion is an incredible solution that provides end users with the ability to learn on-the-job as they work, we have seen some customers struggle with the initial setup steps.

The rest of this post discusses the common issues that prevent SAP Companion from working as designed and cause extensive hair loss in the people responsible for getting it working.

Before configuring SAP Companion

Before beginning to configure SAP Companion, it is important to understand:

• At the time of writing this post, SAP Companion was supported, to some level, within more than 70 of SAP’s browser-based applications, e.g. S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, and Ariba.  For more information about the SAP browser-based applications that support SAP Companion, refer to SAP Companion Supported Applications and Content Scenarios
• The first SAP browser-based applications to support SAP Companion, e.g. S/4HANA, required a significant amount of configuration to occur in the application to turn on and configure SAP Companion in that application.  Most recently, the approach to configuring SAP Companion has changed and the majority of the SAP Companion configuration work now occurs in SAP Enable Now Manager for the SAP browser-based applications that have recently begun to support SAP Companion, e.g. SAP Ariba
• SAP Companion supports three different content scenarios, however, not all scenarios are supported in all SAP browser-based applications.  The three content scenarios are:
  • The standard content only scenario – In most instances, SAP Companion can be configured to display the standard SAP content, if standard content exists for the corresponding application. This content is created and managed by SAP and can be distributed to end users through SAP Companion
  • The customer-specific content only scenario – In many instances, it is possible to display content that has been created by your organization, using SAP Enable Now or SAP Companion, within SAP Companion. This includes standard content that has been modified by your organization.  This is only possible if your organization is licensed to use SAP Enable Now because customer-specific content displayed in SAP Companion must be hosted in SAP Enable Now Manager
  • The extended content scenario – In the extended scenario, both standard and customer-specific content can be displayed in SAP Companion.  Not all SAP browser-based applications support this scenario and customers must be licensed to use SAP Enable Now to create and manage their own content.
• As an organization, it’s important to decide which content scenario you wish to deploy before starting to configure SAP Companion.  This decision impacts how you configure SAP Companion so it is important to make that decision before you begin
• The SAP Companion Supported Applications and Content Scenarios document provides information about the SAP browser-based applications that support SAP Companion and the content scenarios that are supported for each application.  The following diagram explains the information that is available in the document

The SAP Companion Supported Applications document provides details about the level of support within each application

• When users access customer-specific content through SAP Companion, the content is distributed from their SAP Enable Now Manager environment.  All users that access content from SAP Enable Now Manager must have an active user account in Manager and must be authenticated by Manager.  Given that all users must be authenticated, it’s important to configure Single Sign On (SSO) for SAP Enable Now so that users attempting to access content through SAP Companion can be authenticated.  For more information about configuring SSO for SAP Enable Now, refer to Configuring SSO for SAP Enable Now Cloud.

Configuring SAP Companion

In many instances, individual customers must configure SAP Companion to turn it on and adjust its behaviour, using parameters, to suit their specific requirements, e.g. to tell SAP Companion where to locate the content that is to be displayed.  The SAP Companion Integration Guide provides the instructions for configuring SAP Companion.

When configuring SAP Companion, it is important to read all relevant sections of the SAP Companion Integration Guide, not just the section with the instructions for your specific SAP application.  At a minimum, it is important to read the following sections in the integration guide:

When configuring SAP Companion, using the parameters defined in the SAP Companion Integration Guide, it is essential that you enter each parameter and its corresponding value exactly as shown in the guide.  Case and spelling are important and impact whether SAP Companion works or not.

Configuring SAP Enable Now Manager

If your organization plans to distribute their customer-specific content, which includes modified standard content, through SAP Companion, that content must be hosted in a Workarea in SAP Enable Now Manager.  If your organization does not have SAP Enable Now licenses, it can only distribute standard SAP content through SAP Companion; it cannot modify or extend that content in any way.

If your organization does have SAP Enable Now licenses and plans to distribute customer-specific content through SAP Companion, the following configuration is required in SAP Enable Now Manager:

• There are specific browser settings that must be configured to allow SAP Companion to function correctly.  Refer to the Initial Setup > Trusted Sites and Cookies section of the SAP Companion Integration Guide for further information about those browser settings
• Specific SAP Enable Now Manager Server Settings must be configured to allow SAP Companion to connect to SAP Enable Now Manager.  Watch this video to learn about these settings
• SAP Companion users and authors must have access to the Workarea that contains the customer-specific content to be distributed through SAP Companion.  Watch this video to learn more about Workarea permissions
• Content authors must have an Enable Now user account with an authoring Role to allow them to successfully create content through SAP Companion, e.g. Context Help messages and Guided Tours.  Watch this video to learn more about the user Roles that are relevant to SAP Companion content authors
• The SAP Companion configuration for some SAP browser-based applications, e.g. Ariba and Concur, is defined in the Administration > SAP Companion Integration screen in SAP Enable Now Manager.  If you are attempting to configure SAP Companion for one of these applications, watch this video to learn more.

Troubleshooting Tips

The following factors can prevent customer-specific content from appearing in SAP Companion:

• End users will only see published content located in the correct Workarea in SAP Enable Now Manager, i.e. the content must be in the correct Workarea and it must published.  In editing mode, authors will see the content, even if it is not published, but this is not the case with end users
• The values of 4 content attributes, in SAP Enable Now Manager, must exactly match the corresponding attribute values in SAP Companion for the content to be displayed in SAP Companion.  Watch this video to learn about the 4 attributes that control whether SAP Enable Now content is displayed in SAP Companion
• Using parameters, it is possible to configure SAP Companion to not display if there is no content available for the corresponding application screen.  This does not mean that SAP Companion is not working, it is simply not shown for that screen because of the configuration.  One way to check if this is the case is to set the parameter called editor=true or set the parameter noHelpMode=carousel because these parameters will force SAP Companion to be displayed, even if there is no content for the corresponding application screen.  Refer to the notes on the editor and noHelpMode parameters located in the Features and Configuration section of the SAP Companion Integration Guide
• If SAP Enable Now Manager and SAP Companion appear to be configured correctly but SAP Companion will still not authenticate the user, try modifying the SAP Companion configuration to include the newWindowSAML=true parameter.  Without this parameter, SAP Companion attempts to authenticate the user using an iFrame, which is not supported by all Identity Provider systems.  If the parameter is set to true, authentication occurs in a separate browser window.

What’s Next if SAP Companion is Still Not Working

If you have been through every section in this document and SAP Companion is still not working, try looking at the KBA 2836977 – Troubleshooting the SAP Companion Configuration in SuccessFactors, S/4Hana or other applications, which has other information about troubleshooting SAP Companion.  If you are still unable to identify the issue, raise an SAP support ticket using the details in the KBA and a support person will be in touch to investigate your issue.

Summary

In the majority of cases, issues with SAP Companion can be addressed using the information in this post.  Occasionally, it can be tricky to get SAP Companion working correctly, however, once it is, your workforce will have easy access to the content that they require to resolve their own issues and learn as they work.  No more exiting the application and browsing through multiple portals of information, just open SAP Companion and begin learning.  The payoffs are huge, for a small amount of upfront pain, so stick at it!