SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2022 What’s New in Employee Central

SAP has announced the latest updates and changes for SuccessFactors for the second half of 2022.

Preview release was on October 28 and production will be released December 9th. You can view the full set of documentation in the What’s New Viewer here . For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog.

For tips on how to manage a release, check out our blog here.

Let’s quickly take a glance on what’s there on 2H 2022 Employee Central.

Configuration Type: Universal

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) validation.

Watch over on “Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)” validation because system is not going to perform a Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) validation check for positions that have more than 1000 target FTEs for the below scenarios.

Save Job Information through Centralized services, either through import or on the Job Information history.
Save a position target FTE with a value greater than 1000.

Employee Central API Permissions are no longer required!

Employee central entities “EmpEmployment and EmpJob” Permissions are only required to access the Employee Central Service Center.

Below Permissions settings will help to view a tickets in Ask HR.

User > Employee Central Effective Dated Entities > Job Information
- Select permission View for items Job Information Actions and Company.
User > Employee Data >Employment Details
- Select permission View for item Employment Details MSS.

Enhancement in Time Sheet UI required custom fields

Restrictions in creating required custom fields on the EmployeeTimeSheet and TimeSheetValuationResults objects

Required custom fields on the EmployeeTimeSheetEntry and Allowance objects are restricted to the below primitive data types:

String
Number
Decimal
Time
DataTime
Date
Boolean

End of Development Time

Benefits Auto Enrollment Job – End of development on May 20, 2022 and will be deleted on May 19, 2023.
Old time sheet – Maintenance end on December 9, 2022 and will be deleted on May 19, 2023.
Savings Plan related fields – End of Development on December 9, 2022 and will be removed on May 19, 2023.
HTTP Basic authentication with SAP Cloud for Customer – End of Development on May 20, 2022 and will be Deleted on Nov 17, 2023.

Employee Central Payroll endpoint URL subscriptions

New Event Subscription Management tool supports the following events

Employee Hire
Employee Rehire
Employee Termination
Payroll Data Maintenance Task Configuration Change

New subscriptions can no longer be created; Existing subscriptions related to Employee Central Payroll will be automatically migrated to Event Subscription Management.

Configuration Type: Admin Opt-out

Centralized Support on the UI action save.

Yeah!!! Now, Centralized Support has extended their hands on saving the following action on UI, based on role-based permission.

Admin Center > Company System and Logo Settings >

History UI of Compensation Information and Recurring Pay Components
Global Assignments
Employment Details
Contact Information
Employment Details for a Higher Duty or Temporary Assignment

By default, Saving changes on UI and data imports for Emergency Contacts are enabled. No role based permission required.

Centralized Services Support through MSS.

Using role-based permission, centralized services now support making changes to an employee’s records when changes are made in the Manager Self-Service (MSS).

Change Job and Compensation Info
- Company System and Logo Settings > Enable Centralized Services to Save Changes on the Manager Self-Service UI for Change Job and Compensation Info.
Termination Information
- Company System and Logo Settings > Enable Centralized Services to Save Changes on the Manager Self-Service UI for Termination Details.

New Key Property in OData API EmpWorkPermit.

In order to maintain multiple work permit of employee with same document details, the new composite business key ‘issueDate‘ has been introduced.

Whenever the employee work permits is renewed, we can create a new record without touching the old one.

Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

We can validate employee’s and their dependents addresses using SAP DQM Microservices that is hosted on SAP BTP (SAP Cloud Platform) which requires X.509 Certificate authentication, that the customers would manually adopt.
- The DQM Microservices in SAP BTP account must be configured on Cloud Foundry and download the X.509 Certificate.
- The downloaded X.509 Certificate needs to be uploaded in .pem format in the Security Center.
- Set up the OAuth Configuration in the Security Center against the OAuth Configuration tile.
- Configure the Destination Settings in the Security Center.
WBS Element can be used as a standard field without having to maintain the WBS Element as a custom field. Using WBS Element as a standard field, you can replicate the complete WBS Element information from SAP S/4HANA to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. You can also migrate WBS Element from a custom field to the standard field.
- Admin Center > Manage Permission Roles > Industry Features > Download Employee Cost Assignment Migration Data
New token ‘TIME_OFF_STATUS’ is available for e-mail notifications on Time Off, which helps to differentiate the email notification by the status of the absence.

In Conclusion

We have now covered the highlights of the Employee Central related updates for 2H 2022.

Do you need help managing your SuccessFactors Release cycles? Download our support services brochure or email info@worklogix.com to see how we can help.

SAP SuccessFactors H1 2021 Employee Central Release Updates

Interested in what’s new for Employee Central for H1 2021? There’s quite a few enhancements! In this quick blog we run through the major release updates that caught our attention the most.

As of April 9, 2021, SAP has released the documentation for the H1 2021 release. The preview release will be April 16 and the move to production will be May 21^st. You can view the full set of documentation in the W hat’s New Vie wer here. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. New to the release process? For tips on how to manage a release, check out our blog here.

Qualtrics Integration

Increasing the integration between Qualtrics and SuccessFactors has been a priority for SAP – we’ve seen multiple integrations across modules and now there’s a few more for EC. SAP has added 4 email survey integrations based on intelligent services to trigger in the below events:

Employee Rehire
First Time Manager
Transition from Individual Contributor to Manager
Transition from Manager to Individual Contributor

These surveys can be very insightful to find out if employees are comfortable in their new roles and identify where they might need help!

BizX Talent Integration / Succession Data Model

Integration with the BizX Talent side of SuccessFactors has also been improved. In particular, SAP has made it possible to run a full HRIS sync (that pushes data from EC to BizX) based on individual user ids.

In addition, they’ve made it easier to view what the HRIS mapping looks like in the Manage Business Configuration Screen with an overview screen of all of the mappings in one location. Previously you had to dig through all of the fields individually to find this information! Check out the screenshot below:

Admins can also now export the Succession Data Model and Country/Region_specific Succession Data models from Admin Center (previously only partners could do this in provisioning). Simply give the new permission “Export Succession Data Model or Export Country-Specific Succession Data Model” permission and you’ll get access to the screen shown below:

These enhancements help make the integration between employee central and the talent modules more clear cut.

Business Rule Scenarios

Multiple new business rule scenarios are now available that allow you to:

Configure cross-entity rules triggered from a source entity with changes executed on the target entity
Calculate Full Time Equivalent for a user
Create business validations / raise alert messages for HRIS elements

These enhancements contribute to the ongoing effort to increase the flexibility and robustness of business rules.

SAP Integration

If you sync your HRIS data with SAP, you’ll be happy to know there are 10 enhancements to this integration including:

A comparison tool that compares configuration between EC instances
An enhancement considering the purging status of ERP communication data while replicating employee communication data from EC
The ability to select specific foundation objects by object ID ad choose log or list view when viewing the Foundation Object Transfer Report
In Define Employee Data Settings for EC instance, the field names have been changes to “Standard Mapping (PERNR)” and “Standard Mapping (CP)” for clarity
The Enhanced Work Schedule Rule Transfer Report was updated with a new BAdi to maintain the external code of work schedule rules
Better data replication that considers purged data
Replication of inactive employees that were terminated in EC before the full transmission start date
Sample contract elements (IT0016) content
Replication of OM data infotypes even when relationship data (IT1001) can’t be replicated
Organizational assignment data that was marked as status “Failed” will change to “Outdated” once the next replication job runs

These enhancements help to make the interface more robust and reliable for customers wishing to replicate employee data to on-premise SAP.

Global Benefits

Enhancements and automations came to the global benefits functionality as well. Let’s take a quick look at these:

When an employee has a job change that affects their benefits eligibility, this can now trigger an intelligent service event to create or update benefit enrollments
When benefit master data changes, a new automatic enrollment job now exists to handle creating and updating enrollments
A new pension / retirement savings plan type has been introduced called “Workplace” that offers additional contribution options

Once again, we see how the system continues to provide helpful automations and features to make this functionality more simple and robust to use.

Reporting

Custom fields are now allowed in story reports. The fields can be seen within the query designer.

Conclusion

The SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central product continues to grow and become increasingly more robust! This does not represent all of the enhancements in the H1 2021 release – only the highlights we found most compelling. Check out the W hat’s New Vie wer here for the complete list of enhancements.

See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.

Contact info@worklogix.com for any assistance supporting and implementing your SAP SuccessFactors Modules, or download our support services brochure.

Introduction to the Metadata Framework

What is the Metadata Framework (MDF) in SAP SuccessFactors? If you’ve been introduced to SAP SuccessFactors, chances are you’ve heard the term “Metadata Framework”. But you may not know the details of what the Metadata framework is exactly. This quick blog will help you understand what comprises the “Metadata Framework”.

To get started, let’s examine the name “Metadata Framework”. “Meta” refers to a greek origin word meaning “beyond”. So the word “Metadata” refers to data beyond the data. Or in other words, Metadata is data about the data. Metadata is data that describes what type of data it is (e.g. a number, or text, or a drop down) how the data looks (e.g. how it is formatted such as a date formatted as 12-31-20 vs. December 31, 2020), what its limits are (e.g. 256 characters long), etc . As the picture at the top of the blog post suggests, a framework is the structure laid out in the initial stages of building a structure. So the “Metadata Framework” is a way to lay out the structure of data in SAP SuccessFactors.

So how do we go about laying out the data structure of SAP SuccessFactors? If you have admin access in the system, you can navigate to the “Configure Object Definitions” screen as shown in the example below. Think of an “Object” as a collection of fields that describe, define, and/or belong to a “thing” in your database/system. Objects could be a chair, a dog, a car, a person or the example below, a position. This screen demonstrates the power of the MDF because you can create objects (as seen in the upper right hand corner under “Create New”, or you can edit existing objects. This ability to create and edit objects lets you store any type of information! In our example, we chose “Object Definition” in the “Search” field and then chose “Position” so we can see how the position object has been defined. You can see below some basic data about the object in general at the top such as whether it is active or not, whether version history is kept on the MDF definition, etc. Below that begins a list of fields within the object and associated attributes of each field such as its technical identifier, length, the type of field it is, etc. Scrolling further down we can even set rules for what happens when a new object is created (such as pre-populating fields) or validation rules to help with data integrity to check fields before the object is saved. We can edit this definition of the overall object and the fields within the object by clicking “Take Action” and then “Make Correction”. Taking a look at the screenshot below, you can start to get a sense of what the MDF is all about.

It is important to note that not all data in SAP SuccessFactors uses the metadata framework. Most Employee Central data is stored in the MDF–but not all. SAP is working on moving the final few pieces into the MDF within the next few releases. Most of the Talent modules and Recruiting still also reside outside of the MDF. However, as new functionality is built, it is created using the MDF wherever practical.

We hope you enjoyed this quick tour of the MDF! You should now have a basic understanding of what the MDF is and how to configure it. Do you need more help with the MDF? Contact us at info@worklogix.com.

H2 2020 SAP SuccessFactors – Employee Central New Features and Enhancements.

SAP SuccessFactors has some exciting new features for your Employee Central. They can be found in detail here (S-User ID required). Filter on Solutions for Employee Central to review all of the latest changes. Under the Description for each, you can click on ‘See More’ to see screenshots and detailed information.

Highlighting some of the interesting points on the new features and the Enhancements released in H2 2020 Employee Central.

Lets drill down based on the configurational type Universal, Admin opt-in and Admin opt-out.

New Features added with the configuration Type: Universal

Using any mobile browser, Enrolments and claim employee benefits can be done.
Using changeWfRequestApprover, you can change the approver of a workflow step through API, apart from the Manage Workflow Requests tool.
The duration to pull the data from the Employee Central CompoundEmployee API fields last_modified_on or snapshot_date is limited to a maximum of 3 months.
Moving all the hire-related permission settings into one category “Manage Hires” is more efficient while granting access to HR admins and managers.
Delete assignments/ Edit dates within a temporary work schedule assignment is now available with regular work schedule pattern.
To trigger the workflow, new business scenario: Trigger Workflows option is available under the Employee Central Core category on the Configure Business Rules page.
New Day View includes cross-midnight absences and planned working times for Team Absence Calendar. Employees/ managers can view absences and planned working times.

New Features added with the configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

Qualtrics surveys with Benefits to get feedback from your employees when they add a benefit during a cart-based enrollment action, such as for New Hires, Rehires, or the Company Open Enrollment process.
Simplified process for sending a survey in an email.
- Intelligent Services events to send employee information to Qualtrics, so that you can send a Qualtrics survey via email to them when they are assigned to concurrent employment.
- Intelligent Services events to send employee information to Qualtrics, so that you can send a Qualtrics survey via email to them when their manager changes.
- Intelligent Services events to send employee information to Qualtrics, so that you can send a Qualtrics survey via email to them to find out why they’re leaving the organization.

Customized Configuration of New Hire:

You can create templates where you specify only the blocks needed for the type of employment you are hiring for, meaning that you can add, remove, and rearrange the order of the blocks as well as add standard and custom MDF objects to the configuration.

https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/2011/en-US/7c87858cc3384c67b5cb923587005502.html

New Job option ‘ Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Employee Master Data Changes’ is available to process the records of the employees who have changes in their master data. Existing ‘Benefits Auto Enrollment Job’ processes runs for all the employees even when there are no changes as per the eligibility rule.

Rules must be configured for the master data objects maintained in the benefit eligibility.

- Create Benefit Tracker for Employment Info Changes ()
- Create Benefit Tracker for Employment Info Changes with Effective Date ()
- Create Benefit Tracker for Personal Info Changes ()
- Create Benefit Tracker for Personal Info Changes with Effective Date ()
Custom data block ” Live Profile User Information” can be added to your People Profile to display and manage additional information about contingent workers. Not required to import data using Employee Central Imports or OData APIs to modify information that’s not available on the contingent worker’s profile.
Address Validation: Added validation mapping for all address fields for Brazil and Belgium. Legal entities in Brazil and Belgium are required to store the addresses of employees and their dependents in a way that is legally compliant.
Local Version of Ghana and Suriname includes National ID, Personal Document Types, Personal Information, Job Information, Disability Information, Dependents Information, Home Address and Corporate Address.
Added a new option to allow the data replication when employees are flagged for a payroll correction run (Matchcode W).

Now, configure the Internal Job History block in the People Profile as a read-only to view a summarized version of an employee’s job history at the company. Based on the rule scenario configured, job history for an employee will be displayed and only visible to the HR Admin.

Accruals Transfer date can be adjusted automatically in the following scenarios:
- Unauthorized leave
- Leave without pay

https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/2011/en-US/50252735bfe84d8cbd606df49d604432.html

New Features added with the configuration Type: Admin Opt-Out

Work Permit Importing on Centralized Services – Now validation is based on the business keys to ensure their uniqueness, adopt the Full Purge mode, and import data based on user ID, instead of person ID. The shift from the legacy approach to this new one to importing work permits improves data quality and reduces maintenance costs.

https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/2011/en-US/47e77878716b49369d31534ca3c642bf.html

Enhancements in H2 2020 Release:

Filter option has been enhanced on the OData Entities: Custom string fields’ custom-string1, custom-string2, and custom-string3 can be included in the filter while querying the Employee Central OData APIs PerPerson and EmpEmployment.
Integration of Position Management with SAP Fieldglass: No manual effort of creating and attaching a business rule to map fields. When you create an Fieldglass requisition from position organization chart, the entire position object is now passed to SAP Fieldglass.
Enhancements to the Deduction Start Date: Options in the Deduction Start Date field is changed across benefit types. The options available for the Deduction Start Date field are
1. As of Enrollment Effective Date
2. Always Next Pay Period
3. Next Pay Period Based on Pay Check Issue Date.
Event Reason drop down field is introduced while Hiring or Rehiring Contingent Workers.
‘onChange Rules’ can be executed across blocks when an employee is transferred within your organization using the Manage Pending Hires tool. You can also trigger changes based on rules set for fields across blocks. For example, when there’s a transfer leading to a change in the company code, the pay group is changed based on ‘onChange’ rules in your instance.
Scheduled job belonging to Off Cycle Event Batch and Employee Data Imports are cancelled if there are at least 100 failures reported within a span of 90 days.
The rules ‘check_Bank_Uniqueness, validateMainPaymentMethod_PaymentInfo and proposeIBAN_PaymentInfoDetails’ are being removed from the pre-delivered content for Payment Information.
To have more accurate address data for customers in Thailand, new fields are added and existing fields are modified.
Administrators can configure a rule function to split advance leave payment across fiscal years.
NAF Office Number Home Address information is removed due to a requirement change in Norway. Removed the <Region> field from the Home and Corporate Address content because this is not required in address content for Norway.

See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.

Also, check out this interesting article about the Job Profile Builder.

Do you need help implementing or supporting your SAP SuccessFactors Modules? Contact info@worklogix.com for assistance, download our support services brochure, or visit https://www.worklogix.com/implementation.html for additional information.

1H 2020 SAP SuccessFactors – Employee Central Features

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central has come out with several enhancements and features for 1H 2020. All of the latest enhancements can be found here (S-User ID required). Scroll down to the ‘What’s New Viewer’ to review the changes.

Filter on Solutions for Employee Central to review all the latest changes. Under Description, click on ‘See More’ to see screenshots and detailed information.

This post will be highlighting some of the top enhancements & features:

Show Full Name in History Pages

Users previously had difficulty finding out who made the change solely by their user name in the History page. But now SuccessFactors has made it easy for users by showing the full name of the person who made the change along with the user name in the “Last modified” field of the “History section” for the below pages:

- Job Information
- Job Relationships
- Compensation Information
- Personal Information
- Dependents
- Addresses

Synchronize Data from Work Order to Job Information

Manual steps has been reduced – Yes!! Manual steps are no longer required in updating the job information of contingent workers when there is a change in their work order.

Now Synchronization is automatic between the work order and job information for the common data of contingent workers. This can be achieved by creating a business rule while adding a new work order or modifying an existing work order.

Detailed Information can be found here: Click Here

Check Tool for Contingent Workforce Management

New checks have been created to help users identify and resolve potential configuration and data issues with the contingent workforce management application.

To save time and effort, a few checks have been added to highlight issues related to application configuration and contingent worker data along with resolution tips to help users resolve them by themselves.

Detailed Information can be found here: Click Here

Export and Import of Corporate Data Model Information

The Corporate Data Model can be now be imported and exported from the Admin center. Users can incorporate their changes in the exported XML and import them back in from the Admin Center.

This includes Country or Region-Specific Corporate Data Model. This removes the need to do the Import/Export of the CDM on the provisioning side.

Detailed information can be found here: Click Here

Rule Contexts During Import

Now while importing a data model, the original values of the rule contexts will be preserved. Previously when users imported a data model by default, all rule contexts were reset to Yes.

Detailed information can be found here: Click Here

Accept or Reject Auto Delegation Requests

SuccessFactors has now offered the chance to users whether they wish to accept or reject delegation request. Users can now respond to auto delegation requests on a new tab called “Delegation Requests for Me”. Workflows are delegated to them only when they have chosen to accept the request.

Detailed information can be found here: Click Here

Specify Start Time and End Time of Auto Delegation

Delegators will now be able to choose a period for the auto-delegate to remain effective. Users have the option to choose the start date and end date when they configure the delegation.

During the specified period, the workflows will be triggered automatically for the delegates to approve. When the “end date” has been reached, the auto delegation feature will turn off automatically and hence no manual work is required to turn it off.

27-08-2020 4-38-17 PM

Customizable Key Details on the My Workflow Requests Page

An enhancement has been made to include the custom key details for workflows in the “My Workflow Requests (Advanced To-do)” page.

Now workflow decisions can be made by seeing the summary without having to open the workflow detail page for position workflows.

Detailed information can be found here: Click Here

Time Sheet Custom Fields are now supported for the iOS and Android Mobile Apps

The SAP SuccessFactors Mobile apps now support the following Time Sheet custom fields: Date, Boolean, Number, Decimal, and String.

This feature creates better alignment between the iOS and Android Mobile apps and the web application.

New Rehire Event Reason for Replication of Employee Master Data

A new event reason has been created that supports the scenario where an employee is rehired after termination. Job information records will be extracted from the rehire date with PSEUDO_REHIRE event reason.

Do you need help implementing or supporting your SAP SuccessFactors Modules? Please Contact info@worklogix.com for assistance, download our support services brochure, or visit https://www.worklogix.com/implementation.html for additional information.