On October 9, 2021, SAP released documentation for the H2 2021 release. Preview release is October 15 and production is November 19. In this article we take a quick look at the latest updates for SAP SuccessFactors Platform. It’s a huge list for Platform this release – so we’ve tried to summarize the most interesting items. 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 here. Let’s get started! We’ve categorized the enhancements below for you starting with the most compelling in our opinion!
Of Special Interest
What stood out to me as the most interesting part of this release is the introduction of a Digital Assistant! As with most digital assistants, the feature is basically a natural language processing program that appears in the form of a chat window. Right now SAP is reporting they have over 250 scenarios programmed on the web version and over 20 on the mobile app. This feature is currently only available to early adopters.
The Center of Capabilities continues to expand its functionality. There is now a proficiency rating scale available that allows you to quantify the skill level of employees in the skills within the Center of Capabilities. There are also a new Center of Capabilities Library Reports for Stories in People Analytics.
There have also been some general UI Enhancements to the center of capabilities functionality overall. In addition, the capabilities portfolio is now available which is the main experience that shows the list of capabilities for a worker.
In addition, there are a lot more Quick Actions available on the latest homepage. For example, there is a My Team quick action for managers to review info and take actions on their team members. Clock Time lets you clock in and out. Complete Payroll tasks, Delegate Workflows, My Profile, Org Chart, View Admin Alerts, and View Team Absences all pretty much do exactly what you would expect them to do as well. You can check out the full details here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/f6d92d1c4a834f29b8b1998c7b845d1b.html
Also the header page now conforms to Fiori standards. This is always great news to me to see more and more parts of the system align with Fiori – have you notices how much better the web system looks on your mobile phone these days? That’s thanks to Fiori!
If you are still on the V12 Employee Profile, its time to move to the latest employee profile! This functionality is finally deleted.
Security
Certificate-Based authentication is now supported for standard third party integration packages for Boomi and CPI. My sources inside SAP tell me that certificate-based authentication will be the preferred method of authentication going forward for interfaces in general. Aligned to this, SAP also announced the depication of HTTP Basic Authentication for APIs. End of maintenance is November 19, 2021 and deletion will be November 1, 2022! Get your certificates ready!
You can also now Restrict API Access to Specific Users through OAuth 2.0. Additionally, you can now restrictindividual user’s login to specific IP addresses. These allow for an extra layers of security in your integrations and general user access.
Also of Note
There were also some minor curiosities for me in this batch of platform enhancements that I thought were pretty…pretty good! For example, you can now provide a Zip file for the job that updates employee photos en masse. Before this was a bear for anyone who suffered through putting a bunch of uncompressed photos on an SFTP server and waited for the large data transfer!
There’s also deep linking now available to go straight to someone’s employee profile. I could see this being useful for succession planners or managers talking about employees and wanting to share their profiles.
The employee import email also now includes a new troubleshooting section to help you figure out what went wrong on the import. Nice!
Conclusion
The SAP SuccessFactors product continues to grow and become increasingly more robust! This does not represent all of the enhancements in the H2 2021 release – only the highlights we found most compelling. Check out the What’s New Viewer here for the complete list of enhancements.
See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.
The latest release updates are here! In this article we take a quick look at the latest updates for SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding 2.0. Preview release is October 15 and production is November 19. 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 here. Let’s get started! We’ve categorized the enhancements below for you!
Security Enhancements
In the category of security, there’s been an enhancement to proxy where you now have more granular control over whether or not a person who can proxy has access to onboarding. You can select the check box on the Proxy Management screen.
In addition to US I-9, the Canadian TD1form for all provinces is now supported. The New Zealand KS2 KiwiSaver deduction form, Tax code Declaration, and Tax rate notification for contractor forms are now supported.
Qualtrics Integration
SAP continues to further their integrations with Qualtrics across the board. There’s now a new Intelligent Services event to send internal hire information to Qualtrics. This allows you to send email surveys to employees when the internal hire step is completed. There is a new configuration screen that makes this setup easy! It is shown below:
New Hire Enhancements
A few enhancements have been made to the new hire experience. New Hires can now complete the onboarding process on the homepage. There’s new “To Do” tasks that show up for onboarding here for the new hires such as compliance tasks and completing personal data collection.
New hires can also now access LMS courses before their first day of work as shown below!
The complete new hire experience for the home page can now be done on the latest version of the homepage.
Hiring Manager / Admin Enhancements
In addition to new hire experience, the hiring manager and admin experiences have seen some updates as well. Future Managers can also now access information about their new hires in the onboarding dashboard and “To Do” tasks. Role-based permissions also now allow you to assign based on this new future manager relationship.
The Restart process for onboarding has also been enhanced so that you can choose whether or not to retain data or instead reload from recruiting.
General Process Enhancements / Behind The Scenes Enhancements
Behind the scenes, there’s been some other updates as well!
When it comes to picklists, the mapping from recruiting to employee central can be a pain. The system has now been updated to map based on a series of potential exact matches rather than just on labels. First, the system will attempt to map based on the option id since this is the most unique identifier. If no exact match is found, then mapping is performed via label using the external code value. If no external code is available, then the label alone is used.
Also behind the scenes, when a major patch/release is deployed to the system, the default onboarding process in the Business Process Engine is now automatically upgraded. Previously, an admin had to manually upgrade the flow.
The rehire process has also been enhanced to make life easier for admins managing this process. Values such as date of birth, national id, legal entity, and user records can now be seen as shown below:
No shows and rehires are handled better as ell. The value “No Show” has been added as an event reason for cancelling the second rehire check. There is also a new welcome email template specifically designed for rehires.
Conclusion
The SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding product continues to grow and become increasingly more robust! This does not represent all of the enhancements in the H2 2021 release – only the highlights we found most compelling. Check out the What’s New Viewer here for the complete list of enhancements.
See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.
For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 2021 Performance Management below.
The updates for Performance Management are primarily targeted for 360 Reviews so we will start with those. The PM form updates will be discussed after these features have been reviewed. Calibration updates can be found in our separate blog here.
What’s New for 360 Forms – Fiori Version
Here are the 10 universal updates made for the Fiori version of 360 forms to provide the same features that are available 360 Reviews v11.
Add Approvers in 360 Reviews
Approvers may now be added in the Modify stage.
Development Goal Section Available in 360 Reviews
A development goal section may be added to a 360 Review form template. These enables employees the opportunity to add and edit development goals.
Display a Data Table for a Chart
Within a 360 Executive Review and Detailed 360 Report, a user may select the table icon on a chart to see a data table. This provides text equivalents for non-text content.
Display External Users in Search Results When Adding Participants
It is now possible to add external users as participants without having to disable the system setting Hide External Users from search results.
EZ Rater Available in 360 Reviews
When enabled, the EZ Rater option provides a more condensed list view for rating goal and competencies.
Form History Available in 360 Reviews
Prior performance and 360 forms are now available within a 360 Review. The History button will display options to view either form type if available.
More Form Actions Available in 360 Reviews
Additional action options are now available for 360 forms. Information about the form may be viewed and the form may be deleted.
Print Preview Available in 360 Reviews
When the user clicks the Print button, a popup displays a preview of the form. This provides the user the opportunity to select the entire form or selected sections to print.
Stack Ranker Available in 360 Reviews
Stack Ranker can be enabled which allows side by side ranking of employee competencies. Ratings may be modified and comments added.
Section Descriptions Fully Displayed by Default
Now section descriptions are fully displayed by default and can be collapsed. Clicking Show Less to hide content. Previously sections were collapsed and the user had to click Show More to see the content.
What’s New for PM Forms
There are 5 universal updates for PM forms.
Customized Weighted Rating Supported in Import Overall Scores
Previously it was only possible to import overall scores into the Objective Competency Summary, and Performance Potential Summary, and Summary sections. The new release enables you to update overall scores for the Customized Weighted Rating section.
On the import file, use <PERFORMANCE> rating in the CSV file. The rating field is also used to update the Summary and Performance Potential section overall rating. If there is more than one PERFORMANCE rating, there is a priority for updating. The section order for uploading from high to low is:
Customized Weighted Rating
Performance Potential Summary
Summary
Deep Link to Performance Management Forms
There is now a deeplink available to access a performance form: /sf/openFormByDocId
New OData V2 API Entity FormCustomizedWeightedRatingSection
There is a new OData V2 API Entity: FormCustomizedWeightedRatingSection. It can be used to get the Customized Weighted Rating section details of a performance form in order to update the manual ratings section of the performance form.
Target Population in Role-Based Permissions for Import Overall Scores
This update pertains to the Customized Weighting Rating import that we just covered. Role based permissions may now be used to restrict users to importing scores for only their target population.
Select a role in Manage Permission Roles. Go to Permission>Administrator Permissions>Manage Document and select “Import Overall Scores Only for Target Population” and “Include All Employees” which allows granted users to update manual overall scores for all employees.
Live Profile Section Deleted
A Live Profile section can no longer be added to PM forms. Information in the existing section is no longer available. A link to People Profile can be used on the form instead.
What’s New in Continuous Performance Management (CPM)
There are some new early adapter features for the latest version of Continuous Performance Management (CPM). They are admin opt-in or opt-out features. We won’t cover these here since the latest version is not widely enabled. When the latest version of CPM is enabled, these email reminder notifications will become obsolete: Conduct 1:1 Meeting, Update Status, along with Activity and Achievement reminder notifications.
The latest version will handle notifications differently since multiple roles can be used and meeting channels can be created. Requests and meeting notifications can be created for anyone in the user’s meeting channel.
We have now covered the highlights of the PM related updates for H1 2021. See our blog for Calibration release features.
Highlights are identified by module and the type of change.
Universal- for modules enabled, universal means no steps are required to have access to the new functionality. These features are automatically made available.
Admin Opt-In – the admin must enable the new feature, usually in Admin Tools
Admin Opt-Out – the admin must disable the new feature, usually in Admin Tools
Provisioning Opt-In and Opt-Out require a Partner or Product Support request
For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 2H 2021 Performance Management below.
Performance Management
There is not much in the way of new functionality, just one universal update.
General Availability – Universal Updates
Configuration Center Support For Performance Management Form Templates
You can now view, download, and transport Performance Management form templates across tenants using Configuration Center. Prior to this release, only Feature Configuration was available under General Configuration for Performance Management. Now System Configuration and Manage Templates are available.
New PM Configuration In Configuration Center
General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins
The admin opt-ins require the latest version of the home page.
PM Related Updates “For You Today” Section of the Latest Home Page
When the latest home page is used, a “For You Today’ card will appear for PM tasks.
You can enable to-do tasks on the latest home page in the Upgrade Center.
The tasks are:
“Review Employee Performance” task available for managers
“Review Employee Performance” task available for employees
To give managers a view of the form that need their review, cards are grouped into Direct Reports, Matrix Reports, and Other on the stack view. An example is shown below.
For You Today Performance Tasks
Users can go directly to the performance review forms from this card to complete the tasks.
Goal Management
There is one universal update for Goal Management. The majority of the new functionality is for the latest version of Goal Management. With each release more and more features become available.
General Availability – Universal Updates
View, download, and transport Goal Management configurations using Configuration Center.
It is now possible to use ConfigurationCenter for Goal Management to view configurations, download configurations, and transport configurations across tenants. Configuration Center permission is required.
The view feature enables the admin to view configuration as well as see the username who made changes with a date and timestamp.
The download feature is useful to take a backup of your application’s configurations as well as for troubleshooting by an Implementation Partner or Customer Support.
The export feature can be used to export configuration in order to copy from the preview system to production.
With this release, after selecting the Talent configuration area, Goal Management is visible. The admin can then select the features to download.
Goal Management in Configuration Center
After selection, the admin goes to the “Transport Mode” tab to initiate the download process.
Upon completion, the configuration bundles is downloaded in ZIP format. Configuration types are available as separate files.
Latest Goal Management
With each release, the latest version of Goal Management has functionality added that is already available in the current version,
Now supported in the latest version of Goal Management:
Beta Goal Import
Changing goal plan states in Goals
User search
Matrix relationships
Now available in the latest version of Goal Management:
Spell Check
Legal Scan
Advanced user search by criteria
We will look at the new supported functions that are available for those using the latest Goal Management. We will start with the universal updates.
Early Adopters – Universal Updates
Mass Import Personal Goals in Latest Goal Management
It is now possible to use the “Import Performance Goals” for the latest version of Goal Management.
Change Goal Plan States in Latest Goal Management
It is now possible to update the goal plan state in the latest version of Goal Management. The ability to lock and unlock goal plans will be available and provides visibility of the goal plan state using the latest version of GM.
Goal plan states are used to control the action and field permissions before and after a goal plan is approved. Users with the “change-state” permission in the goal plan XML can now change the goal plan state in a more straightforward manner.
An example using goal plan states in the latest version of a goal plan is shown below. The current state has a dropdown list.
Latest Goal Management Goal Plan Current State
In addition, employees will be able to receive email notifications when their goal plan state changes. The notifications will include who changed the goal plan state and what the current goal plan state is.
Enhanced People Selector in Latest Goal Management
When using the latest version of goals management, the people selector will include matrix manager and matrix reports. If these matrix roles have permission, they will have access to view goal plans.
An example of the people selector in a goal plan is shown below.
People Selector with Matrix Manager and Reports
If these matrix roles have permission, they will have access to view goal plans.
360 Reviews
General Availability – Universal Updates
View, download, and transport 360 Reviews configurations using Configuration Center
Similar to the Goal Management being available in Configuration Center, it is now possible to use ConfigurationCenter for 360 Reviews to view configurations, download configurations, and transport configurations across tenants. Configuration Center permission is required cross tenants.
Before this release, 360 was not available in Configuration Center Now when selecting the Talent configuration area, 360 is visible. The admin can then select the features to download fro the Transport Mode tab.
360 in Configuration Center
Add External Participants When Users Have No Search Permissions
Users without permission to search for external users may now add them as form participants by email address. Users can enter the email address of an external user in the “Add a New External Participant” dialog box.
If the external user already exists in the system, the First Name and Last Name fields are automatically filled and users can select “Add” to add the external user as a participant.
An example is shown below.
Add External Participant
General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins
360 Reviews Tasks on the Latest Home Page
When the latest home page is used, a “For You Today’ card will appear for 360 Review tasks:
“Complete 360 Evaluation task” available for managers
“Complete Your 360 Evaluation task” available for employees
Found on the latest Home Page, for any 360 forms for an employee, manager or raters, there is a card to prompt the user to review and complete the 360 Reviews form in the Performance inbox.
For You Today Card for 360
Users can go directly to the 360 review form from this card.
Calibration
General Availability – Universal Updates
There is a universal update for a calibration session.
Set max rating change span
In “Manage Calibration Templates”, if your data source is “Performance”, it is now possible to set a maximum rating change span. This setting can be found on the “Advanced” tab.
Once the span is set, if you make rating changes in the session, the following rules apply:
If the rating change made doesn’t exceed the maximum rating change span, the rating will be changed
If the rating change exceeds the maximum rating change span, an error message displays and the rating reverts to the original rating.
Shown below is the Calibration Template “Advanced Settings” tab.
Set Maximum Rating Change Span
Continuous Performance Management (CPM)
There are only admin opt-ins for this release of Continuous Performance Management.
General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins
New Qualtrics Survey for Continuous Performance Management
It is possible to integrate Qualtrics surveys with Continuous Performance Management. This integration allows you to collect feedback from employees after 1:1 sessions with their managers.
To use this feature:
CPM must be enabled
Qualtrics license for website and app feedback projects required
“Manage Qualtrics Integrations” feature is enabled in Upgrade Center
The Qualtrics account is used to create the survey and view survey feedback.
An employee will be prompted to complete the survey. An example is shown below.
Start Survey within CPM
The user will see questions to answer.
Survey Questions
Once completed, the admin may view the survey feedback.
Early Adopter – Admin Add -Ins
Enhanced Achievement Experience for Continuous Performance Management
This feature is only available if the latest version of CPM is used.
Achievements can be the default view on the CPM landing page, which enables quick access to achievements. The admin would have to select “Achievements view” as the default on the “Continuous Performance Management Configuration” page. An example is shown below.
Set Default View
When a user accesses CPM, the default view will now be the Achievements tab.
Achievements tab default view
Feedback Integration with Microsoft Outlook
Continuous feedback may be enabled from a Microsoft Outlook add-in to make giving feedback easier.
In order to use this feature:
Latest version of CPM must be enabled
SAP SuccessFactors user attributes are mapped to Microsoft Active Directory
Continuous Feedback outlook integration is enabled and the manifest file downloaded
SAP SuccessFactors user attributes mapped to Microsoft Active Directory.
The employee will see an option to give feedback.
CPM Feedback within Outlook
Start Giving Feedback
The feedback questions display and enable the employee to provide feedback.
Feedback Questions
Upon submission, a confirmation message displays. An example is shown below.
Completion of Providing Feedback
Depreciation
Deprecation of 360 Reviews v11 Version
November 18, 2022 is the end of maintenance for 360 Reviews v11 and will be deleted on May 20, 2023.
We have now covered the highlights of the PM related updates for 2H 2021. See our blogfor 2H 2021 Career Development release features.
There are not a lot of new features for Career Development in this release. There are some updates for Mentoring and for early adopters, the latest version of Goal Management and Career Explorer have new functionality.
For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 2H 2021 Career Development below.
Mentoring
General Availability – Universal Updates
The universal updates for Mentoring relate to mentoring email notifications.
Improved Email Notifications
With the new release, there are changes to some of the mentoring email notifications. Some links have been added or removed and some of the messages have been made more concise.
The mentor invitation email notification has been updated. Now there is a link that goes directly to the mentoring program to accept the invitation to participate. An example is shown below.
Mentor Invitation to Participate
The program link has been removed from the email notification that goes out to pending mentees when their requested mentor becomes unavailable. Here is an example of the new email notification.
Mentor Unavailable Notification
Stop Email Notifications to Matched Mentees About Mentor Availability
Currently any mentee that is linked to a mentor will received an email notification when the mentor becomes unavailable as a recommended mentor for new mentees.
Similarly, when the mentor becomes available again, the mentees already in a relationship with a mentor would be notified. An example is shown below.
Emails to Current Mentees regarding Mentor Availability
Sending a notification to existing mentees when their mentor becomes unavailable caused confusion. It was not clear to existing mentees that their mentor was still available to them.
Mentees already accepted by a mentor will no longer be notified when the mentor becomes available or unavailable as a recommended mentor to others joining the program. The existing mentees will still have the mentor relationship but any employees searching for a mentor will not see the unavailable mentor to select from.
General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins
If you are using the latest Home Page, managers will be able to approve or decline employee requests to be a mentor. A new approval card will show on the home page which identifies when the request was submitted and identifies the mentoring program. The manager can approve or reject the request directly from this card.
An example is shown below.
Mentor Approval Card
Latest Version Development Goal Plan
Early Adopter – Universal Updates
For early adopters using the latest version of Goal Management there a few new features that we will discuss briefly.
Mass Import Personal Goals
For early adopters using the Latest Goal Management, it is now possible to mass import personal goals into development plan through Admin Center. This functionality was not available previously for the latest version of goal management.
Improved People Selector
Users with the appropriate role based permissions will be able to search for people by name and access their goal plans.
People Selector will now include additional hierarchical relationships: a user’s matrix manager and matrix reports.
Improved People Selector
Career Explorer
Early Adopter – Universal Updates
Career Explorer is only available for customers in an Early Adopter Care (EAC) program.
Exclude Job Roles from Data Sync
With the new release, there is a universal feature that allows job roles to be excluded from data sync between your system and the People Connection. This means those job roles will not be recommended to employees in Career Explorer.
Accessed from Admin Center, go to “Manage People Connection Integration”. Select “Manage Job Roles for Data Sync”.
The new “Manage Job Roles for Data Sync” screen is seen below.
Select Job Roles to Exclude
Display Long Job Role Names in Recommended Role Card
Currently, long job role names will truncate in the recommended role card as seen below.
Truncate Job Role Names
With the new release, longer names of job roles can be displayed in full using two lines as seen below.
Complete Job Role Names
We have now covered the highlights of the Career Development related updates for 2H 2021. See our blog for 2H 2021 PM release features.
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.
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:
Overview of HRIS Sync Mappings
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:
New Export Succession Data Model Screen
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 What’s New Viewer here for the complete list of enhancements.
See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.
In this release, we saw a wide range of enhancements across the Talent modules – some specific to Succession and others that lay across the modules but help out succession planners. Let’s take a look at what’s new in the Succession module below!
Succession Management Specific Changes
Let’s start with what’s new just for Succession Management before we take a look at some general talent improvements that are relevant to Succession.
Nomination History
The main new feature exclusive to Succession Management is the ability to view nomination history in the talent card and in the people profile. Users will with Succession Planning permission can click a history icon on these screens to see a list of positions for which the employee has been nominated and information about the nomination history for each including the date, nominator, readiness level, status, change type, and notes. The information includes deleted nominations as well.
Nomination History View
Hide Pending Nominations for Talent Pools
Succession configurators have had the ability to hide pending nominations from succession planners for some time now, but the ability was only extended to position nominations. Now, this feature works for talent pool nominations as well. This configuration setting remains in the same in Admin Center -> Nomination Setup.
Form-Based Nomination Deleted
Another update specific to succession with this release is that form-based succession nomination will be completely deleted as of May 21,2021. This was a legacy method of approving nominations – if you never used it, then don’t worry because no action is required. If you are still using forms to approve nominations, you have little time left to switch to the newer permission-based method!
General Talent Management Updates Relevant to Succession
There are also numerous updates across the talent modules in general that affect not only Succession, but also Performance, Goals, Development, and/or Calibration. Let’s take a look at these briefly below.
Editing Talent Info Directly on a Talent Card
It seems like every customer for whom I’ve implemented Succession has asked why they need to switch between the employee profile view and other views to edit talent information. Why can’t customers just change the information right on the talent card that shows up across the different views that contain the talent card? This way data like impact of loss or risk of loss can be updated when the user has the contextual information they need to make the decision. Well now, customers can!
Users can now click the icon shown below to open a popup that allows these fields to be changed.
Editing Information on a Talent Card
My Jobs Downloads
Previously Succession (and other talent reports) could be downloaded from the Scheduled Reports page in Classic View. Reports may now be downloaded from My Jobs page within Report Center. This eliminates the need to switch to Classic View prior to downloading.
A report with multiple files can be downloaded in a compressed .zip file or downloaded individually.
Numerous Calibration Session Improvements
There are a variety of calibration session feature that have been added/updated as well. For example specifying default facilitators or allowing managers to more easily create calibration sessions for their teams. For more information on these improvements, check out our blog on What’s in in H1 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Release.
That’s a Wrap!
That’s all of the updates for H1 2021! We hope you found this blog informative!
There are five universal updates related to Mentoring and one for Development Goals. Let’s take a look!
Mentoring
The mentoring features are related to the mentor program sign up process and are designed to improve the user experience.
Key Questions Indicated
In the sign up sheet, required entries are noted by a red asterisk. This ensures the mentees complete these fields prior to looking at the recommended mentors. Answering the key questions will improve the recommended mentors match.
Answers to questions will be saved but preferred mentors are not saved.
Save Sign Up Program to Complete Later
There may be times when an employee starts to enroll in a mentoring program but is not ready to commit. Maybe they need to consider their mentoring preferences further or need to check in with their manager first. The employee may start to fill out the sign up form, save it and come back to it later to make any updates prior to signing up.
There will be a “Save for Later” button that will display within the program sign up page.
Once saved, the program will appear on either the Invitations or Open Enrollment tab, whichever is applicable.
The program visible on the tab and can be easily be identified with an icon and “Saved for later” text.
Identify Mentor Requests
While filling out the sign up form, mentors that are selected from the recommended list will display a green check mark on the mentor cards.
Confirm Sign up
A mentee will see a confirmation popup when they are completing a program sign up. This gives the mentee the opportunity to confirm signing up for a mentor program. By clicking the “Complete Signup” button, the mentee is enrolled and mentor requests are submitted.
Your Mentor Requests
The Mentoring Page will contain a new section that tracks any mentor requests that a mentee has made. The “Your Mentor Requests” section allows a mentee to see the status of their mentor requests. Pending requests will appear as well as any declined requests and reasons. This feature is only applicable to open enrollment and unsupervised programs. Supervised programs rely on a matching program instead.
Mentees may also cancel any pending mentor requests.
Admin Opt-Ins for Mentoring
There is one admin opt-in available to for Mentoring.
Qualtrics Surveys for End of Mentoring Relationships
Qualtrics Surveys may now be used with Mentoring. The survey can be used when a mentor program participant opts to end the mentoring relationship. Based on how the program was configured, either the mentor or the mentee may cancel the mentoring relationship. A survey will pop up after a participant ends the mentoring relationship.
An email survey is sent to the other participant in the mentor relationship.
The feedback provided in the survey results are seen by the program owner and may be helpful when designing new mentoring programs.
In order to take advantage of this feature, Manage Qualtrics Integrations from the SAP SuccessFactors Admin Center needs to be set up.
Development Goals
Learning OData V4 Service
There is a new Learning OData V4 service. When using transcript or legacy learning activities, learning activities may be created and updated in mass to be associated with development goals and competencies.
For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of the 7 new universal features for 2021 Calibration along with the an admin opt-in. Let’s start with the universal features.
Universal
Distribution Range and Group of Ratings in Guidelines
When defining your Calibration template and Performance was selected as the data source on the Data tab, previously an individual percentage could be set for each rating with one rating in a guideline.
It is now possible to create a distribution range for ratings including a group of ratings in a guideline.
In addition to an individual rating, a group of ratings can be used when creating a guideline. As an added bonus, more operators besides “=” can be used:
<
<=
>
>=
is between
This allows you to set a distribution range for ratings and also include a group of ratings in a guideline with different operators.
Group Ratings and Distribution Ranges in Bin View
Here is a feature that works with the new distribution ranges and groups of ratings in guidelines. When a guideline includes an individual rating with a distribution range, in Bin View, you can see the number of subjects in a range that can be added or removed from the bin to meet the guidelines. A warning message will display above the bins if a guideline includes a group of ratings.
You may modify the total number of subjects for groups of ratings to meet the guidelines. You may also adjust the number of subjects displayed as a range within a bin.
Dashboard and Executive Review Bar Charts
Working in tandem with the new distribution range and groups of ratings that can be configured in guidelines, there is a new UI for bar charts for the Dashboard view and the Executive Review view. The bar charts identify actual distribution for each rating from the rating scale. Blue and orange bars are used to identify the distribution that matches or does not match the guideline.
Hover over the chart to see target vs. actual distribution if any of these conditions are met:
A rating appears more than once in multiple guidelines.
Not all ratings are configured in all guidelines.
There is more than one rating in a guideline.
There is more than “equal” configured in a guideline.
When none of these conditions are met, the bar charts will still display the actual distribution and the guideline.
Filters in Manage Calibration Settings
Within Manage Calibration Settings, the “Search Results Fields” tab has been relabeled as “Search and Filter Fields”.
On this tab, the existing columns has been relabeled:
“Include Field” is now “Include Search Results Fields”
“Make Default” is now “Default Search Results Fields”
There is a new column, “Filter Fields”, applies to all views of a calibration session and allows you to identify the default filters.
There are also new filter fields: Name, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Title, Username, Email, Gender, Level, andStatus.
Manager Created Calibration Sessions
It is now easier for a manager to create his team calibration session. Previously a manager could identify the template, session name and number of reporting levels when creating the session. Now the manager has more options. Session co-facilitators may be chosen, the default co-facilitators changed and the direct reports may also be participants rather than just subjects. The default co-facilitators option will only appear if the admin opt-in on Manage Calibration Settings is used. It will be explained in the admin opt-in section at the end of this blog.
Deep Links to Performance Management
Within a calibration session view, it is now possible to use a deep link to view a performance form:
/sf/viewPMFormFromCAL
Also to use a deep link to edit a performance form:
/sf/editPMFormFromCAL
Appending the deep link to the application server address will go to a Performance Management form in calibration views as well.
My Jobs Downloads
Previously Calibration reports could be downloaded from the Scheduled Reports page in Classic View. Reports may now be downloaded from My Jobs page within Report Center. This eliminates the need to switch to Classic View prior to downloading.
A report with multiple files can be downloaded in a compressed .zip file or downloaded individually.
Admin Opt-In
There is one admin opt-in for Calibration which we touched upon when looking at manager created calibration sessions.
Specify Default Facilitators for Manager-Initiated Calibration Sessions
A manager initiated calibration session can now have default facilitators. To set this up, a user who has access to Manage Calibration Settings would go to the Global tab and use the setting: Choose one or more users as default facilitators for a new manager calibration session to identify active users to default as facilitators.
This can be useful to specify an HR manager to act as a co-facilitator in order to access a manager initiated session.
When creating a session, the New Session dialog window will display the default facilitators but can be edited by the manager.
We have now reviewed what is coming soon for Calibration.
SAP SuccessFactors H2 2020 release updates finds us with several admin-opt “latest” versions including Home page, Goal Management and Continuous Performance Management (CPM). Here we will focus on the latest version of Goal Management and discuss how it fits into the new home page and how it integrates with CPM. See my earlier blog post for more information on performance management updates and my blog post for what’s new in CPM.
There is a new admin opt-in for the latest version of Goal Management. The latest version of Goal Management provides users with a streamlined view of goals to make it easier to access and manage. Performance Goals and Development Goals are now housed within Goal Management and have improved integration with CPM. Access to Goal Management contains both plans with a tab for each as seen in the example below.
New Goal Management View with Both Goal Plans
For managers, the new look is especially helpful. It is easy to navigate to direct report’s plans or any other users in their target population. They can swap between between their reports and within the two plans. An example the manager’s goal plan view is seen below.
Manager View of Goal Plans
Latest Goal Plan Features
The latest version of Goal Management still allows for the following existing functionality:
Creation of personal goals.
Development goals can have competencies and learning activities added.
Receipt of goal notifications.
Edit, view, and delete all goals except group goals v1.
Access to other’s goal plans with proper role-based permission.
Existing integration with other modules.
New functionality includes:
Personal goals not yet at the completed stage and approaching or past due date can appear on the latest home page.
Linked achievements for the latest version of CPM may be created and viewed here rather than having to go out of the goal plan and navigating to CPM.
Activities can be added directly to goals and linked activities may also display. An example of activities tied to a goal is shown below.
Add Activity to Goal
However, only the latest version of Goal Management may be used with the latest version of CPM.
Latest Goal Management Limitations
Since this is a new version for Goal Management, there is some goal plan functionality not yet available including:
Mass import of goals.
Ability to cascade and assign goals.
Use of Group and Team Goals.
Changing goal plan states within goal plan.
Use of metric lookup tables.
Use of Coaching Advisor for development goals.
Assigning custom learning activities to development goals.
OData APIs.
Some mobile features which will be identified shortly.
Attributes that may be Configured
Listed below are the the goal plan XML attributes that may be configured in the latest Goal Management:
max-goals
max-weight
max-weight-per-obj
min-goals
min-weight
min-weight-per-obj
new-obj-share-status-public
show-total-goalscore
Unsupported Goal Plan Field Types
Additionally, there are some goal plan field types that are not supported:
Bool
Checkbox
Comment
Link
Table
Text when used for achievement text, actual achievement text, object plan field 1, go to url
Changes to Goal Plan Fields with Latest Version of Goal Management
Name field is required with a maximum length of 500 characters.
Description and metric fields have a maximum 1000 character limit.
State. For use on the latest version of the home page, set the final enum value of the state field to “complete” in order to trigger the change of the goal state which enables incomplete goals to appear on the latest home page.
When using weight, if min-weight-per-obj and max-weight-per-obj attribute values are not met, goal creation is not possible.
For development goals, competencies can only be used in conjunction with Job Profile Builder.
Cannot select a single competency to link to a development goal in the UI.
You may convert existing goal plan templates but the goal plan field types that are not supported will not appear in converted goal plans.
After the upgrade, goal plan templates will need to be converted. Convert a template only once and and one at a time. Only convert the goal plans in use. Goal plans not converted will be read-only. Once converted, the goal plan templates may be used in the latest version of Goal Management.
Mobile Apps Limitations
There are some limitations using the latest version of Goal Management in mobile apps. For Performance and Development goals:
Cannot delete a goal from the goal card.
Cannot enter a negative number in the number field type.
Cannot revert back to the legacy view to see unsupported fields.
For Development goals:
Unable to search for a specific competency.
Unable to display the number of competencies on the goal card.
Unable to add competencies by library or category.
No integration with Learning.
Latest Goal Plan on latest Home Page
The latest Goal Management may be used in the latest version of the home page. There is a new admin opt-in for the redesigned home page. It is available for early adopters in both Preview and Production. Any existing legacy home page custom tiles or permissions are not impacted by the new page. An example of the new Home page is shown below.
Latest Home Page
The view is less cluttered with customized user and organization content. Tiles are replaced with cards and are system generated and more interactive. The page is divided into three sections:
Quick Actions. For frequent or quick actions.
For You Today. Dynamically generated user content. Displays any recently added goals and CPM activities.
The new Home page shows content from Goal Management, Continuous Performance Management, and Continuous Feedback. On the latest home page, you can view personal goals when the state of these goals is not yet complete and these goals are approaching their due dates or already overdue.
The latest version of the home page handles only personal goals in the following manner:
Updates of goals on the home page appear on for those manually created, modified or deleted.
Goals from an import are not reflected on the home page.
Performance goals appear based on status, if not yet complete and 15 days before due date.
Development goals appear based on status, if not yet complete and 30 days before due date.
Overdue Performance and Development goals will display.
Goals in “For You Today” section
Performance and development goals disappear from the new home page when:
Goals are completed.
Goals are deleted.
Goal due dates are past the due dates configured on the goal plan template.
To-do items list can be opened and acted upon in a side panel on any page. You can take action on each to-do directly from the side panel.Overdue to-do items are indicated in red.
Is the upgrade right for you?
After upgrading to the latest version of Goal Management, you cannot reverse the update, so be sure to fully understand what features you will be gaining and losing. It is wise to fully test in a preview instance before committing to an upgrade to production.
Because there are some substantial limitations to the latest version, it may be premature to upgrade but it is at least worthwhile to anticipate how Goal Management is changing and to gain an better understanding of how modules continue to be more tightly integrated with each release.
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