SAP SuccessFactors 1H 2022 What’s New in Succession and Career Development

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

Preview release was on April 15 and production will be released May 20. 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.

For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 1H 2022 Succession and Career Development below.

Career Development

General Availability – Universal Updates

Use Capability Picker in Job Profile Builder, Performance & Goals, and Succession & Development

Users can now use the Capability Picker to add competencies in Job Profile Builder, Performance & Goals, and Succession & Development.

Capability Picker replaces New Competency Picker, with a new UI that includes employees’ competencies, behaviors, and skills within an organization.

Career Development

Users can use the Capability Picker to add competencies to development goals in the latest Goal Management.

The latest Goal Management must be be enabled and development goal plan XML the show-competency-browser switch is configured.

Succession Planning

Capability Picker can be used to select competencies by competency libraries or job roles and search for competencies using keywords.

Job Profile Builder must be enabled.

In the Talent Search Settings in Admin Center, select Enable Capability Picker.

Here is an example of Capability Picker with a search box and a hierarchy structure of capabilities.

New Actions Available in Action Search

Additional Mentoring, Development Goals, and Career Worksheet actions are now available in the global search box.

Users can enter the text of an action or select from suggested actions to get to the selected product page.

Sign up for mentoring programs
Review and update mentoring activities
Update status of development goals
Add learning activities to development goals
Delete development goals
Search for target roles in Career Worksheet
Launch role readiness assessment in Career Worksheet
Create development goals in Career Worksheet
Add learning activities in Career Worksheet

These new actions take users directly to product pages.

0% Expected Rating Now as the Lowest Rating in Career Worksheet

If a competency’s expected rating is set as 0% in Manage Job Profile Content, the expected rating now appears as the lowest rating in the rating gap chart in Career Worksheet.

Previously if no expected rating was set, “N/A” would display as seen below.

With the latest release, it is now possible to differentiate between “N/A” and 0% expected rating.

Job Profile Builder must be enabled.

Enhanced Permission Control for Viewing Roles and Competencies

Before this release, users could view all the roles and competencies regardless of user permissions in Career Development.

Now users can only view the roles and competencies to which they have permissions in Career Development.

This permission control has been enhanced for viewing job roles and competencies within multiple features in Career Development:

Development Goals
Career Worksheet
Career Path
Mentoring

Users within the target population for certain job roles and competencies can view the roles and competencies on Career Development pages.

Job Profile Builder must be enabled.

Permission control is applicable in Development Goals, Career Worksheet, Career Path V2, and Mentoring. More details are explained below.

Development Goals

Creating, editing and viewing development goals in Career Development or People Profile, users can view the competencies based on their permissions. If behaviors are mapped to competencies, the same permission control applies.

Using OData APIs when creating, updating, deleting or querying,development goals, users can create, update, delete or query the competencies that they have permission for.

Career Worksheet

Users can view their current roles and suggested roles that they have permission for.

Browsing or searching for job roles, user can view the job families and roles that they have permission for.

Viewing the career path of current or target roles, users can view the job roles to which they have permissions.

Users can view all competencies and behaviors (if configured) of the current and target roles in the gap analysis charts based on their permissions.

When creating development goals for competencies, users can view the competencies in the goal creation dialog box based on their permissions.

Users can add learning activities to the competencies based on their permissions.

In Suggested Roles when filtering job roles by competency, users can view and select the competencies to which they have permissions.

Career Path V2

Users can view the job roles to which they have permissions. Administrators can manage the job roles to which they have permissions.

Mentoring

Program participation may be limited by selecting dynamic groups. Upon sign up to a mentoring program, the users within the groups can view and select picklist options only for their group in the signup form.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Create and Edit Goals in Non-Goal Management Modules

It is now possible to try out the latest Goal Management in non-Goal Management modules:

Career Development
Succession
Performance Management
Multi-Rater
People Profile
Continuous Performance Management

Creating or editing a goal in one of these modules, the user is prompted with a dialog with new UIs offered by the latest Goal Management.

Mentoring

General Availability – Universal Updates

There are several universal updates for Mentoring.

Cancel Request and End Mentoring on Manage My Opportunities

On the Manage My Opportunities page, users can now cancel the mentoring request that they made directly in Opportunity Marketplace, without navigating to other product pages.

If a mentee is already connected to a mentor it is now possible for them to end the mentoring relationship on their My Opportunities tab.

Text Replacement for Mentoring in Opportunity Marketplace

User created customized mentoring text is now available in Opportunity Marketplace.

This includes mentoring, mentoring program, mentor, mentee, including plurals and uppercases at the program level.

Previously:

Now:

Recommended Mentors and Mentoring Programs Available on iOS and Android Mobile Apps

In iOS and Android SAP SuccessFactors Mobile apps, employees may get recommended mentors and mentoring programs in the Connect with People section.

Mentor Details Page in Opportunity Marketplace

Opportunity Marketplace now has a Mentor Details page. Users can perform a variety of tasks such as viewing details of recommended mentors, bookmarking mentors, submitting and canceling mentoring requests, checking mentoring status, and ending mentoring relationships.

Mentoring – Admin Opt-Ins

Qualtrics Feedback Opportunity for Mentoring Program Completion

Intelligent Services events can be used to send employee information to Qualtrics in order to send a Qualtrics feedback survey to all of the mentoring program participants when the program ends.

Manage Qualtrics Integrations in the Admin Center now includes the Complete a Mentoring Program option in the Event Name field’s drop-down list for Talent.

To use this feature requires a Qualtrics Employee Experience license so that you can create Lifecycle projects. You also need to integrate SAP SuccessFactors with Qualtrics, and enable Intelligent Services and Integration Center.

Succession

Enhanced Permission Control for Searching Positions by Roles and Families

In the previous version, you could access all the job families and roles regardless of permissions.

In the current version, you can only view the job families and roles to which you have permission when browsing positions.

Browsing job roles to find the position to nominate a successor to will be limited to the job families and roles that the user has permissions for.

The permission control applies to the following scenarios:

Opening a nomination dialogue through the nomination section in Succession Talent Cards.
Opening a nomination dialogue through the nomination block in People Profile.

Job Profile Builder must be enabled.

Wrap Up

We have now covered the highlights of the Career Development and Succession related updates for 1H 2022. See our blog for 1H 2022 PM release features.

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 1H 2022 What’s New in Performance Management

SAP has announced the 1H 2022 SuccessFactors release information.

Preview release is on April 15 and production will be released May 20. 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.

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 1H 2022 Performance Management below.

Performance Management

The majority of the performance management updates involve Multi-Rater 360 forms and Calibration. However there are a few performance related updates that we will begin with.

General Availability – Universal Updates

Restrict Data Access of Inactive Users’ Forms

This enhanced was designed to comply with data privacy and protection standards.

Currently there is no way to limit a user’s access to inactive employee forms. With this release, there is a role permission that may be enabled which restricts the data in an inactive user’s PM form.

To set this up, open a permission role that should have the restriction.

Under User Permissions>Performance>Restrict Data Access of Inactive Users’ Forms

With this permission set, users with this permission role will not be able to access the data of inactive users’ forms in the following areas:

Home Page (only can review performance related To-Dos but not form pages)
Stack Ranker
Team Overview
Form OData APIs that include form subject information

Use Capability Picker in Performance & Goals

The previous “New Competency Picker”, now the Capability Picker, has a new UI which includes employees’ competencies, behaviors, and skills within an organization.

The Capability Picker can be used to add competencies in competency sections on PM forms.

To this use, Job Profile Builder must be enabled. In Performance Management Feature Settings in Admin Center, Enable Capability Picker must be selected.

New Columns for Performance Management in Story Reports

In Story reports for Performance Management, users can now include feedback comments in the Ask For Feedback table as seen below.

These are the Ask for Feedback comments provided by internal and external users through emails.

In addition, manual overall performance rating, manual overall performance rating description, and locale specific manual overall performance rating description are available in the Performance table.

Enhanced Signed Date Column in Story Reports

Signing a form using Route Form and Sign Form, the Signed Date column in Story reports now shows the date and time when the form was signed using the time of tenant preferred time zones. Only the latest record is shown in the reports if users have signed the form multiple times.

Enhanced OData Entity FormAuditTrail

The FormAuditTrail API has been updated with a permission check. This API can be used to access all audit trail records of forms in the system. Otherwise, users can only access audit trail records of forms in their folders.

Permission is needed to access all audit trail records of forms in the system and the permission role should include Administrator Permissions> Manage Documents>Admin Access to Forms OData API permission.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

There is a performance management related admin opt-in that is applicable for CPM achievements and feedback on a performance form.

View Achievements and Feedback on Forms on iOS and Android Mobile Apps

Performance reviewers with iOS and Android SAP SuccessFactors mobile apps, achievements and feedback linked to employees’ goals on performance forms can now viewed.

On the goal item page, there will be an Achievements row as seen in the example below.

Achievement details may be viewed by clicking Achievements for the goal. If the employee had any achievements linked to a goal, they would appear as seen below.

If there is any feedback for an achievement, it will noted with the number of feedback given.

Clicking the feedback indicator, reviewers can view feedback for the achievement.

To take advantage of this feature, the latest version of CPM must be enabled.

Reviewers will have to the View permission for User Continuous Performance Management Achievement in their permission role.

360 Reviews

There are several 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version updates. One is also applicable to 360 Reviews v11.

General Availability – Universal Updates

Participants Able to Recall Completed Forms

A participant may recall a 360 Reviews form after providing feedback and submitting it. However this recall feature available for raters but is not applicable to process owners, managers, employees, HR representatives, or approvers.

A Recall button will appear in the action column of the Evaluation Summary section of the form.

Using the Recall button moves the form back to the participant’s inbox.

Select Multiple Employees on Advanced Search Dialog

Previously, managers were only able to select/add one employee from the search results at a time. To add more, filters had to redefined for each selection.

Managers can now select multiple employees from a search done on the Advanced Search Dialog and add them all to the Participant List at once.

Refill the Participant List After Declines Occur

Process owners may now add alternative participants to the participant list if some of the initially added participants have declined to evaluate. This helps ensure that process owners get enough feedback for evaluations.

In order to use this feature, in the advanced settings of the 360 form template, all check boxes should be deselected for the option Hide the Decline to Participate button on the 360 Form for as seen below.

In the advanced settings of the 360 form template, select at least one role for the option Enable Add New Participants after 360 Evaluation starts for. This allows the selected role to add participants after the evaluation has begun.

Form Titles Editable in 360 Reviews

It is now possible for users to edit titles of 360 Reviews forms received in their Performance Inbox folder. Already available in 360 Reviews v11, it is now available in the SAP Fiori Version as well.

In the advanced settings of the 360 form template, select the option Enable form title editability in Form info page (V10) or Enable form title editability in the Form (V10), depending on where you want to change titles.

Process Owners Able to See Participants on Anonymous Forms

Process owners now can see the participants who have given evaluation feedback even on anonymous 360 Reviews forms. This provides participant information such as employee name, email, division, department, location, manager and category.

The Evaluation Summary will still show “anonymous” for each rater, but the Rater List will show rater names instead of “anonymous”.

In order to use this feature of a Multi-rater form, some set up is needed.

The 360 template to be used should have Anonymous 360 configured in Provisioning >Form Template Administration.

Within Form Template Settings for the form, on Show Participants in Status Summary (Applicable to Anonymous 360’s only) needs to be enabled.

Enable Show Participants in Status Summary

Improved Reminders Buttons

The Reminder icon in the Evaluation Summary section has been transformed into a button. Previously the Actions column contain a reminder icon as seen below.

This has been replaced with a Recall button in the Actions column. Users can now send reminders to those who have not given feedback yet; to a one or multiple participants. There is a new Send Reminder to All button will send a reminder to any rater that has not given feedback yet (a status of Pending). The user will also receive a confirmation of this action before reminders are sent.

Add “First Matrix Manager” and “All Matrix Managers” as Default Rater Categories 360 Reviews v11 and 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version

Within the Manage Templates tool or by editing the XML form template, First matrix manager and All matrix managers are now options as default rater categories in both 360 Reviews v11 and 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version. When selected, the employee’s first matrix manager or all matrix managers will then show on the rater list by default when a 360 Review form is launched.

The feature saves users from manually adding a first matrix manager or all matrix managers as raters after the form is launched.

Enforce Start Date in Route Map

A feature currently available for PM forms is now available for 360 forms.

Within the route map associated with the 360 template, select the Enforce start date option and then enter the start date for the step. This may be done for any step in the Modify and Evaluation stages on the route map.

Before the step start date, forms are read-only, but participants can open the forms to check the details.

Support for Learning Activities in Development Goal Section in 360

It is now possible to use Learning activities in the Development Goal section of a 360 Review form. A user may view details of a learning activity, add LMS learning activities, and delete LMS learning activities or Transcript-enabled custom learning activities.

In Provisioning>Company Settings make sure to select the option: Transcript — requires “Version 11 UI framework (ULTRA)”.

Show Behavior Descriptions When Not Rating by Behavior

If competencies have behaviors associated with them, behavior descriptions may be included in the Competency section of a 360 multi-rater form, even if the behaviors are not being rated.

When including behaviors, the behavior name displays but descriptions are hidden by default. Clicking the arrow button will show the behavior’s description.

In order to use behaviors on the form, the XML form template needs to have behavior-mode-opt in the competency-sect set to a non-zero value (1, 2, 4 or 5) and use-behavior should be false.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Hide the Nonremovable Checkbox in 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version

You can now hide the Nonremovable for Raters checkbox on a 360 Reviews form if it’s not needed.

In the advanced settings of the 360 form template, enable the Hide the Nonremovable checkbox on a form in the Modify stage.

Previously, the checkbox always appeared on a form, even if a rater was not permitted to use it for editing linked skills.

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.

360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version has been Generally Available and now includes the majority of features and functions that were available in 360 Reviews v11.

It is recommended if you’re using 360 Reviews v11 Version to migrate to 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version.

Goal Management

General Availability – Universal Updates

There are no universal updates for Goal Management.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Create and Edit Goals in Non-Goal Management Modules

When the latest Goal Management is enabled, you can try out the latest Goal Management to create and edit goals through an embedded dialog.

When you create or edit a goal in the following modules, you’ll be prompted with a dialog with brand new UIs offered by the latest Goal Management:

Career Development
Continuous Performance Management
360- Multi-Rater
People Profile
Performance Management
Succession

Calibration

General Availability – Universal Updates

There are several universal updates for a calibration session.

Manager Template Permission for Creating Calibration Sessions

It is now possible to identify which calibration templates managers can access when they create calibration sessions. The new permission, Manager Template Permission for Creating Sessions, is added under User Permissions >Calibration for a permission role.

Permission for Manager Calibration Sessions

Total of Expected Number of Subjects Equals Actual Number of Subjects

Logic has been enhanced for subject distribution in scenarios where the guidelines are defined with rating groups or when not all ratings have a distribution guideline.

When the guidelines are defined with rating groups or only part of the ratings have distribution guideline, but these are not met:

Ratings are included once in the guidelines
All guidelines are defined with “=” operator
Total of distribution guidelines is 100%

The system sums up the decimal parts and distributes the whole numbers to the ratings if there are decimal parts in the calculated results. This is done to ensure the total number of expected subjects for all ratings is equal to the actual number of subjects in the session.

Enhancement to Guidelines Enforcement

Distribution guidelines have been enhanced to support more guideline scenarios. Finalizing sessions individually, enforcement is now supported in three more guideline scenarios.

Distribution Guidelines are set in the Data tab of Manage Calibration Templates.

The enhancement only applies to finalizing sessions individually.

Guideline is defined in a rating group when there is one more than one rating
Guideline is defined with a rating range with an operator other than “=”
Not all ratings have a guideline

When the distribution of subjects doesn’t meet the guidelines for any these scenarios, the session cannot be finalized.

More User Information of Calibration Subject Available in Story Reports

You can now include the name and external user ID of a session subject in a Story report. The first and last names and external user ID are supported in the auto-joins for calibration subjects. This makes it easier to get calibration subject information.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Qualtrics Feedback Opportunity for Calibration Session Finalization

Manage Qualtrics Integrations in the Admin Center now includes the Calibration Session Finalization option in the Event Name field’s drop-down list for Talent.

Intelligent Services events can be used to send employee information to Qualtrics so when an employee finalizes a calibration session, a Qualtrics feedback survey may be sent via email.

Calibration, Intelligent Services and Integration Center must be enabled and a Qualtrics Employee Experience license for Lifecycle projects is required.

Continuous Performance Management (CPM)

The legacy version of Continuous Performance Management (CPM) will reach End of Maintenance on May 20, 2022 and will be retired as of May 19, 2023.

The latest version of CPM, initially released in 2H 2020 is available in the Upgrade Center. If no action is taken, your company will be automatically upgraded to the latest version after the retirement date.

In Conclusion

We have now covered the highlights of the PM related updates for 1H 2022. See our blog for 1H 2022 Career Development release features.

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 Center of Capabilities: An Introduction

I’ve implemented and supported many SAP SuccessFactors systems across my 15+ year career. One repeated issue I’ve come across throughout these years is how to catalog skills, competencies, and the like in a systematic way that allows employers to record, categorize, evaluate and search through employees who have specific skills at specific skill levels. Imagine starting a new project or opening a new plant and being able to see who out in your existing talent pool has the skills you need to success instead of hiring new full time talent or contractors. Up until recently, the only way SAP SuccessFactors customers have had to do this out of the box has been the employee profile which lacks the rigid structure needed to really properly catalog skills.

As the SAP SuccessFactors product as continued to expand, SAP has set out to solve this problem. SAP’s answer to the problem of how to record, categorize, evaluate and search through employee skills, competencies, and the like in a systematic way is the Center of Capabilities.

The Center of Capabilities provides a framework where the skills, competencies, and other similar employee attributes that matter to your organization can be cataloged and assigned to employees. The framework consists of two main components: the Capabilities Library and the Capabilities Portfolio. As you might expect, the library contains the listing of all capabilities (skills, competencies, etc.) that are important to your organization. The portfolio shows which particular skills, competencies, etc. are assigned to individuals or job roles (for more information on job roles, check out our blog Introduction to the Job Profile Builder or our book that covers this and more talent management topics). Let’s take a closer look at these two components of the Center of Capabilities.

The Capabilities Library

A Capabilities Library stores a collection of related skills / competencies / attributes. For smaller organizations you may have only one library divided into a few major categories. For larger organizations you may have multiple libraries each containing a single relevant functional area further divided into smaller categories and even groups beneath those. In addition, behaviors can also be added to competencies. Two examples are below, the first a snippet of a simple single company-wide library, and the second a snippet of a larger company collection of libraries with competencies that also contain behaviors (note that as of writing this blog, only competencies are supported in the library, but the long term plan appears to be to include more types of capabilities):

Library: ACME Company Library
- Category: Finance
  - Competency: Analytical Approach
  - Competency: Financial Responsibility

Library: Information Technology
- Category: IT Project Management
  - Group: Project Planning
    - Competency: Achieving Deadlines
      - Behavior: Clearly lists key/critical dates
      - Behavior: Provides consistent status reports
    - Competency: Being Adaptable to Changes in Plan
      - Behavior: Takes in New Requirements following change control procedures
      - Behavior: Adjusts project plan using proven estimation techniques
  - Group: Meeting Facilitation
    - Competency: Listening to Others
      - Behavior: Implements active listening techniques
      - Behavior: Records key group member discussion points into meeting notes
    - Competency: Guiding Others to Desired Outcomes
      - Behavior: Understands and interjects when meeting is becoming derailed
      - Behavior: Facilitates agreement between meeting participants
- Category: Systems Administration
  - Group: Configuring Systems
    - Competency: Following Change Control Procedures
      - Behavior: Reviews change control procedure documentation
      - Behavior: Records system changes
  - Group: Developing Programs
    - Competency: Applying Software Architecture Standards
      - Behavior: Listens to and implements architectural review board feedback

The screenshot below shows a sample of what a competency with behaviors assigned looks like within the Library. You can access the library via the “Manage Center of Capabilities” screen (make sure you assign this permission first as well as end user permissions – you can find more details in the admin guide at help.sap.com).

The Capabilities Portfolio

The capabilities portfolio is what ties an individual to a set of capabilities from the library via their job role. Capabilities can be assessed via a performance form. Each capability has a proficiency rating scale assigned to them that determines what their scores can be. Before you can use the portfolio, you’ll have to use the setup wizard pictured below in the “Manage Center of Capabilities” screen to setup the rating scale / proficiency levels. You will also need to associate which performance forms will show the proficiency history.

Once your setup is complete, you can select “Capabilities Portfolio” from the main navigation to look at your capabilities. As capabilities are rated via performce forms, they are updated here. You can look at the capabilities of another by searching for their name and selecting “Go to -> Capabilities Portfolio” from the action menu.

Conclusions

As of right now, the “Center of Capabilities” is mostly a rebrand of the existing competency library. However, taking a look at the SAP release roadmap, we can see that subsequent releases should prove to have more functionality that will expand the functionality beyond the initial limits of the legacy competency library. Speaking with contacts at SAP, the vision is to have the Center of Capabilities serve as the location where HR resources can find out all kinds of information about what individuals within the organization can do for it and conversely empower individuals to seek other opportunities in the organization that need their unique capabilities.

Do you need help setting up the Center of Capabilities? Contact us at info@worklogix.com!

H2 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Compensation Features

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

As a reminder, preview release was on October 15 and production will be released November 19. 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.

After reviewing all the changes, I narrowed the list down to the Highlights for H2 2021 Compensation:

1. Create Benchmarking Ranges and Color Values for Compensation Plans Using Display Settings

Compensation administrators can now update benchmark ranges and color settings for Compa-Ratio and Range Penetration in the compensation plan template under Display Settings.
Previously this was done in XML.

Additional settings have been added to allow Compensation Administrators to make changes via configuration

2. Enhanced Default Sorting by Employee Name for Compensation Plan Worksheets

There is now a new setting for sorting of employee names by First Name or Last Name as well as by Ascending or Descending order.
This allows end users to be able to find employees more easily.

Additional settings have been added to enhance usability

3. Enhanced Ability to Add Newly Eligible Employees to Compensation Worksheets

Users can now update settings to add eligible employees, not just new hires, to worksheets for a compensation plan.
These selections must be made on both the Update all worksheets settings and the Update a specific worksheet settings.

Both checkboxes should be selected for updating new hires as well as those newly eligible

4. Guidelines Using Entered or Calculated Values for Compensation Planning

Calculated or editable fields defined in the Design Worksheet can now be used as attributes for Guideline tables in Compensation, Variable Pay, and Total Compensation Plan templates.
This is very helpful for when customers have specific guidelines they wish to use that would have otherwise been difficult to incorporate via a workaround.

Custom columns can be created and then used as part of guideline configuration

5. Show Compensation Recommendations Outside of Guidelines or Salary Range by Using a Filter in Executive Review

Compensation planners can create a filter showing employees with compensation recommendations that are outside of guidelines or salary ranges.
This is now a standard option that doesn’t require any additional configuration.

Filter can be set to show all employees, show only employees within guidelines, or show only employees outside of guidelines

6. Improved Collaboration for Planners in Updating Worksheets

Save & Close button was added to allow easier collaboration for planners updating the same worksheet.
In the previous version, although a planner chose Save to save the updates made to the worksheet, the worksheet remained inaccessible to the other planners until the current planner exited the worksheet.

Save & Close button has been added to allow less restrictions for multiple planners on same worksheet

7. Define Population Views Using Manage Advanced Executive Review Filters

Compensation Administrators can now turn off Executive Review filters that are not relevant to their company.
Some of these additional filters were confusing to end users as they were not being used.

Filters can now be turned off via Company Settings – Manage Advanced Executive Review Filters

8. Enabling Bulk Print Feature in Specific Compensation Plans for Executive Review

Compensation Administrators can now set Enable Bulk Print in Executive Review from Plan Setup in the Settings page.
This change allows for plan specific control over bulk printing.

Enable Bulk Print in Executive Review checkbox is now found under plan specific Settings – General Settings

9. Integration of My Jobs Window for Bulk Print Statements in Executive Review

Users can now view the status and download Bulk Print statements from the My Jobs window that is now integrated with the Executive Review page.
Choosing Check print job status from this window redirects you to the Reporting – Report Center – View Schedules – My Jobs page.

Users now have an easier time navigating and find statements that were bulk printed

10. Publish Report for Detailed Logs on Compensation Publish to Employee Central

Compensation Administrators can now create a detailed report of the publishing status logs for employees and identify the issues during the publishing process for a given template.
The report is available in the Complete Compensation Cycle – Publish Data – Employee Central Publish Report area of the compensation plan.

To view report, Administrator – Manage Compensation – View Employee Central Publish Report permission has to be set in role-based permissions

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

What’s New in the SuccessFactors Platform for H2 2021

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 W hat’s New Vie wer 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 latest home page showing the Digital Assistant chatbot in action.

What Everyone Needs to Know

In this release, SAP announced a Tenant Preferred Time Zone feature. SAP is migrating servers to the UTC timezone. If you want to keep your server time zone where it is today, check out the link here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/d5e86fa8bb564058820592217d3a21d4.html

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.

The settings, such as providing a unique name to the rating scale, defining the number of proficiency levels, and assigning the numerical value as 0 or 1 for the lowest proficiency level are available on the Rating Scale page of the Capabilities Portfolio Settings wizard.

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.

The Capabilities Portfolio page provides information about the capabilities assigned to a user. This page also provides users the option to navigate to the Opportunities Marketplace.

There are a large number of new To-Do Tasks across all modules available on the latest home page. Examples are shown below. Check out the full list here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/34c3515e0de14431b35d76525dfb00df.html

Example of the home page showing several pending tasks: approve job offers, approve job requisitions, approve time off requests, approve time sheets, complete calibration, and complete 360 evaluation.

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 restrict individual user’s login to specific IP addresses. These allow for an extra layers of security in your integrations and general user access.

IP restriction can be applied to individual users.

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.

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

H2 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Analytics/Reporting Features

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

After reviewing all the changes, we narrowed the list down to the Highlights for H2 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Analytics/Reporting Features:

Audit Trail Now Reportable in Stories in People Analytics
- Users can now use Stories in People Analytics to report the audit trail records of form completed steps, including step owner and step action.
- This new feature allows you to track the routing details of Performance Management forms in a consolidated report.

Additional columns available to report on step details

Increase in the Number of Columns Supported for Learning Queries in Story Reports
- The number of columns that you can select while creating a Learning query has been increased from 30 to 120.
  - You can now create more complex queries due to the increase in number of columns.

Notes of People Profile Now Reportable in Stories in People Analytics
- Users can now use Stories in People Analytics to report the notes of People Profile. Information about notes that can be reported includes:
  - Note content
  - Note titles
  - Note creators
  - Note recipients
  - Last modified dates
  - Creation dates

Notes of People Profile are now reportable

Query Validation for Story Reports
- The queries in Story reports are now checked for errors whenever you choose Preview or Finish on the Query Designer page.
  - The validation checks return a list of missing or erroneous columns, calculations, and filters used in the query.

Inline Translation for Story Reports
- You can now add localized values for widget titles and page names in Story reports.
- Note: After you enable inline translation in a story, you can edit it only in the source language. When you enable inline translation in the story, your current locale becomes the source language for the story.

The ability to add localized widget titles and page names enhances the user experience for Story reports.

What’s New in Onboarding 2.0 H2 2021

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 W hat’s New Vie wer 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.

A screenshot of the Proxy Management page with a box highlighting the new Grant Proxy Rights options.

Compliance Form Updates

There’s been a number of compliance form updates. Form I-9 was enhanced so that the instructions of the form now show up in the system help icon sections. Various popups and warning messages make the form more informative to users. You can view the complete list of enhancements to form I-9 here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/587c828977e84747868fa5125cf38eb9.html

A screenshot of the help text displayed for the First Name field in USCIS Form I-9.

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!

A screenshot of the home page where new hires can access the assigned courses.

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.

The switches to determine the new hire information after restart are available under Restart Settings. The Allow Recruiting Update switch allows you to determine whether values must be updated from Recruiting or the existing values must be retained in Onboarding for auto-restart. The Retain Onboarding Information switch allows you to determine whether to update new hire information from Recruiting or retain the existing value for manual restart.

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 upgraded versions of the Default Onboarding Process flow are visible under Process Definitions.

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:

Enhanced version of the Rehire Verification screen with date of birth, national ID, legal entity, and last working day.

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.

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

What’s New in the 1H 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management Release

As of April 9, 2021, SAP has released their documentation for the H1 2021 release.

Preview release will be April 16 and production will be released 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.

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

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.

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 2H 2021 What’s New in Performance Management

SAP has announced the 2H 2021 SuccessFactors release information.

Preview release is on October 15 and production will be released November 19. 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.

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

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.

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 Configuration Center 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.

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 Configuration Center 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The user will see questions to answer.

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.

When a user accesses CPM, the default view will now be the Achievements tab.

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.

The feedback questions display and enable the employee to provide feedback.

Upon submission, a confirmation message displays. An example is shown below.

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 blog for 2H 2021 Career Development release features.

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 2H 2021 What’s New in Career Development

SAP has announced the latest updates and changes for SuccessFactors for the second half of 2021.

Preview release will be October 15 and production will be released November 19. 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Display Long Job Role Names in Recommended Role Card

Currently, long job role names will truncate in the recommended role card as seen below.

With the new release, longer names of job roles can be displayed in full using two lines as seen below.

We have now covered the highlights of the Career Development related updates for 2H 2021. See our blog for 2H 2021 PM release features.

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!