SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2022 What’s New in Performance Management

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

Preview release was on October 28 and production will be released December 9. 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 2H 2022 Performance Management below.

Latest Goal Management

The updates are for the latest Goal Management are admin opt-ins. The new features are described below. These features are also now available in iOS and Android mobile apps.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Copy Goals from Goal Plans using the latest Goal Management

Users can now copy personal goals from their own goal plans as a new option to create goals.

Requirements to use this feature include:

The TGM/CDP Goal Transfer Wizard feature is enabled
The create permission is granted in XML configurations
The write permission for goal fields is granted

Leave Comments on Goals when using the latest Goal Management

Users can now add, edit, or delete comments on their own goals or those of their direct reports. In legacy Goal Management, comments are shown in the goal list or on the goal editing page.

In the latest Goal Management, the updated comment feature is supported and comments are shown on the goal details page.

Comments can also be managed in Performance Management forms, 360 Reviews forms, and Career Development.

Team Goals Now Available when using the latest Goal Management

Users can now create, manage, and be assigned team goals in the latest Goal Management.

Users may:

Create, edit, or delete team goals
Access team goals from their own goal plan
Assign/unassign team goals to people from their team or people found via search
Share/unshare team goal ownership with others
If configured, users can manage team goals assigned to them in Continuous Performance Management.

Users can also manage team goals assigned to them in Performance Management forms, 360 Reviews forms, and Continuous Performance Management.

Group Goals are no longer supported.

These new features are available in iOS and Android Mobile Apps as well.

Performance Management

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

General Availability – Universal Updates

SMART Goal Wizard not available when using the latest Goal Management

It will not be possible to use the SMART Goal Wizard when adding a goal to a performance form. This feature currently is not supported. Even if you enable the SMART Goal Wizard setting in Form Template Settings this option will not appear when adding a goal.

Enhanced OData Entities for Querying Development Goal Sections on Forms

You can now use APIs to query development goal sections and goal items on Performance Management forms. The FormContent, FormPMReviewContentDetail, FormObjective, FormObjectiveDetails, and FormObjectiveSection APIs. Previously these APIs were used to query performance goal sections and goal items only

General Availability – Admin Opt-In

Confirmation prior to Sending Forms

When users send a form, a message popup appears and allows them to confirm the action.

In the advanced settings for the template, there will be a new option to enable the new experience as seen below.

A pop-up will appear for a user that is sending a form back or forward a step to allows the user to confirm the action. It is also applicable when signing a form, rejecting form or sending a copy of a completed form.

In the route map on the form, clicking Actions in the current step, will display a dropdown list.

Selecting the action will cause a pop-up to display.

Continuous Performance Management

General Availability – Universal

Updated Character Count for Continuous Feedback Topic Field

In the previous version, when users chose the “send” button on a form, a confirmation page appeared.

The character count for the Continuous Feedback topic field to 200 characters.

Replacement of Continuous Performance Management Legacy Version with the Continuous Performance Management Latest Version

The legacy version of Continuous Performance Management (CPM) will reach End of Maintenance on May 20, 2022 and will be retired as of May 24, 2024. The replacement is the latest version of CPM, initially released in 2H 2020, that is currently available in the Upgrade Center. If no action is taken, your company will be automatically upgraded to the latest version after the retirement date.

General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

New Quick Action to Give Feedback on the Latest Home Page

Employees can now choose to Give Feedback from the Quick Actions section on the latest home page.When the Give Feedback is selected, the user can search and select one person, input a topic, and provide feedback to the other user.

Once selected, the user may select the person, feedback topic, and questions.

OData v4 API Continuous Feedback for the Latest Version of Continuous Performance Management

You can now use the Continuous Feedback OData v4 API with the latest version of Continuous Performance Management.

The OData v4 API for Continuous Feedback has been added to support third-party integrations and extensions for the latest version of Continuous Performance Management (CPM).

Calibration

General Availability – Universal

Remove Subjects from Calibration Sessions

There is a new admin tool, Remove Subjects from Calibration Sessions, used to search for the sessions where an employee has been included as a calibration subject.

When the employee is included in many sessions, you narrow down the search results by selecting a calibration template name. Then, only the sessions created with the specified template are listed.

General Availability – Admin Opt-In

More Gender Values in Calibration Views

Male and Female were supported for visualization in Calibration Views. Now there are the other three standard values: Unknown, Undeclared, and Others.

The gender icon is displayed next to the employee’s name. When the gender of an employee hasn’t been specified in the system yet, it will be indicated as No Selection.

The gender bars in the matrix grid view are now rendered in different colors:

Male: Violet
Female: Green
Undeclared: Blue
Unknown: Dark Blue
Others: Red
No Selection: Grey

Enhancement to Guidelines Enforcement During Mass Finalization

There are more guidelines enforcement scenarios that are supported when you finalize multiple sessions at one time.

More than one rating is included in a guideline defined with a rating group
An operator other than “=” is configured in a guideline defined with a rating range
Not all ratings have a guideline

No longer are guidelines enforced only when finalizing an individual calibration session. With the latest release, multiple sessions can be finalized as long the distribution of subjects doesn’t meet one of the above-mentioned definitions. Distributions would need to be adjusted in order to finalize all of the sessions.

Previously, these guidelines were enforced only when you finalized individual sessions.

360 Reviews

There are several updates for 360 Reviews. Highlights are described below.

General Availability – Universal

Hide Route Map on 360 Reviews Forms

Similar to PM forms, a route map may be collapsed on the form.

This is done through the advanced settings of the 360 Review template by selecting “Hide Route Map on the Form”. Once enabled, when viewing the form, clicking on Hide Route Map will hide the route map from view on the form.

Clicking on Hide Route Map will collapse the route map from view on the form.

Click Show Route Map

Required Fields Marked on 360 Reviews Forms

Fields defined as required are now identified with red asterisks on forms in the Evaluation stage. This now matches how required fields display in PM forms.

Updated Messages for Users Approving or Routing Forms Using Unsupported Tools

In the Approve Form or Route Signature Stage Form tool, once users enter document IDs and chose the buttons to approve or route forms, they weren’t informed that these tools don’t work for 360 Reviews forms.

Now if a user tries to approve or route 360 Reviews forms using unsupported tools in Admin Center, a message will display reminding them that these tools aren’t supported and are shown the correct tool to use.

Messaging when Routing using Unsupported Tools

“competency-filter” Attribute Supported in 360 Reviews Forms

The competency-filter attribute can be used to control what competencies users from different participant categories can view and rate on 360 Reviews.

Within the meta-cat element in the meta section of the form XML, define different participant categories in order to:

After the form is launched, in the Show Assignments dialog, participants belonging to the categories allowed to rate a competency are automatically selected for that competency. However, users can still select any competencies for a participant that weren’t initially included in the competency-filter defined for the participant’s category.

If a participant’s category is changed in the Modify stage, the participant’s competency assignment will be automatically updated to comply with the new category’s competency-filter.

If a participant is added in the Evaluation stage, the participant’s competency assignment will follow the competency-filter defined for the participant’s category.

If a competency is added to the form, filters including or not including this competency will apply to related competency assignments.

Disable Page Setup When Printing 360 Reviews Forms

It is now possible to prevent a user from specifying to print the Summary View or 360 Executive Review form. Instead the form will be printed in its entirety.

In Form Template Settings there is a new option – Disable Page Setup. When enabled, users aren’t allowed to specify the sections to print and the entire form will print.

Show Behaviors in Summary Section by Enabling Rate-by-Behavior

When behaviors are associated with competencies, it is now possible to show behavior names and ratings in the Summary section.

To enable rate-by-behavior, set use-behavior to true and behavior-mode-opt to 0. In the Summary section, add the show-behaviors-in-summary element.

Purge Data of External Users in 360 Reviews

There is a new purge request, DRTM 360 Reviews – External User Purge used to delete data of external users no longer needed in 360 Reviews forms.

The External User Purge for 360 Reviews can be defined by the following purge rules.

A specified number of days have passed since the user declined a form
A specified number of days have passed since the user submitted a form
A specified number of days have passed and the user hasn’t responded to a form
A specified number of days have passed since the user who has never been involved in any form was added to the system

To successfully purge a user’s data who has multiple 360 Reviews forms, each form must satisfy one of the first three criteria.

Deprecation of 360 Reviews v11 Version

The 360 Reviews v11 version will reach the end of maintenance on May 19, 2023 and will be deleted on November 17, 2023.

360 Reviews v11 Version is being depreciated because 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version is generally available and includes the majority of features and functions that were available in 360 Reviews v11. In addition the SAP Fiori version has an enhanced user experience and updated visualizations.

If you’re using 360 Reviews v11 Version, please migrate to 360 Reviews – SAP Fiori Version.

Career Development

There are a few universal updates for Career Development that are reviewed below.

Career Worksheet – General Availability – Universal

Enhanced Competency Gap Graph in Career Worksheet

Previously, the gap graph was shown only when a competency had both a last rating and expected rating. With the latest release, if a competency has either a last rating or expected rating, a horizontal bar graph for ratings is shown below the competency.

In the example below, the competency has an expected rating shown in blue with no last rating.

In the previous version, no horizontal bar graph was available if both ratings were not available.

Career Worksheet – General Availability – Admin Opt-Ins

Career Explorer Now Generally Available

Previously, Career Explorer was only available for customers in an Early Adopter Care (EAC) program. It is now generally available.

Career Explorer recommends career opportunities to employees based on the career paths of people who are similar to them in the organization. It provides a means for employees to find relevant opportunities in their organization outside their hierarchy, career moves of people who are similar and paths that they may not have considered.

For a recommended role, an employee can expand the card to see a career path in a lineage chart and view job profiles and recommendation reasons. The role may be added to Career Worksheet to do gap analysis for personal skills, or dislike the role to further personalize subsequent recommendations.

Recommended roles are refreshed every two weeks or when there are enough delta changes to the data. This allows employees to visit the Career Explorer page regularly to explore new recommendations.

Mentoring – General Availability – Universal

Country/Region Picklist Available for Mentoring Matching Questions

A “Country/Region” picklist is now available in the question category to use for automatic matching. Matching rules can be created to allow mentees to define their preferred country/region when signing up for a program, and mentors’ country/region information is pulled from their profile data.

Mentoring Program Available in Cross Domain Table Reports

Mentoring Program is now available as a domain in Cross Domain reports in Table reports. This can be used with Performance Management, Goal Management and Employee Profile domains to gather mentoring program related data.

In Conclusion

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

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

SAP SuccessFactors Platform H1 2022 Release Updates

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 in the 1H 2022 Platform release below.

Overview

SAP continues to invest in numerous updates into the platform, topping most of the other modules for the past few releases. Due to the large number of updates (89 in this release!), we’ve highlighted only some of the most significant changes below. We’ve categorized the updates based on who the affected audience for each change: User Experience Updates, Admin Updates, and System Updates.

User Experience

SAP continues to remind customers that the Universal release of the Latest Homepage will be in June 3rd for preview and June 24th for production environments. If you haven’t reviewed the changes and opted-in, you should do so now and plan your communication strategy so your users aren’t caught wondering why their homepage changed!

SAP also continues to add more quick actions to the latest homepage, thus increase its usefulness as a quick way to access needed areas of the system without having to click through navigation. The actions added include “Candidate Talent Pools”, “Learning Administration”, “Mobile Activation”, “View Company Documents”, and “View Tile Reports”. The homepage also now allows for grouping of custom cards within the Organizational Updates section as seen in the screenshot below:

Screenshot of Card Groupings within the Organizational Updates Section

You can also see an example of the new half sized custom cards in the screenshot above.

There are also various updates to the opportunity marketplace including allowing Assignment offer approvals, allowing assignment owners to see descriptions of capabilities including proficiency levels when creating assignments and applicants to see their own capability details. The capability picker also got updates you can read about in our blog here: https://worklogix.blog/2022/04/17/sap-successfactors-1h-2022-whats-new-in-succession-and-career-development/

The org chart also got a nice update where you can change the order of direct reports below a manager. Check out the configuration steps here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/780a0273693342c79ded9930b9057110.html

You can also now turn on a data privacy consent form for uploading photos that is shown to users as in the example screenshot below:

Screenshot of data privacy consent message for employee photos

Also related to photos- you can now have just one photo for a person on global assignment with multiple employments.

After many years of service, quickcards have finally got an upgrade across the system. This gives a better look and feel consistent across the platform. An example is shown below:

Admin Updates

Do you still love to use the old admin page like me? I’m sorry to say the nostalgic use of the OneAdmin page will end on May 20th this year. Time to start using the NextGen admin page.

SAP also continues to increase the list of jobs available to monitor in the Scheduled Job Manager. You can check out the list of jobs here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/55e3deb65bf14190b102ff7ad1f803fc.html

Are you an admin that loves unstucking stuck workflows or resolving HR data issues? You might be interested in the new custom fields you can add to admin alerts! Check out the list here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/055e9cd78d2543d283fd556cbca2132d.html You can also now see the name of the current approver for stalled workflows within admin alerts.

If you are a security or compliance admin, you’ll be happy to know you can now perform read and change audit reports on multiple users for up to 30 days now. The storage limit has also been increased from 1GB to 10GB.

The still evolving transport system in SuccessFactors also got an enhancement in the form of Bundle Management in Configuration Center. You can now create bundles, edit them, and even share them with others! Checkout the screenshot below:

New Bundle Management Feature Screenshot

There’s also now a handy import history report available for download in the Configuration Center as well!

The Check tool has now been integrated into the instance refresh too. Admins will now get an email that includes a summary of check tool results when a refresh is processed and can also download an error log. The list of items the check tool checks has also been updated. The detailed list can be found here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/354e3d1428d8493d89dfb7487e5dcedf.html

Security admins will also be glad there’s a new potentially neck-saving notification when they change a role that impacts a large number of users. Don’t worry – you can select the threshold of users so you aren’t getting unwanted pop-ups! Checkout the configuration steps here: https://help.sap.com/doc/62fddbd651204629b46bbccbabf886ba/cloud/en-US/c7b923c87ca3494c8416349431fa8a49.html

The RBP admin screen also got a new facelift! You have the option to turn this one on by selecting the option on the old screen. Check it out below!

System Updates

Access to APIs based on HTTP Basic Authentication will no longer be supported on November 17 2023. This gives customers about a year and a half to adapt any existing interfaces that log on to the APIs directly to OAuth 2.0.

The APIs will now also start to be throttled. Probably a smart move on the part of SAP to keep system stability, but but news if you have interfaces that make lots of calls. Don’t worry – the limit is now 40 requests per second so you’d have to be doing A LOT of calls to be affected.

The APIs have also been enhanced with more linking between a variety of entities. Check the main What’s New Viewer page for specifics.

Wrap Up

We have now covered the Platform update highlights for 1H 2022! SAP continues to invest greatly in the platform to expand the overall capabilities of the system, concentrating on consistent and enhanced user experience while giving admins more helpful tools.

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!

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 H1 2021 Release Updates for Succession

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

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.

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.

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!

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!

What’s New in the 1H 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Career Development Release

Want to learn what is coming soon in SAP SuccessFactors Career Development? The latest updates for H1 2021 have been announced.

As of April 9, 2021, SAP has released their documentation for the H1 2021 release. You can view the full set of documentation in the W hat’s New Vie wer here. As a reminder, preview release will be April 16 and production will be released May 21^st. 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 Career Development below.

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.

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 Job Profile Builder Talent Management Integration

SAP SuccessFactors Job Profile Builder (JPB) is a tool used to create and maintain job profiles associated to job roles. Job profile content can be used when creating job requisitions but it can be used for much more. JPB is integrated with many HCM modules and the key that ties all of these modules to Job Profile Builder is job roles.

The job profile components can be used in many modules. These components are useful in many areas of SuccessFactors including:

Performance Management
Career Development
Succession
Employee Profile

First, let’s look at a job profile. Job Profiles are tied to job roles within a job family. The profile can include education, skills and competencies to associate with a job role. This information can get pulled into a req and the position associated with a job will inherit its properties.

An example of a job profile is shown below.

Job Profile

Competencies are a very critical component of a job role. The competencies are selected from a competency library, most notably the SuccessFactors 2.1 Competency Library. Once the job roles are created, competencies are selected to map to roles. Positions associated with a job will then have these competences that can included as requirements on a job req or a way for an employee to track progress on goals.

As you see below, for a role, a competency library is selected and then competencies can be added.

Mapping Competencies to a Job Role

Job codes, skills, competencies and talent pools can be mapped to a job role. Job codes associated with the roles will inherit the skills and competencies. An example is shown below.

The job role below has a job code, 8 competencies, 4 skills and a talent pool mapped to it.

Job Role with Mappings

This means that all positions associated with a job code will then have the associate skills and competencies.

Performance Management
Any job related competencies can be included on performance form template. This allows an employee to be rated on their job specific competencies.

When a form is generated, all competencies associated with the employee’s role will be pulled in when a performance form is generated.

Role Competencies on PM Form

Development Goal Plans

Development goals can have have competencies added. This is especially useful when using Career Worksheet which we will look at next,

Competencies on Development Goal

Career Worksheet
The Career Worksheet is a component of Career Development and is used by an employee to discover development opportunities based on roles that may wish to grow in to. The Career Worksheet is also dependent on job roles and their job role definitions, mapped competencies and expected competency proficiency ratings.

Job profiles will appear throughout the career worksheet, when browsing roles, viewing suggested roles, viewing career paths to name a few.

The employee selects future or targeted roles to view along with the job role’s associated competencies. The worksheet identifies competency gaps which highlight development areas that the employee needs to work on. The worksheet also illustrates how ready an employee is for the targeted role based on their competency proficiency. The worksheet may also be used to view career paths and suggested future roles.

Competency mappings to roles are the sole source of competencies listed on the career worksheet. Only ratings from completed forms are displayed in the career worksheet.

A job role will require a number of competencies and each competency should have an expected proficiency level rating. An employee’s readiness for the role depends on whether the employee’s proficiency rating for the competencies meets the expected ratings.

The system uses the Career Worksheet readiness calculation to compute a competency match score which compares the employee’s competency rating with the expected rating for the role.

An employee can browse career paths and suggested roles from their Career Worksheet. Employees can proactively prepare for that next step. By discovering the competencies and skills needed to exceed in a job role, the employee can create development goals that align with a targeted role. This gives employees a sense of empowerment to develop skills, behaviors and competencies to prepare for future roles.

Suggested Roles

Suggested roles can be based on career paths or through an algorithm based on a set of criteria. The suggested roles can be a combination of competencies, targeted roles, career path and roles selected by peer. Clicking within any role will will display the job profile, Selecting a role will add it to the employee’s career worksheet in order gauge their readiness for the role.

Suggested Roles

Clicking the plus sign will add the role the employee’s career worksheet.

The employee can view job roles based on job family. Selecting any will add the role to career worksheet.

View

Career Path

Once a target role is selected, the career path for the role can be viewed. This gives the employee a chance to see the job role progression. Job profiles for the roles in the path may be viewed as well.

On the Career Worksheet, the job profile of a targeted role may be viewed.

Career Path for Target Role

All of the job roles that have been configured for a career path will display. The targeted role will be highlighted. Clicking on the information icon give the employee a view of the job profile which can be used to help them decide if that is a job they may like to grow into.

Job Profile

Role Readiness Form

The Role Readiness form is launched from the Career Worksheet by the employee and is used to rate how proficient they are in the competencies needed for any future roles that they selected. The form is used to help employees plan their career development and identify areas of development needed for the future roles.

Role Readiness Form

Readiness Meter

Once the form has been completed, the readiness meter on the career worksheet will show how ready the employee is for the targeted role.

Readiness Meter

Gap Graphs

There is a gap graph for each competency comparing the last competency rating of record for the employee with the expected rating for that role. All job roles mapped to a competency will be included. The graph shows the actual competency rating from the latest rating form against the expected rating for the competency.

For any large gaps for the competencies, the employee may decide to add a development goal to help them become more proficient. This will add the development goal to their development plan. The development goal will also show the linked competencies.

Succession

Job roles can be tied to talent pools. When a talent pool is mapped to a job role, all positions tied to the job code will then become members of the talent pool. Talent pools associated with a position display in the position card when accessed from the Succession Org Chart or Position Tile view.

An employee’s talent card will also show the talent pools their position is associated with as seen below.

Talent Pool on Talent Card

The Position card will also show talent pool successors.

Position and role information may be viewed as well. Within the Succession Org Chart, when viewing a position, the associated job role details may be viewed. Clicking ‘View Role Details’ will open the job profile associated with the role.

Role Details

Employee Profile

The skill profile is linked to JPB.

Employees can add skills whick can be used for employee development and succession planning,

Skill Profile

Conclusion

I hope you can see that Job Profile Builder can be used beyond Recruitment. The job profiles created can be extremely useful in developing the people within your organization and not just for finding new talent.

For more information on the Job Profile Builder and Talent Management Integrations, check out o ur book here!

An Introduction to 360 Evaluations in SAP SuccessFactors

As year-end approaches, it is common for many companies to take a second look at their employee performance and goal setting processes. In the past few weeks, I’ve been helping multiple companies revamp their employee performance processes. While some are just tweaking current forms and processes, others are considering including a new and often enlightening process – 360 evaluations.

What is a 360 evaluation?

The idea behind a 360 evaluation is to get a picture of how others view your performance from all angles. This means that in addition to getting feedback from your manager (top down), you also get feedback from your own direct reports (bottom-up), peers (side), and even external sources (vendors, business partners, customers, etc.).

Why do companies implement 360 evaluations?

Receiving feedback from a variety of sources helps create a more complete picture of how an employee is performing and/or perceived to be performing from different angles. 360 evaluations can help uncover trends and gaps in these different angles. For example, a manager may consider an employee a top performer, but when feedback is asked from peers or external sources on an anonymous basis, the employee might get different feedback (“He’s always on top of his own tasks, but sometimes at the expense of the team as a whole when we need his support”). Similarly, an employee may not be considered a top performer by a manager, but feedback from others could reveal a lot of solid performance feedback into which the manager never previously had sight (E.g. “She’s been so helpful in getting my career on the right path and helping me with work tasks at the expense of her own!”). Allowing this feedback to come to light can help employees and managers work to truly improve employee performance. We’ll take a look in a moment at how SAP SuccessFactors 360 evaluations aid in attaining this kind of feedback.

Walk-through of a 360 form in SAP SuccessFactors

360 forms are launched just like performance forms are. However, it is important to note that 360 forms use a separate screen for launching (don’t worry, this screen pretty much works the same as the other launch forms screen you are used to. After picking a target population, the admin can launch just like a normal performance form.

Search bar showing separate launch screen for 360 forms

360 forms will also show up in the performance inbox like other performance forms, but with a different icon. It is important to recognize that 360 forms use a template type than regular performance forms and get treated slightly differently in these respects.

View of Performance Inbox with both 360 and regular performance reviews

Once the first person in the route map gets the form (in this case the employee), they need to choose who will be involved in the evaluation. The system can be configured to default in people for categories like direct reports, manager, and peers.

Employee nominates raters step of 360 review

Users also have the option to add external participants as shown below by simply providing a first name, last name, and email and then choosing in what category the person should be included.

Once the user is finished adding participants, there is usually an approval step prior to the evaluations being sent out. Evaluations can be designed using sections similar to those you are used to seeing in a standard performance review form. There are sections for objectives, competencies, as well as an introduction and a section for the subject’s information. Unlike regular performance forms that can be configured heavily on the online editor in “Manage Templates”, 360 forms can only be fully setup by partners or SAP (though much of the config is done in the online editor).

For internal participants, the evaluation is sent to the user’s performance inbox like the typical performance reviews where they can then open the form as shown below.

In the case of external participants, after approval of the evaluators, an email is sent with a link that allows external users to access the form. This can be a security consideration for some organizations since the link is only as secure as the receiving email system.

After all evaluations have been completed, the form is put in the completed status and the employee / manger / etc can view the results depending on permission settings. You can see an example completed performance form below.

Completed Review showing Anonymous ratings

One key advantage of the 360 form in SuccessFactors over the typical annual performance review is that the 360 feedback comments and ratings can be made anonymous. Obviously the user would know who their manager is, or they might be able to derive who the other evaluators are based on category if there are only one or two – so the forms allow you to configure minimum counts in each category as well as rollups to combine categories to help keep anonymity. The user can click on the link for each reviewer to see the details of each review and create an HTML or PDF printout of the details as shown below.

Printed Detail of Individual Review Feedback

The form also has a nice detailed report showing the combined feedback comments and overall ratings by category. This can help the employee and manager understand where any gaps between self and manager evaluation ratings may exist along with other types of ratings from other categories. For examplem we can see below there is a large gap between the manager’s perception and the employee and other’s perception of “Prioritizing and Organizing Work”. Perhaps the manager is getting too much priority and the employee needs to focus on the work the team as a whole needs completed!

Wrap Up

After this quick walkthrough, hopefully you can now see the advantage of 360 forms as an insightful tool to get employee performance feedback from a variety of sources and understand what a typical end-to-end 360 process looks like.

For more information about 360 forms and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!

Do you need help implementing or changing your 360 form or other performance and goals processes? Contact us at info@worklogix.com.

Job Profile Builder: An Introduction

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Lately, in a variety of customer engagements for various SAP SuccessFactors modules, I’ve had to bring up the topic of the Job Profile Builder. As a relatively new feature that touches every module, it’s really no wonder! But there’s still a lot of customers who aren’t quite familiar with it. This blog should give you an understanding of what the Job Profile builder is, why you would want to use it, and an overview of what it takes to go about setting it up.

What is the Job Profile Builder?

The Job Profile Builder is an important SuccessFactors Platform feature that enables customers to build and organize a catalog of well-formed jobs. So what exactly is a “job”? If you are familiar with position management in HRIS systems, you’ll know to traditionally think of positions as a seat. One person sites in one seat (I know there’s some exceptions, but let’t not get complicated here). Jobs are an abstraction above positions. So where there might be a Maintenance Tech I position who services a building in San Francisco, there’s also a Maintenance Tech I position in Seattle that does the same thing but is a unique instantiation of a position from the San Francisco position. The job describes the common tasks, required skills, education, & competencies, etc. for these positions. If you’d like an idea of what kinds of information companies associate with a job regardless of the system they use, Mercer has a great article here.

What Benefit Does it Provide?

Quite a few benefits are to be had with a well maintained job catalog. From a business process perspective, it will help you categorize and regulate your positions. For example, standardizing pay bands, required competency levels, government classifications, etc. On the Successfactors side, the Job Profile Builder integrates across all modules and can greatly reduce redundant data entry while helping facilitate the business process benefits. The following integrations are available with the job profile builder:

Employee Central: Direct association with positions in Position Management
Performance Management: Automatic Assignment of Competencies
Succession Management: Successor suggestions based on competency assessments
Compensation: Derive compa-ratio based on link with job grade
Recruiting: Automatic population of job posting description from job profile
Career Development: Competencies pulled into Career Worksheet and Career Paths showing job progression
Workforce Analytics: Planning based on required job Competencies
LMS: Assigning learning content based on job

In the example screenshot below, we can see how the recruiting integration automatically pulls the job description from the job profile for internal and external requisition postings. This can save your recruiters a great amount of time having to re-type job descriptions for each posting.

Example Job Profile Integration with Recruiting

How does Job Profile Builder work?

There are 3 major components and corresponding configuration screens of the Job Profile builder:

Job Profile Templates: define what types of content go on a profile and where and how they are presented. E.g. you might have physical requirements for some types of roles but not for others. It is basically the layout of what the profile will look like. An example is shown below. For more info see the link here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/70097a1a469d47a0ae08809e4a240f98/2005/en-US/0ac7427e15cc467eb9a50178c06b53ed.html

Editing a Job Profile Template

Job Profile Content: Define the options (e.g. drop-downs) that show on the profile. For example what skills or competencies or education types will exist in the system that can be placed on a profile. An example of configuring what degree types will exist for selection in creating a job profile in the system is shown below. There’s also a lot of helpful pre-built content from SAP available for download from the SuccessStore that pops up as you build your content. For more info, see the link here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/70097a1a469d47a0ae08809e4a240f98/2005/en-US/99856fa2c4944001ab5991e92c9454eb.html

Managing Job Profile Content

Job Roles: Roles are what you build the profile around. They represent a specific set of skills, competencies, description, etc. Roles can be associated with job codes which in turn associate to positions. Job roles can also be grouped into similar categories called Job Families. You setup the Job roles within the Job Profile Content screen. See the example below. For more info, see the link here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/70097a1a469d47a0ae08809e4a240f98/2005/en-US/aa2d3d5b1027403bbcffa8b29f70196d.html

Setting up Job Roles

This still doesn’t tell us what the Job profile is….well, when you create a Job Profile you are associating it to a specific Job Role and filling in a specific template with the specific content relevant for that role. So to answer the question of what is a Job Profile?–It is the marriage of these 3 components. You can see in the screenshot below where a specific template is being filled in with the content we have setup in the system to define a particular role.

The Manage Job Profile Screen: Editing the Content on Your Specific Job Profile

How does the Job Profile Integrate with Employee Central Position Management?

You will notice when you start creating a Job Profile, there’s a screen asking you to associate the profile with a Job Role:

Example screenshot showing organization of Job Families to Roles and Positions when creating a Job Profile

When you edit roles, the system will ask you to map Job Codes. Those Job codes sit between the job Role and the Positions. Thus while there’s a 1:1 relationship between the Profile and the Role, there can be many codes associated to a role. Since there’s many codes across many positions, thus there are many positions that can be associated to one job role and profile.

This provides us with many benefits! For example, whenever you create a requisition from a position with an associated Job Profile, the requisition will automatically pull in the Job Profile as well and activate this integration seamlessly!

Furthermore, the Job Profile builder can utilize Employee Central workflows as well! This can be beneficial as you manage you job catalog as a variety of resources all using the profiles across the modules may want to make edits. In the screenshot below we can see when one of these interested parties modifies the Job Profile it will trigger a workflow.

Screenshot of Job Profile Builder Edits Triggering Workflow

Conclusion

Hopefully you now have a good understanding of the Job Profile Builder and are excited to start using it! Setting up a job catalog can be a tremendous undertaking, but hopefully now that you understand how the tool works, it can make the task a little easier. If you have an existing job catalog you’d like to import, there are also import screens available for you. As I mentioned before, there’s also a lot of helpful pre-built content available from the SuccessStore.

For more information about the Job Profile Builder and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!

Do you need help with integrating or setting up the Job Profile Builder? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com

Configuring SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Part I -Provisioning

What is Calibration?

Calibration is a process used to appraise employee performance in a fair and consistent manner. Managers meet in calibration sessions to discuss employee performance and achieve agreement on performance ratings. At the onset of a calibration session, the definition of each performance rating can be agreed upon to enable a common language to use when discussing and evaluating performance. The intent is to help eliminate any potential manager bias when discussing employee performance and finalizing ratings.

SAP SuccessFactors Calibration provides a framework to objectively evaluate employee performance. This tool provides HR and senior managers the means to impartially review and adjust performance ratings across teams, departments and the organization. A calibration session provides a visual presentation of employee data from multiple sources in multiple views. Evaluating ratings in several formats with different filters may help to find areas of bias.

Calibration may be a standalone process or part of a performance review process, a talent review process, or a compensation review process.

Information used within Calibration may be sourced from Performance Management, People Profile, Compensation, or Succession data. Within Performance Management, overall performance, potential, competency, and goal ratings may be calibrated. The Succession related metrics that may be calibrated are Risk of Loss, Impact of Loss and Reason for Leaving. Compensation ratios may be evaluated using the salary, bonus, stock and variable pay components of a compensation template. Overall potential, performance, competency, objective and two custom ratings may be calibrated from the talent profile section of People Profile. Upon completion of a calibration session, ratings are updated in the original source.

We will focus on calibration based on ratings from a performance form template.

Basic Configuration of Calibration

There are several steps to perform before we are ready to run a calibration session:

Enable Calibration in Provisioning
Configure Succession Data Model
Set role-based permission for Calibration access
Configure data source template
Enable calibration related e-mail notifications
Configure Calibration Template
Configure Calibration Settings
Assign users to Executive Review role
Configure Calibration History Portlet in People Profile

In this blog we will cover the steps to configure Calibration in Provisioning. The steps to configure Calibration in your instance will be covered in the next blog, “Configuring SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Part II – Instance Set Up”.

Enable Calibration in Provisioning

First we must enable Calibration in Provisioning. Within Company Settings, search for “Calibration” to find the section called Enable Calibration. Once found, click the checkbox as seen below.

Additional settings under Enable Calibration may be enabled here. If you plan on using Executive Review, which summarizes calibration activity across sessions, enable this feature here. We will need this feature enabled when creating the calibration template.

If you are going to permit managers to create their own calibration session, click the checkbox for “Enable Manager Calibration Session”. We will need this feature when configuring the calibration settings.

The other features may be set in the instance directly via Manage Calibration Settings and will then reflect as enabled in Provisioning. We will be discussing these features in the next blog, so we can leave the rest unchecked here.

There is also a radio button within Enable Calibration used to identify the permission model used. The default permission model is legacy permissions but you should be using Role-Based Permissions (RBP). Make sure “Use role based permission model”is selected.

Save the settings in this section of Company Settings before moving on to the next set of features to enable.

Calibration Reporting Permission

There are no standard reports or dashboards for calibration. Any calibration reporting will need to be done using ad hoc reports. If you wish to make calibration data available for reporting, go to the Analytics and Dashboard Tabs & Misc Reporting section of Company Settings.

“Additional Adhoc Sub domain Schemas Configuration” and “Enable INCLUDE STARTING FROM USER in people pill” will need to have the following enabled:

Calibration
Calibration Org Chart Coverage
Calibration Activity

After saving the settings, back out of Company Settings and we will continue with additional configuration set up.

Configuring Calibration in the Succession Data Model

There are elements in the Succession Data Model that can be used for calibration. We will need to update the data model to ensure these elements are configured. Export the data model in order to make updates.

Open the file using an XML editor. Here we will be updating the following:

Rating elements
Display options
Filter options
Calibration History Portlet

We will look at each of these.

Rating Elements

The ratings that can be calibrated are based on the available ratings configured in your system. While setting up Calibration in your instance, you identify the data source of the ratings. Earlier we had mentioned that ratings may come from performance form templates. You may calibrate ratings from an existing performance form template or you may decide to create a new performance form template in order to utilize additional rating types such as overall competency, overall goal and overall potential.

In either case, the data model must contain the rating elements that you wish to calibrate. Most likely these already are already in the data model but you will need to verify this. The rating elements are:

sysOverallObjective
sysOverallCompetency
sysOverallPerformance
sysOverallPotential
sysOverallCustom01
sysOverallCustom02

A code segment seen below displays an example of the overall performance rating background element.

sysOverallPerformance Background Element

Make sure all of the rating types that you wish to calibrate are included in your data model.

Additional Elements to Calibrate

There are three standard elements that may display in some of the views in a calibration session. If you are using SAP SuccessFactors Succession, these most likely are in used for Talent Flags and Matrix Grid reports.

riskOfLoss
impactOfLoss
reasonForLeaving

A code sample of the flags is shown below:

Display Options

Calibration sessions can display data in many views. In Part II of this series, you will learn how to create these views. There is a display option feature that is particularly useful for the List view tab. Here the data is displayed in a table with a row for each employee being calibrated. If there are several columns for this table, there could be a lot of back and forth scrolling. With the display option feature, some columns may be hidden. There is an icon for display options that enables users to add or remove certain columns from the view. Some are hardcoded and will always show up as display options in a calibration session:

First Name
Last Name
Count
Quickcard (if enabled in the calibration template)

The Quick Card display option may be enabled when configuring the Calibration template which we will discuss in Part II.

When clicking on the display options icon within the calibration session, any of these fields may be deselected and those columns will no longer display on the view.

There are some icons that may be added as a display option fields. Any display option fields defined for Succession in the Matrix Grid Classifier tool in Provisioning or the flags be set in Matrix Grid Report Icon Reconfiguration may also be used as display options in a calibration session. In the list view, any of these icons selected would appear in a new column called “Attributes”. Bin and matrix views the icons appear underneath an employee’s name. Having these icons readily visible for each employee may be useful when comparing employees.

Filter Options are used in a calibration session to narrow the list of the employees that display. If there are a large number of subjects, this is a way to view a smaller group that meet the filter criteria. It may be more manageable to view subsets of employees during the session.

Within a calibration session, the standard fields that are available as filter options are:

Manager
Division
Department
Location
Jobcode

These will always appear as filter fields for a calibration session. If Risk of Loss, Impact of Loss and Reason for Leaving are also in your data model, these fields will also be filter fields. The 15 custom fields that may be defined in the data model may also be added as filter options. To set this up, the custom fields must be part of the default filter in the data model as shown below in the code segment sample.

Adding the custom fields as default filters

These custom fields may also be used in as filters in calibration. Module specific filters are defined within <custom-filters>. Identify the calibration module filters by adding this tag:

<filter-module-id=”calibration”>

Include the custom elements that you wish to use as calibration filters. This should be placed after the default filter as shown below:

There is one additional calibration specific element that may be added to the data model. We will look at this next.

Calibration History Portlet

Calibration data may appear in People Profile when the Calibration History Portlet is configured. This portlet provides a snapshot of calibration session data along with ratings. The background element for the portlet must be added to the data model. A code segment sample is shown below.

<background-element id="calibrationHistoryPortlet" type-id="138">
   <label>Calibration History Portlet</label>
</background-element>

If you also wish to use the portlet in the Employee Scorecard, the portlet must be added under the view-template “employeeScorecard”. A code segment sample is shown below.

Adding Calibration History Portlet to Scorecard

After making the data model updates, save and import the data model.

Congratulations! Calibration is now enabled and you are ready to set up Calibration in your instance. Coming soon will be my blog, Configuring SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Part II – Instance Set Up to learn how.

For more information about Calibration and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!

Do you need help setting up your Calibration implementation? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com