Preliminary remarks:

This is not meant to be a prediction and is probably as close to the real future as our planet is to Asgard or the nearest other planet with evidence of live. This is pure science fiction.

However, it does have a purpose: I do want to challenge those consultants, analysts, vendors and users of HR software, who believe they actually can predict the development of IT over 20 years and are ever so sure that the cloud is here to stay even beyond the usually foreseeable future.

It's also meant to be some fun

This is not saying I would like to or expect to see the cloud go away. This is to get people away from thinking in linear trends only and to get them to expect the unexpected instead. Don't get caught out completely unprepared by those Black Swans.

*** Science Fiction   *** Science Fiction   *** Science Fiction   *** Science Fiction   *** Science Fiction   ***

London, 23/05/2036

SAP's CEO, speaking from the global King's Cross headquarter of SAP's consumer business subsidiary Google, an SAP company, announced the end of SAP's HCM cloud solutions today. Customers will be supported to the migrate to the on-site-distributed model within the next 5 years. In this model, organisations host and control their own software and data.

The cloud had been SAP's focus technology in all of HCM since 2015. After some problems due to exploding cost for customers it eventually became a success, because new technology made data centres cheaper. Initially, margins had taken a beating, for 2 reasons:

• most customers demanded data centres in their own regions. So, data centres were sitting there more or less uselessly during night time, as the original idea of balancing peak times from one region against quiet times in other regions didn't work out.
• Also, after a few close shaves with a terrorist attack in Geneva and a Tsunami in the Thames estuary, the enormous security bill (93% of data centre cost) had threatened the business model.

And now, the very factor that saved it in 2020-2023, a huge increase in processing power, is now spelling out it's demise. The new generation of database and application servers based on HANA-photon replacing HANAv12 is now actually turning the tide and makes - together with other technical advances - the cloud unnecessary due to it's unbelievable processing power.

HANA-photon supports the distributed model of light computing, where the photon replaces the electron. This creates a processing power undreamed of even 10 years ago. It allows for a distributed model where the average corporate system is made up of millions of autonomous entities "living" in light processing units across the whole organisation. They are self-coordinating and self-replicating with each unit of information usually existing in at least a hundred different places - ready to self-repair, if even one of them gets lost or damaged. So, data security is a non-issue.
The other big advantage of the cloud so far (it took some people some time to realise) was data privacy in their well protected data centres - actually the last bastions of the whole concept of data privacy, until it had been made a mere illusion of the past by the arrival of new processing power. Interesting how fast culture has followed technical reality. It's now a few years that I've heard those lame water cooler jokes last time: an unknown colleague would join you, you greet her by her name and want to offer help with her latest project that sticks out from the information your implant provides instantly and congratulate on her pay rise, but instead you try to be funny and say "Ha. You are probably to young to remember, but there where times, when I wouldn't even have known your name, Jess. We used to do these stiff introductions back in the days. Very awkward".

So, yes, data privacy is a concept of the past and doesn't stand in the way of giving organisations their systems back and put them back in the driver's seat. And this is where the enormous computing power of HANA-Photon and a few other clever concepts come into the picture: in the old days, customers changing their own systems  (called on-premise, the historic predecessor of on-site-distributed) made it very difficult for the software vendor to manage upgrades In fact, they didn't manage them. They just gave every customer the same coding and left them fighting with the unavoidable clashes on their own. That's what made the success of the cloud: everybody uses the same code. No changes, but easy upgrades.

Today, in the new model, upgrades are managed proactively. Whatever a customer is changing, the SAP's change management layer is monitoring and automatically decides on the best alignment strategy with the changes made by the product development team in that same release. It will make small amendments or build a so called wrapper. Either on the vendor side or on the customer's system (no risk - each piece of code is held a hundred times in autonomous entities as explained earlier, only 40% are changed and set inactive for now. Then, at every weekly update, it's like a shift change. The 40% take over instantly. Downtime max 5 seconds. And then the other 60% are updated (except for one instance, which is archived for tracking as well as possible fallback). It is amazing, what the factor of 7,000,000 in processing power does. The system is programming itsself for this upgrade alignment. 3bn changes across all customers per year. Only 50 millions of those need any human intervention. Easy for SAP's 200,000 support staff, all based in low income countries like France or Spain - only

few people are left in India to avoid the enormous labour cost in South Asia.

And now SAP's young CEO Frank Akwatagibe from Nigeria is explaining this strategy, which I find overwhelming. Will customers and partners be able to deal with this change?

Yesterday, I talked to retired IT consultant Luke Marson Less than 25 years ago he had been in the spotlight for the impressive way he managed the big transition from the old "on-premise" model to the cloud. I met him in his home in Southern France: an old Brewery he bought in Belgium and brought it back to its former glory here in the a Provence. "Wouldn't you be tempted to get back into the saddle and help customers with another big transition?", I asked. "Oh no, that's for younger people.", he replied. "The weekly upgrade I care about these days is the new recipe I apply in my microbrewery each week. This week it's a classic old Czech Pilsener. Try!" 

It was excellent....

*** end of SciFi   *** end of SciFi   *** end of SciFi   *** end of SciFi   *** end of SciFi   *** end of SciFi   ***

Again: I don't believe / predict this or anything else in particular  to happen that would make the cloud concept obsolete. I would be really surprised, if any of this would happen as described (Except for Luke Marson's Brewery. I wouldn't be surprised about that.)

I just want to get you to remember, how disruptive technology changes could make all predictions obsolete play against linear trends.

Recruitment has been one of the fastest and largest change agents in HR over the last decade. This change is driven by new technologies as well as forced by candidates who demand good recruitment experiences and even more fulfilling careers. As the tail end of millennials enter the workforce, an even more demanding, technologically savvy and obsessed age cohort, Generation Z, begins coming into the working environment. This means there is a second coming of recruitment evolution. Beyond just generations, we have other facets to consider – life stage, developing regions, global distribution, part time and contingent labor, mobility, and more.

All of these considerations lead to the question: are you set up for long-term recruitment success? At SuccessConnect Singapore, taking place September 8th and 9th, I will be talking about some of the forces that are driving change in recruitment, both known and those which are often forgotten and passed over. We will look at generational differences, what impact life stage has, and how environment and devices are shaping recruitment. Please join me in my session “SuccessFactors Recruiting: Overview and Roadmap” on September 8 at 2:05 p.m. to learn about and discuss how we can help you plan for and solve these challenges today and what is coming in the near future to further improve your recruitment. People are every company’s greatest asset, and successful workforce strategies start with recruitment!

To learn more about SuccessConnect Singapore and the value you’ll get from all the sessions and networking opportunities, click here.  Register today!

People Profile  is the new version of Employee Files  which uses latest responsive web design  technique. Principle of responsive web design  is that as the user switches from their laptop to iPad or mobile,  the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size which leads to

smooth navigation and excellent user experience.

Responsive web design technique is the latest trend in web environment and I am happy that SuccessFactors is offering latest and greatest rich user experience to it’s customers.

Below is the new look and feel of People Profile

Advantages of People Profile:

Access to  information in one click :  Before People Profile , employee data was grouped into multiple views (for example, Personal Information, Employment Information, Talent Information , Time Off , Benefits etc. )  so user has to click on each view in employee files to access the specific information.

Sometimes this may be annoying navigate to different views to view different information, in contrast People Profile shows complete information (It completely respects Role Based Permissions) in one page and provides a menu bar on  top with section names. As user scrolls down though the information , corresponding section in the menu bar highlights automatically.

In short user can navigate to any section in one click either using menu bar or using scroll down option.

More Visualization :  There is more concentration on visualization in People Profile than in the past, like displaying the country flags next to country names,  displaying the manager profile picture next to HR-Manager  or Matrix Manager in Job relationships,   showing the location in the map for Time Zone field etc.

Time Data :   Time Off section in People Profile shows snap shot of leave balances and upcoming time off requests.  

                     Time Sheet shows planned and recorded hours for today, tomorrow and for whole week.

I feel  user would like the idea of  showing high level information of both Time Off and Time Sheet information in same place.

Change Profile Picture /Background image : User can change profile picture or background picture using the header option as below.

How to enable People Profile: This is an opt-in feature, so it  must be enabled in provisioning. Below is the feature which should be enabled.

Add/Remove Section: It is now made extremely flexible and easy for Administrator to choose which sections to be displayed and which sub section to be displayed under parent section using drag and drop option.

By enabling People Profile feature, "Configure People Profile" option replaces the “Configure Employee Files” and this new features is quite convenient for Administrators.

Admin can add any number of new sections and rearrange the existing sections quite easily just by drag and drop.

Configure Header Fields : Administrator can configure the fields to be displayed on header section. Now it is possible to choose up to 3 additional custom fields to be displayed addition to the standard fields available in public profile so far.  This feature is extremely useful as majority of the customers would like to see additional information at header level.

Role Based Permissions for Sections/Views:  Like earlier, once views are configured in “Configure People Profile”, they can be permissiond in Employee Views .

Contingent Workforce:

In People Profile “Contingent Worker “caption has been added in header section for contingent employees, which makes it easy to identify  contingent employees.     For contingent workers , People Profile only shows the relevant sections unlike  normal employees.

Summary: I feel People Profile adds more value to customers as it has greater user experience and latest responsive web design technique.  This also reduces the number of clicks to view different sets of information which span across different sections.  Complete employee data including Talent, Personal Information, Employment information , etc. can be viewed in one page.

I hope this blog may help readers in the community to give basic idea about People Profile.

Reference to my previous blogs.

SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Sheet and Time Valuation

SuccessFactors Employee Central and Compensation Integration

SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits

In the classes that I teach I always seem to have students ask about small enhancements to SAP that would make a big difference to them in their day to day use. My recommendation to them is to take a look at the SAP Customer Influence program. However, It seems that a majority of them are not aware of the SAP Customer Influence Program nor the SAP Improvement Finder website to find out about improvements that SAP has released via Improvement Notes. In many cases these improvements are already in their system from Support Packs and they just need to be activated by flipping a switch or by simple configuration! I wanted to write this blog post with the hopes that we can get more awareness of these programs.

Here are the links to the respective websites for each.

SAP Customer Influence: Enterprise Home

Improvement Finder

Here is a list of some of my personal favorites in terms of functionality created by this program as well as the description from the improvement request. I have seperated them by functional area within HCM. I have also included a link to the improvement to provide more information as well as any related blog posts that I have seen for the functionality.

Personnel Administration

• PA30; PA40; PA61: Automatic toggle to display mode - Note/Improvement 2110196
  • You now have the option to specify time periods after which transactions PA30, PA40, & PA61 automatically toggle to display mode and transaction PA40 automatically toggles to transaction PA20 if the user does not perform any activities in these transactions. In this way, you can prevent the system from locking the employee data displayed in these transactions for further changes over a longer period of time.
  • See this great blog post for more information on this functionality
    • New toy: Automatic toggle to display mode PA30, PA40, PA61

• PA20, PA51: Pushbutton for refreshing displayed infotype data - Note/Improvement 2099012
  • The new pushbutton Refresh Data is introduced on the toolbar of the initial screens of transactions Display HR Master Data (PA20) and Display Time Data (PA51). When you choose this pushbutton, the system rereads the infotype data from the database. As a result, the user can display the current data without having to call the transactions again.
  • How many times have you updated something and you are viewing it in PA20 and you have to go all the way back out and go back in to view the updates? Countless number of times for me.

• PA20, PA30: Errors when displaying subtypes for an infotype -Note/Improvement 2135764
  • In the list of data for an infotype, you can now see all data for subtypes for which you hold display authorization. If additional subtypes exist for which you do not hold the required authorization, the system issues the message: At least one record was skipped (authorization).

• Validity Period of HR Objects - Note/Improvement 1883014
  • This is one item I implemented for many clients that was such a small thing, but provided a lot of value. This is especially true for people who have been live with SAP HR for many years and have a lot of old Personnel Areas/Subareas that need to be cleaned up.
    
  • If you activate the Validity Period for Organizational Assignments function, you can specify validity periods for the following objects:
    • Personnel Area,
    • Personnel Subarea.
    • Employee Group,
    • Employee Subgroup.
  • Remark: This improvement is also available for Webdynpro ABAP user interfaces in HR Renewal for Personnel and Organisation (PA-PAO) as of synchronisation package available in November 2014. Please refer to note 2022480.
  • See this great blog post for more information on this functionality
    • Validity Period for SAP HR Enterprise and Employee Structure

Time Management

• Enhanced Work Schedule Rule Finder in PA30 for IT0007 -Note/Improvement 1795844

  • This is one of my favorites and another one that I implemented for many clients that they absolutely loved! In the past, many people wrote custom programs in order to find work schedules, but with this it may no longer be necessary. It is such a small piece of configuration to turn on, yet provides terrific value! One of the complaints that I heard about this functionality was that it was only available in change mode (PA30) and not in display mode in case anyone wanted to search for a WSR without necessarily changing it. Well, SAP heard this complaint and answered it in the form ofNote 2112174which makes it so you can use this functionality in PA20.

    The search feature, available via the button WSR Finder, is now available in the planned working time (IT0007) screen in the block Work Schedule Rule. With this search feature, you can search for work schedule rules based on weekdays and one or more criteria.

  • See this great blog post for more information on this functionality.
    • Work Schedule Finder - OSS Note 1795844

Enterprise Compensation Management

• View Compensation Planning after review period -Note/Improvement 2040271
  • Many of my past clients using ECM within SAP liked this functionality where they managers van review the compensation planning after a review is over.
    
  • The new functionality gives you the possibility to access the planning data of a review after the review end date by making it accessible in Manager Self Service.

I am sure there are other great improvements that I did not touch on or may not even be aware of but are out there waiting to be turned on in many customer systems so take a look at the improvement finder website and see if there are any ones that might be good for you!

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below as I would love to hear about things. Do you have any other small enhancements that you have turned on that provided a lot of value? Are there other small things that you would like to see? Would love to hear different thoughts on this.

Good Evening Everyone,

Hope you all doing really well.

When i started My career in SAP HR, there were ups and Down's, spent lot of sleepless nights for the issues and enhancements which i had worked on in SAP HR.

There were sometime i got struck in SAP HCM and every time when i got Struck i went and searched for the documents or existing threads in SCN related to my issues, Most of the times i have raised threads  and my threads have been answered and helped by Experts ,not even a single thread went in vain. every thread has been acknowledged by experts and they made me who i am in SAP HR, once again thanks a lot to the experts who helped me on learning SAP HR SCN is the place where we can learn and share a lot .

But for the past few months i have been noticing there are some of the threads raised by our colleagues especially who are new to SCN don't  acknowledges whether their thread has been answered,helpful or closed. I could see our some of our experts have been asking them to close the thread by marking the correct answer if the their query is resolved.

I request all the newbies of SCN to please mark the helpful and correct answers and close the thread accordingly once your query has been answered by our experts as our experts have spent lot of  time on their tight and busy schedule on providing guidance on the queries we raise and help us to resolve the same which in turn provides points to them.

if you mark the helpful and correct answers, it would be helpful for other comrades to know which one was correct and helpful so they can apply the same method in their situation as well, if we don't mark correct answers , we may get confused whether it has been answered or not and once again there are chances thread may get raised for the same problem .

Thanks a lot for your understanding.

Please revert me or add if anything is required on this blog.

Thanks & Regards

Sriram Tamil

I did some searching around and found several discussions and blogs that mention one type of SuccessFactors (SF) module or another and the related language packs. But I couldn't find a blog specifically focused on language packs for multiple modules. While it is becoming easier and easier to implement languages, the soup to nuts area of language packs could probably use its own blog. So here we are We'll start off small an build from there.

How can you be sure your customer has purchased language packs?

Check the customer's Schedule A which shows the licenses, languages, and other services from SF. You must be sure languages are purchased before you turn them on in provisioning.

Who implements language packs, SF or Partners?

Partners or SF PS both can implement language packs. It is simply a matter of turning on the appropriate languages in provisioning including the top checkbox for Language Packs. New instances already have that checkbox 'Language Packs', but that wasn't always the case. And it will wreak havoc in your instance if that is not checked. Don't ever uncheck it even if the customer only has English!

The key is to KNOW for sure the customer owns the language pack within their Schedule A or ask them to purchase before you turn on languages in provisioning.

If a customer purchases one language pack, then decides they want to change it, can you do this on your own in provisioning?

You should not just allow a customer to switch a language without a change order to their contract. This would be handled through their SuccessFactors Account Exec and then have them show you the change order. Only at that point would you change the language in provisioning.

Which default language does a customer get with their basic license?

To my knowledge, unless this has changed, customers only get one default language, English. And English cannot be changed out for a different language, even if they will only be using one. For example, if the customer is in Germany and that's the only location for their business, you cannot switch out German for English unless for some reason this is specifically called out in their contract with SF. If anyone knows something different than this process, please add notes here.

If a customer purchases language packs for BizX, does this automatically mean they have language packs for other modules with their own instances, e.g. JAM and LMS?

Although JAM does have its own instance, it is considered to be part of BizX and all customers have it with their licenses. So yes for JAM. But LMS is different. Because LMS is a completely separate instance, language packs are turned on and configured differently and they have their own pricing. Note that pricing does change so customers should check with their SF Account Exec if there are any questions on whether language packs are included or not.

For BizX modules e.g. EC, PM/GM, Recruiting, once the customer purchases BizX language packs, they are usable for all BizX modules. It just gets tricky when the module is on a different type of instance like LMS.

Is all language work accomplished in admin tools now or must some still be done in XML templates?

Language work is becoming more and more ingrained within the admin tools. Performance, profile, route maps, rating scales, and even Recruiting templates can now be edited in the new admin tools and language translations added there. However, unless I haven't see something new about Goal Mgmt, you cannot add goal plan translations in admin tools. Keep watching release notes as this will surely change soon.

How can the basic system language be changed other than what you can do in Text Replacement?

The functionality for this is called 3 Tier Architecture which is accomplished in provisioning. A customer can request any system language change. But of course all it takes is time and money by the partner as you cannot do this in admin tools, except for the selections in Text Replacement. There are lots of resources out there to instruct on the configuration and it is not as scary as it sounds. But like everything else, pay careful attention to the details and do it in test first!

Which is the best tool to use with language work, Excel or something else?

For language work, Excel is BAD! Do not use it at all, never, never! Use the free suite of tools called Open Office and the spreadsheet within that tool. You customer will need to learn this as well for competencies, etc.

In provisioning, why are there sometimes duplicates of the same language but one with SF, e.g. es_ES_SF?

This situation should be very rare now and only on a very old instance. But in case you ever see it, do not begin work until the customers instances have been migrated to the new language packs which is an engineering case that your customer will need to open and follow through. Do not begin work until this is completed.

Typically, do partners actually provide translations or does the customer do that on their own?

Of course customers can purchase anything with enough time and money. But normally, the customer provides their own translations. We provide the 'cookbook', they add the translations, and then it is normally a combination of work between the customer and partner on who adds the translations. It is most important to let them know right up front about this as I have seen customers be disappointed and not understand they provide the translations.

When during the implementation project is the best time to start the translation process and how much time does this add to a project?

Language translations should be discussed on day one at the kickoff including how it works, the cookbook, who does what, etc. But it is best not to start the actual cookbook and then adding translations until AFTER configuration sign off. You can imagine how many versions of the cookbook would exist if you started earlier than config sign off. If the project timeline accommodates waiting until after config signoff to begin translations, you'll need to add on about 8 weeks to go live unless they agree to an English only go live first. That being said, the customer work in admin tools should be taught and tested very early on and if they want to add their translations early and go back and correct them, it is up to them.

or How to end the Labours of Sisyphus

Note: This article is discussing elements of the European Working Time Directive, but nothing in the article shall be considered legal advice. Before making any decisions possible affecting regulations, do get your own legal advice first

I spent some of the more frustrating hours of my life as an HR systems consultant implementing the European Working Time Directive in SAP Time Management in some shape or from. It was frustrating so often not because the system couldn't do it. No, the frustrating element comes from organisations, who want to implement the regulation through a system only. And you simply can't.

Time administrators often experience the same frustration as the clean up hundreds of

warning and error messages every day only to find the same number again the very next morning. So, they could be excused to feel like ancient King Sisyphus, who was tasked by the gods (they didn't have the European Commission yet back in those days) to roll a heavy boulder up a hill only to see it escaping and rolling back rolled back down every time he was about to reach the top.

But let's take one step back and look at the most significant elements of the regulation.

1) Maximum daily working time is 10 hours: the possibly most important rule

Easy: cutting off working time after 10 hours even comes with the out-of-the-box configuration in the time schema TM00 and who doesn't know constant TGMAX in table T511K? It usually also comes with a warning for the time administrator to see.

Hold on a minute. Of course, there are exceptions. On individual cases like emergencies (you don't want your surgeon to leave you lying there cut open, because the operation took longer than planned and he reached his 10 hours for the day, right?). That's usually dealt with using a custom subtype for infotype 2007 and a custom rule. And then there are planned exceptions, e.g., when it does make sense and is safe to compress the monthly working time into fewer days. Then you'll manage these exception using work schedule parameters or groupings. Fine.

So, it"s quite simple: If someone clocks more than 10 hours without special permission, they don't get paid for the extra time. Or is it? Sounds to me like there is an assumption that working time you don't get paid for is actually not making you tired. It counts as regeneration time. Well, if you believe that, could you please come to London and work for us? We promise not to pay you, so it will be very relaxing ;-)

And this is where the whole idea of "implementing the European Working Time Directive" in SAP HR Time Management, Employee Central Timesheet or any other system falls down. The system can only make sure your employees don't get paid for more than 10 hours, but it's got no control over actual working time (unless it's linked to access control). I get the idea that it does discourage employees from working too long, if you tell them, they won't be paid for it and payment is also a strong incentive to obtain approvals for exceptions, so you know about them. But it can't be reduced to a Time&Attendance problem. It's a People Management problem and therefore line managers need to be involved. So, the very least you need to add is that line managers get the right analytics tools to recognise excesses in working time AND someone to make sure they actually act. Whether or not employees are actually paid for the excess time becomes a side issue (though not paying them sets the right incentives and, let's be honest, is convenient for the employer).

Another question you should ask: are we making sure employees not capturing clock times are also compliant? This group of people is often conveniently excluded from the strict regime, as there is no easy proof for them working excess hours. Well, that doesn't make it more legal. Clearly: this is a supervisor's task to monitor.

2) max 48h working time per week over long term average

in a 6 day week, employees can clock 60 hours without going above 10h per day. The regulator believes this is too much (probably right for most people and jobs imo), but acknowledges you might have to work a bit more during peak periods. That's why the weekly limit of 48 hours (actually the limit is 8h per day based on a 6 day work week - and using holidays or sickness to get the average down doesn't count) can be exceeded, but should be compensated for with shorter days during a 6 months period.

There are some customers, who want their time evaluation to throw error messages at their time admins or even cut pay. Most customers, however, don't do anything about this rule or have a report to monitor the numbers.

The last way is by far the best imo, assuming this report is provided to and acted upon by line managers. These warning messages fired at time admins are usually ignored as a time consuming nuisance and cutting pay - well: dto.

3) Taking the right breaks

This is arguably turned into the most complicated bit in the system. The rules are (almost) clear:

- if you work more than 6h on a day you need to take 30min break

- If you work more than 9h it's 45min all together

- you are not meant to take the break in the first or last hour or in pieces smaller than 15 minutes. Plus a few more details

The standard time evaluation schema is set up to deal with the 30 and 45 minutes break. An even easier way is possible through work schedule rule configuration. The schema solution doesn't really care, when the break is placed. In fact, technically, it does often place it at the end of the work day. This is against the rule, but the argument goes that it's only about cutting 30 or 45 minutes off no matter when the employee really took her break. As overtime often goes into time, where night shift is paid, this doesn't always work and you need to mess around a bit with the schema at that point. A discussion is: if someone clocks 6 hours and 1 minute:

- should we deduct just one minute, because than we don't exceed the 6 hours any more.

- or 30 minutes, because that's the break the employee should have taken already by that time, had he planned to stay for more than 6 hours

- or 15 minutes, because the first point applies, but breaks need to be taken in 15 minutes chunks?

This example illustrates how futile the exercise is: If an employee hasn't done a break yet, when reaching 6 hours, but realises she needs a few more minutes, surely she wouldn't have a break first before working another 5 minutes?

Well, he same as above applies: cutting breaks out of paid working time doesn't guarantee a break, but if employees are responsible for taking their breaks and line managers do some monitoring, this may just be fine.

Where you really see a lot of futile effort is, when employees do actually clock out and in for their breaks. The standard rules (to some extend) and custom rules (often quite complex) are designed to consider breaks clocked by the employees and then adding break time as and when required. E.g.: an employee works from 8am to 18am (10 hours), clocks out 13:00 and back in 13:30 for lunch break. The schema now calculates that there are still 15 minutes of break missing. And pretends there was another break, say, 13:30-13:45. Now, tell me if I'm wrong here: I can understand that breaks are not clocked and standard breaks therefore assumed by the system unless told otherwise. However, if employees do clock breaks, then adding to the recorded break time looks suspiciously like cheating to me. And all that at the cost of considerable, unnecessary complexity added to your system. Yes, it's not rocket science, but as it usually multiplies with a lot of other complexities, weeding these rules out would often be a real gain in simplicity (yes, consciously using the buzz word here).

4) and on and on and on

There are quite a few more rules in the regulation concerning, amongst other things:

• a minimum of 11 hours off in each 24h period (often neglected, but an important safety issue)
• a minimum of 4 weeks annual leave
• special rules for employees under 18 years old

You may want to argue about the rules themselves. They do make sense, but as they are pretty indiscriminate often may take it too far and feel a bit patronising. But that"s not, what I want to discuss here.

So, can the system do this for me?

There's one big problem in time management in many organisations and the working time directive is symptomatic for this problem:

The management of what's often called the organisation's most important resource is delegated to a machine, when it should be line managers' job. In many cases, it would be possible to disentangle from several automated rules and use the energy freed up to provide line managers the right information to manage their team members.

And that's where SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Sheet comes in, in case you have wondered about the headline. Yes: if you have extremely complex rules (be it to calculate fake breaks to comply with the working time regulation or to do more sensible things to actually support your core business), that require highly complex rules or programming of custom operations in transaction PE04, then you probably won't be able to use Employee Central Time Sheet. In that case you need to turn to 3rd party products, when you move to the cloud.

However, if you manage to streamline your calculation (and a lot of customers I have seen could do that) to have the time and attendance system doing its own job and line managers doing theirs - supported with the right reporting, then you'll often realise that EC Time Sheet is the better solution for you. SuccessFactors Employee Central is perfectly designed to empower employees and line managers to do their job, so you'll be more likely to engage line managers with an easy to use system.

If you go to the very basics, Employee Central Time Sheet in release 15_08 may already be all you need. In that case: congratulations for a great job in simplifying your HR process! However, it's quite possible you still want to use actual times rather than just durations in hours. Otherwise you won't be able to record breaks at all. In that case you'll have to look further down the roadmap (possibly not very far ) and pick the right time to switch depending on the speed of evolution in EC Timesheet and your exact requirements.

Employee Central Time Sheet Screen from 15_05 release

And while you are waiting, some simplification may already be possible to prepare for the great day. Most notably: fix Sisyphus' boulder on the top of that hill. Stop generating these hundreds of warning and error messages for time administrators, when, at the end of the day, they don't really have the power to do anything about them. Why have them spend an hour per day ticking off and approving messages, if there is no real decision to be made. You'll be better off monitoring it with a report and you can use the freed up time of your time admins to plan for the Employee Central migration - or for the 3rd party integration.

Comply with a single tick box

Well, it's not all gloom and doom. There is actually one very simple way in SAP HR to comply with the working time directive. And that's having employees opting out of it and recoding that decision in infotype 0016:

Opt-out field for UK in infoytpe 0016 in SAP HCM

On the heels of SAP's major shift from on-premise software to SaaS, many SAP customers are assessing their own cloud migration strategy. This process is in full swing in the HCM space, where organizations using the on-premise SAP ERP HCM solution are considering migrating to SuccessFactors. When planning for this transition, companies have a myriad of factors to consider - from which HCM modules to implement in the cloud (Core HR, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics) to how their transition aligns with SAP's own technology roadmap, which itself is evolving.

For many organizations, the "full cloud" deployment model, where the entire HR application runs in the cloud, is not a feasible option from the get-go. Instead, a more gradual approach is preferred, where they implement selected SuccessFactors modules, while continuing to use their current HCM system (with the "Side by side" or "Talent hybrid" models). In most cases, implementing SuccessFactors involves some type of integration, whether with SAP ERP HCM, other parts of ERP, or other third-party systems. The complexity of a migration project further increases with the scale of the HCM installation and the legacy of heavily customized processes and functionality [1].

So while the end result of a SuccessFactors migration may be simplicity, the road to get there is not necessarily simple.

User Adoption and User Experience KPIs

It's in the context of this migration journey that I want to explore the benefits of incorporating user-centric KPIs in the project success criteria and using them at key stages in the process.

In the face of it, the concern with user adoption and experience when migrating to SuccessFactors may seem superfluous. After all, with a cloud-based architecture, standardized processes and  functionality, and best of breed UI, SuccessFactors seems to inherently address many of the challenges customers experience today with their on-premise solution: complex infrastructure, costly and often underutilized customizations, cumbersome workflows, obsolete UI. However, precisely because the actual migration for most SAP customers is bound to be a complex and multi-step process, it is important to ensure a smooth user adoption and quality of experience, by focusing on those who will ultimately make the implementation a success: the actual users.

First, let's define these KPIs by considering some key questions that everyone involved in a SuccessFactors implementation, from technical consultants to executive sponsors, should be able to answer confidently:

(1) How are our users adopting SuccessFactors? (a.k.a. "user adoption")

Here we need to measure application utilization at the user and application function level, e.g.

• Number of users active in the application
• Active time spent by individual users and user groups
• Usage patterns across different SuccessFactors modules and screens
• Frequency of interactions (from application logins to execution of specific processes)

(2) What is the quality of user interactions with SuccessFactors? (a.k.a. "user experience")

Here we need to capture and quantify various issues that impede user productivity, e.g.

• User generated errors, typically a manifestation of process or training issues
• System generated errors, due to data quality or solution configuration issues
• Response time of user initiated transactions, such as page to page navigation

For these KPIs to render an accurate picture of user experience across the organization, the assumption is that we need to collect them across the entire user base [2].

Next, let's look at how these KPIs fit into the typical implementation methodology for a SuccessFactors migration.

Build a Business Case

When building a business case for implementing SuccessFactors, you may be considering, among other factors, various pain points with the current HCM system. If so, it's helpful to assess their impact on user satisfaction and productivity. The underlying issues may range from process inefficiencies to poor system performance. The impact of these issues can be quantified by monitoring the live user interactions with the SAP HCM application (whether delivered through SAP GUI, NW Portal, or NW Business Client) and rolling these metrics up at the organizational level. With this "user impact" assessment, you can provide a more robust justification for the migration.

Define the Scope of Migration

Before the actual implementation kicks off, the project scope and success criteria need to be defined. If your migration to SuccessFactors is a gradual one, user analytics can help you prioritize the HCM functions and user groups that should be targeted for a migration. Understanding which functions have the highest utilization rate and yet have the largest gaps in user experience will help you maximize the impact of migration.

Another important objective of early migration planning is to get an accurate understanding of current HR processes, which will need to be converted during their transition to the cloud. Tracking the actual execution of these processes in the current HCM system gives you a more accurate view of your current business workflows. It enables you to identify specific requirements that may need to be considered when moving to the new processes.

Define Success Criteria

One of the best ways to keep your migration project focused on delivering a quality experience to end-users is to incorporate user-centric KPIs in the success criteria from the onset.

• User adoption KPIs will be used to track activity around the new HCM modules, to ensure they are properly adopted and in compliance with your best practices.
• User experience KPIs will be used to validate that users can execute those functions efficiently and effectively, without major impediments.

At various points throughout the project (during the verification, launch, and post-go-live phases), you can rely on these KPIs to  track progress and validate key implementation decisions regarding process design, configuration, or training and communication strategy.

Test the New Solution

As you're testing and fine-tuning the SuccessFactors modules with your Pilot users, you can leverage the full capture of user-experienced errors as an early problem detection mechanism. Based on this, you can identify additional training requirements or configuration changes. The more complex the deployment architecture, the integration scenarios, or the solution configuration - the more pressing the need for a broad test coverage. By relying on a fully automated tool to capture user workflows and error incidents, you can leverage every user interaction (every click, task, or process execution) across the entire user group engaged in the UAT cycle, to test and validate the solution.

Monitor Adoption after Go-Live

Even with a flawless implementation, seamless process design, and intuitive user interface, there is always the risk of poor user adoption. The first step towards fixing an adoption gap is recognizing that you have one. Tracking activity levels throughout the rollout reduces this risk by giving you visibility into any emerging gaps. Furthermore, by isolating specific application modules, business processes, or user groups where adoption is lagging, you can tailor your training and communication strategy throughout the rollout. You will be able to answer questions such as: Which divisions are not adopting the new Succession and Recruiting processes? Are there users who struggle with the Compensation module?, etc.

Provide a Better Support

The benefits of user analytics extend beyond the initial rollout. On an ongoing basis, they help your SuccessFactors Admin and Support teams assume a proactive role in delivering services to your users. Most importantly, they give you the ability to separate fact from fiction and avoid fire drills. For example, Are the complaints about usability or performance credible? Are certain problems isolated to the users who report them, or do they reflect a systemic issue?Complete visibility into user experience will help your team stay focused on the real issues impacting your users.

References

[1] SuccessFactors - Useful Resources and Documents is great one stop shop for those involved in SuccessFactors implementations.

[2] For more information on user analytics for SAP solutions, see SAP User Experience Management by Knoa.

http://ddg.biz/blog/Configuring-Mobile-Application-for-Success-factors/index.php

As an HR Business Partner (HRBP), I had a chance to experience first-hand the many advantages of the SF Recruiting management module. Here are the key areas where I found it very beneficial to help me become a more strategic and relevant partner to my business leaders:

• I can see at any point how many openings and which openings my business units have. This helps with demand planning, it facilitates my partnership with recruiting to prioritize the key areas to work on and I can what stage each requisition is at (just opened, interview phase, offer phase)
• It is a very interactive tool that helps increase the collaboration and engagement between recruiters, HR Business Partners and hiring managers
• The hiring manager are a lot more involved in the whole process, they can see real time what is happening to their openings and their involvement and excitement leads to better selection and long term results
• The time from interview to offer reduces sometimes dramatically because the approvals are done through the system, recruiters can set who the approvers are based on the requirements of each business unit and it’s very easy to follow who has approved what and follow up on if something gets stuck with an approver
• The dashboard is visually very appealing, it shows how many candidates have applied for the open roles, how long a role has been open, what stage it is at of the recruiting process
• Another interesting highlight is the mobile capabilities of  SuccessFactors. For example: offer approvals, interview central feedback can be done right from your phone.
• Interview Central can be designed to provide targeted competencies for the specific role you are recruiting, enabling your interview team to focus on what is most important for that hire

Beyond all the great advantages I have seen from the tool as an HRBP supporting my business units, I was also interviewing some candidates for roles that I was a stakeholder for (I was not the hiring manager but the hiring manager asked me to be involved in the interviews). The tool allows all the interviewers to put the interview feedback right into the tool for each candidate (the system continuously sent reminders to get this done which was useful), which makes it very easy and effective for hiring managers to see all the comments and feedback from all the interviewers and they can do a better job selecting the right candidate for the role, thus improving business results for their units.

A lot of visibility has been placed on the new People Profile from SuccessFactors in the core SF platform/EC product with the b1508 release, and rightly so.  The new profile based on the latest SAP Fiori/UI5 design principles provides a more modern and efficient user-friendly interface when displaying employee profile details.  Not to be overshadowed by the new People Profile though is the new Quiz Builder functionality that is now part of SuccessFactors Learning.   The Quiz Builder is meant to replace (eventually) the legacy Plateau Question Editor (PQE) used in the LMS to build questions and exams.  For all the LMS admins out there, this could be one of the best updates in the LMS in a while, and there have been some rather nice features introduced as of late in their own right.  The PQE product though is an eye sore and a chore to deal with at times.  While the new People Profile in the SuccessFactors core platform might be the appointed star of the show, the bigger leap in terms of UX design improvement and usability is easily won by the Quiz Builder in the LMS (if this were a competition), at least in my opinion.  In this blog I explore what the new Quiz Builder brings to the LMS and what it means for the future of assessments in SuccessFactors Learning.

Quiz Builder vs. PQE - Why the Fuss?

I attended SuccessConnect 2015 in Singapore just before writing this blog and set in on a session given by the Director of Learning Products and Strategy at SuccessFactors for the APAC region.  In discussing the LMS roadmap and latest features in the system, you could tell that she was easily the most excited about what the new Quiz Builder brings to the LMS.  She also made a very interesting comment, and hopefully I paraphrase her correctly here. She stated that of all the usability testing that SuccessFactors has done on their products, the new Quiz Builder in SuccessFactors Learning has scored the highest among their testing groups. Hopefully that alone peaks your interest to continue reading?

First things first, a quick overview of what the Quiz Builder is in the LMS.  With this new tool, LMS administrators now have an alternative to creating and building quizzes to deliver to learners.  Previously this was done exclusively through the aforementioned PQE, where admins could create Questions and Exams for the same purpose. Let’s get clear on the semantics here now as this appears to be how SuccessFactors is going to refer to these going forward.  ‘Exam’ is the old term for assessments built through the PQE while ‘Quiz’ is the new term for assessments built through this new tool, termed the Quiz Builder.  This initial release of the Quiz Builder will allow for the creation of quizzes for the most commonly used question types (multi-answer, single-answer, and true/false).  Basic settings for the quiz as a whole can be specified as well, including passing percentage and quiz attempts.

If you picked up on a previous line in my opening paragraph here, I noted the new Quiz Builder is meant to replace the PQE at some point.  As with a lot of features SF introduces, a base level of functionality is rolled out initially and then you will see the subsequent releases bringing increased features related to the update in order to enhance the capabilities further (in the case of the LMS, see the recently introduced and progressively improved Programs and Open Content Network). With that in mind, the following points below should be considered.

• The Quiz Builder will serve as the basis for the replacement of the legacy Plateau Question Editor (PQE).
• Both the PQE and the Quiz Builder will be available for use for the foreseeable future. PQE will not be retired any time soon, especially not before the Quiz Builder provides all the features and capabilities that the PQE currently entails (more on the current gaps later).
• Subsequent releases after b1508 are planned to focus on supporting new question types and further usability enhancements.

Creating Quizzes in the New Quiz Builder

The new Quiz Builder can be accessed now under the LMS admin portal under the Content -> Quizzes section.  For those familiar with creating Programs in the LMS, creating Quizzes through the Quiz Builder will look much the same.  The quiz as a whole is summarized in one screen, providing a more complete overview of the quiz and questions utilized than ever was possible in the PQE.  The PQE itself is used to create questions for use in Exams, however, admins had to perform these two tasks separately (create questions vs. creating exams).  The new Quiz Builder brings the two concepts together, as they should be, and not requiring the two to be maintained outside of the central concept of the quiz.  The matrix below provides further details on the possible settings to be made for a quiz while the screen shot gives you an idea of what the UX looks like for managing a quiz.

Quiz Administration Overview

Quiz Settings

Of note from above, the capability to build quizzes and provide locale based text translations for quiz title/description, messages, and question/feedback is a HUGE new feature previously not possible in the PQE.  For clients who need to build quizzes in multiple languages, managing this in one quiz as opposed to numerous questions per language requiring separate exams per language is a much needed improvement from days past.

Building questions into the quiz is also much improved and more efficient in the Quiz Builder when compared to the PQE.  As previously noted within the PQE, questions had to be created independently (in a painful and inefficient editor to boot), then questions had to be pooled into Exam objects as well.  Within the Quiz Builder, questions can be created as part of the overall quiz directly from the Question maintenance screen and ordered accordingly.  With the new SAP Fiori/UI5 UX, the process of creating new questions, adding/adjusting question text and answer choices, and ordering the overall questions in the quiz is so much more smooth than the PQE that the LMS admins of old (back in the Plateau days) may just shed a tear or two during your first go with the application.

Question Management Within a Quiz

The experience only gets better when learners take the actual exams within the LMS as well. While the legacy exams would get the job done, they weren’t the prettiest things to look at or the most modern. The new Fiori UX principles and simplicity of the design does make the new quizzes a pleasure to run.  They are sleek and minimalist, keeping the focus on the assessment where it should be but at the same time not making the user feel like they have jumped into an early 2000’s web application in order to assess their understanding of the subject matter in question.

Examples of Questions Within Quiz (Learner)

Quiz Completion / Results (Learner)

Mind the Gap – Where the New Quiz Builder Lacks vs. PQE

As with most new features from SuccessFactors across the various modules, the new Quiz Builder is not meant to be a full replacement to the existing PQE across all capabilities, at least not yet.  There are some important gaps to consider presently with the b1508 release when comparing like-for-like against the PQE.  The list below is not comprehensive, but points out some of the key gaps to be aware of.  Keep an eye on the next few releases for SuccessFactors Learning as I expect many of these gaps to be eliminated as the tool matures.

• Adaptive learning and use of objectives
  • Questions in the new Quiz Builder are built directly within a quiz itself and cannot be assigned to Objectives within the LMS.
• Reuse of questions across quizzes
  • The PQE is focused on building a question bank so to speak, then assigning questions to objectives within the LMS and leveraging them where desired in Exams. This can allow admins to use questions/objectives across multiple exams.  Currently in the new Quiz Builder, questions are created directly within a quiz and unique to that quiz only and cannot be automatically reused as is in another quiz.
• Randomizing questions within quiz
  • While you can randomize the answer choices within questions in the new Quiz Builder, much like the PQE, you won’t be able to randomize the order of the questions within the quiz itself.
• Question variants and revisions
  • The PQE allows you to create different variants of a particular question that can then be randomized for which variant is displayed to a user when they take an exam. The Quiz Builder does not currently provide the capability to create different variants of a single question for use within a quiz.
  • Question revisions are also not supported currently in the new Quiz Builder. Within PQE you can update questions and save revisions of questions which comes in handy when an exam is active and being used.  Old question revisions can be maintained while new revisions can be used in future exams.  I haven’t played around with the Quiz Builder to the extent yet to see how/if it would allow for question revisions with respect to publishing quizzes in certain locales, so something to watch out for.
• Images in questions
  • PQE allows you to upload images to use for questions.  Currently the Quiz Builder does not support images or other media for use while presenting a question to a user.

The Future of Quizzes in SuccessFactors Learning

While yes there are functionality gaps with the new Quizzes in respect to the legacy PQE tool in SuccessFactors Learning, the UX and reduction in administration efforts for managing quizzes is a huge step forward for LMS admins.  The capabilities of the tool currently are enough to create general quizzes for a range of purposes, however you may need to wait on the next few releases if you wish to create more rich assessment experiences with the new quiz functionality.

My hope is SuccessFactors does not stop with the new Quiz Builder in the LMS once it reaches parity with the legacy PQE.  It would be great to see additional question types being supported which were not previously (matching for instance).  It’s not uncommon to see clients stick to building assessments in 3^rd party tools to create more robust assessment experiences overall.  If SuccessFactors could bridge the gap between the provided LMS Quiz functionality and those best of breed e-learning content authoring tools with respect to assessment functionality, that would be a great advancement for the LMS in the future.  Regardless, it is great to see new and improved LMS capabilities from SuccessFactors Learning in the new Fiori UX design, which I hope is only a precursor of things to come.

One last note, the Quiz Builder is not the only Fiori designed UX tool within the LMS to make a debut with the b1508 release.  SuccessFactors has also introduced a new Instructor View based on this design as well, which looks to be a great new tool for long overdue functionality for instructors that has been missing in the LMS.  A topic for another day perhaps, but not to be overlooked…

What are your thoughts on the new Quizzes in SuccessFactors Learning?

Abstract

HCM Processes & forms scenario have progressed from ISR world of PCR to much better HCM P&F based on Adobe forms to the latest version HCM Processes & Form based on FPM + Adobe both.

These web based requests are routed to the responsible person for approval and processing using sap business workflows. In an ideal scenario, every web-based request (Transfer, Promotion, Org reassignment, separation etc.) has a separate workflow for each process following its approval hierarchy and processing.

The very purpose of this blog is to not tell about HCM P&F (there is lot of information already on this by our SCN experts/mentors), but to introduce you to our design of “Dynamic” workflow. We have used only one single “dynamic” workflow for all types of HCM P&F requests. I call it “Dynamic” as it changes itself as per the number of approval levels. This design greatly reduces development and testing effort close to 70% compared to the original way of doing workflow development for web-based request. For example: 20 or more different Manager Self Service based web-based request (Processes & Form) can be implemented with 1 dynamic workflow design. So It can be imagined how much cost and effort would be saved in implementing HCM P&F scenarios for a client which otherwise involves huge cost and effort.

I am sure some of you may already be using this approach but since I didn’t find any blog on this so thought of circulating this to maximum people so that this can help their projects/customers as well.

Below are some key features and how they have changed:

PCR/ HCM P&F (Adobe) / HCM P&F (FPM)

SAP Dynamic Workflow

Let’s talk about the feature that we always kept constant.

In every organization, there are many business processes like transfer, promotion, organization reassignment, separation, etc. involving the employees and their managers. As all the process can have different number of approvers and the approval hierarchy with different notifications to be sent with different body and content, a separate business workflow is required which can handle all these above. In order to save the development and testing effort of all these separate workflows, a single dynamic workflow can be created which can handle all the above things.

Once a manager/employee/HR Admin requests for one of the business processes, the approval workflow gets triggered. We are able to known the type of process by the name of the form scenario coming from the event data container. Using the name of this scenario, we can fetch the number of approvers & approver’s rules from one of the custom tables based on the process type. To determine the number of approvers of a particular process, it needs to be maintained in one of the custom tables which will hold data for different types of processes.

The dynamic workflow will now have loop inside which will be executed the same number of times as the total approvers or until the process is rejected by any of the approvers. Inside the loop, we will have task to find out the current rule as per the loop index. This rule along with other required information can now be sent to the standard task which sends the work item for approval to the dynamic manager. Once it is approved, the loop continues and the rule for next level of approver is fetched and the process goes on until the request is rejected or all approvers have approved the request.

Now that all the approvers have approved the request of business process, it goes to the final HR Admin. Once it is approved by it, the notification of completion can be sent. This notification will have the text and subject line based on the type of process. A separate custom table is used to store the subject, the standard text and the number and name of recipients that can be used for a process. Different standard texts will be created for every process and these will have markers for dynamic text. Based on the data fetched from the form, these dynamic texts in the standard text can be replaced with the exact value.

In this way, one single workflow can handle different approvers with different levels of approvals and different notifications having different text for a business process.

Benefits of Dynamic Workflow

1. Can be used for any number of business processes like Transfer, Promotion, Separation, etc.
2. Saves around 70% of the development and testing effort of workflow consultant and of the project as a whole as only one workflow needs to be created.
3. Can handle different number of approvals for each type of business process Example: 5 approvers for Transfer, 3 for Promotion, etc.
4. The logic to find the approver at different approval level for a particular process can be different based on the type of process.
5. The approval or rejection notification can be sent to different recipients based on the type of process.
6. The subject, body and the content of the notification can vary depending upon the type of process.
7. One of the biggest advantages of dynamic workflow is that the number of approvers or the recipients or the logic to get the approver, etc. can be changed by just changing the data entries in few custom tables. This leads to easy maintenance.
8. Any comments provided by approver on approval/rejection are also captured through workflow and can be passed to email notifications.

Sample Design

Below is a flowchart depicting the design, very simple as “Simple is Beautiful”.

Sample Table Structures used to fetch approvers and subject/content of email as below:

Conclusion

The design of workflow can be changed as per your business needs but the idea is to use just one workflow. Hope this helps your customers and provides effective resource management within your project.

Looking forward to your experiences/inputs around the same.

Happy Learning !!

You are already used to run Automated Note Search Tool to find missing notes on your system, but are you facing some problems using this tool to launch the processes created on P&F?

Don´t worry, we’ll clarify these doubts here.

As you might have checked, when launching wd appl. conf. ASR_PROCESS_EXECUTE_OVP_CFG from ANST, you get error message "Process  does not exist" (Message no. HRASR00_UI002):

(Just mention that if you don´t have wd. application configuration option on ANST, you should apply note ‘1976578 - ANST: Enabling the tool for tracing WD Application Configurations’.)

This error is due to the missing parameters, required to execute webdynpro application configuration ASR_PROCESS_EXECUTE_OVP_CFG.

You could follow next steps to use ANST recreating an issue on a process:

1. Run Automated Note Search Tool (tx. ANST or ANST_SEARCH_TOOL)
2. Select WD application configuration option and enter ASR_PROCESS_EXECUTE_OVP_CFG:
   
3. Click on Start recording button:
   
4. Add the missing parameters to the url opened on the browser.

• To start a PA process, you will need parameters PROCESS, APPLICATION_TYPE, INITIATOR_ROLE and PERNR
• To start a PD process, required parameters are PROCESS, APPLICATION_TYPE, INITIATOR_ROLE, OBJECT_TYPE and OBJECT_ID
• To continue running a process already started, you will need to include parameter WI_ID, with the workitem id ready to be executed
  
  On this example, we are starting a PA process:

5. Recreate the issue on the form (adobe, FPM or roadmap form):
   
6. Go back to ANST and stop the trace
7. Select relevant application components on the tree and click on Note Search button. Please note that taking into account the nature of the issue analyzed, you might need to select other relevant component, like PA-PA-XX (if issue is related to the update of an infotype), BC-WD-ABA (if issue is related to the WD), PA-PAO (if issue is related to roadmap forms) and so on:
   
8. You will get the list of missing notes on the system:

And as ANST fanatics already know, KBA 1818192 contains all the important information to use this great tool.

While I admit I am a bit biased as a Total Rewards (TR) Director at SAP, I don’t think there is a more important role or a function more critical to the success of an organization than what takes place within your Total Rewards department, regardless of how your organization might define Total Rewards.

Your CEO, Board of Directors, and Executive Leadership team undoubtedly work tirelessly to chart your organization’s business strategy and overall direction. However, they will not be able to move forward and execute if they are not also engaged and supportive of a TR strategy that aligns with high-level business goals. The reason is fairly straightforward: in today’s marketplace where consumers and an educated and talented workforce are in high demand and have significant bargaining power, employers can only hope to maintain a competitive edge by offering a unique and compelling employment value proposition.

Some organizations in the software industry seem to have adopted the compensation philosophy of paying whatever it takes to get people into their roles to grow at any cost (and in some instances growing unsustainably and unprofitably). In contrast, at SAP we are willing to pay a premium for top talent targeting above the middle of the market with our salary structure, which is reflected in numerous external salary surveys, but we are unwilling to overpay for talent. That necessarily means that we don’t land every top candidate, and that we sometimes watch as talent that we’ve invested significant training and development in walks out the door.

But here’s what we’ve come to learn as an organization: in the interconnected world of today where everything is shared and open, employees know what they are worth, and they know when they are poised to earn more than they should reasonably expect based upon the market for their talents and experience. So how do employers compete for talent in an age where they must inevitably look beyond compensation to avoid being locked in a profit-less arms race for top talent? 

I’d like to offer 6 tips that will help your organization look beyond compensation to more fully embrace your other areas of Total Rewards in a UNIQUE and authentic way that will hopefully resonate with your workforce.

1) Understand Your Business Strategy

Ask yourself: how is your organization – or if you’re part of very large global organization, how is your division – competing in the marketplace? Research done by global consulting firm Towers Watson (HR Matters January 2014) suggests that getting the right Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a critical linkage between business execution and business strategy. But before you can create that linkage, you need to first begin with understanding how your organization is going to compete and win.

Your business strategy needs to be so clear and obvious that just about anyone in your organization or division can articulate it, if asked. If your employees can’t explain how your organization is competing, and hopefully winning in the markets where you compete, you can’t possibly have a talent and TR strategy that aligns with it.

Another way of asking a very different but related question is whether your engaged employees value and appreciate your TR portfolio. A 2012 Total Rewards Survey by consulting firm Aon Hewitt found that 69% of top performing companies made Total Rewards an area of strategic focus for their company while just 42% of non-top performing companies said they made it a focus.

Just how might a TR strategy differ based upon your business strategy? You might choose to offer a different pay mix, promote more flexible working arrangement, offer more liberal time off, or emphasize a growing number of targeted benefits that will appeal to a particular segment of your workforce. Just what your own TR portfolio might look like is going depend upon what your business strategy is.

2) Network Ceaselessly

At SAP, we view our culture as a very large and diverse interconnected ecosystem. In order for our TR strategy to be effective it’s important that TR is connected to leaders throughout the organization and that the TR strategy is meaningful to them. What this means in practice is that while we focus on getting the right benefits and policies in place, and having the right internal and external partnerships in place to help us administer them, we spend as much time if not more time communicating the TR value proposition to managers and employees alike.

And let me be completely honest here, sometimes it can be really exhausting because not every employee is going to like every aspect of your TR portfolio and having that constant dialogue with your employees takes up a lot of time and energy. But if you aren’t networking internally and externally, you are liable to miss out on some really critical opportunities to learn and adopt to what’s going on around you.

Let me share a very recent example to illustrate my point here. This past Sunday afternoon I received an email from Dan Healy, a Senior HR Business Partner at SAP, about a new milk shipment benefit for working moms that elect to breast feed but also travel extensively for work. He received the email that morning from Dean Germeyer, our North America Head of Services Sales, who had just read about it in a Fortune article. By Monday I had already engaged some of my external TR contacts, and within 48 hours they provided me more detailed information on the benefit, which meant that by the end of the week I was already discussing the topic in a North America HR Leadership meeting. I can’t say for certain what we’ll ultimately end up doing in this particular instance, but I can say that things were able to move this quickly because of the strong and open business network at SAP and the role that TR and HR plays in it.

3) Invest in Total Rewards Programs First

Investing in your Total Rewards portfolio is extremely critical to your long-term success. If your organization doesn’t view your Human Capital as an asset that it needs to continually invest in, then you really need to start. Far too many organizations allocate just 2-3% to their salary budgets, allow their Finance team to determine how much of the benefits budget to cut or cost-shift to employees, and then call it a day. Then leadership often wonders why they can’t keep their top talent or find it so difficult to attract talent to their organization. The problem is that this approach was never really effective because putting a hammer to nail isn’t a solution when you’re left with crumbling drywall afterwards – in other words, employees have always been keenly aware of changes that management has made that left them worse off in some way, but somehow spun to seem like a positive. This bad approach to managing TR has always created a cynical and distrustful workforce.

Now in today’s hyper-competitive fight for talent, it’s even more apparent that this approach doesn’t work because skilled workers have more options than ever before. So what should a company’s approach be? A firm should begin with their investments in Total Rewards that are necessary to win and execute their business strategy. It needs to inform managers and employees of these investments, and then begin figuring out how to manage the far less important budget items to tie out to whatever bottom line the organization is trying to achieve.

4) Question Why You are Doing What You’re Doing

One of the biggest pitfalls that happens in the TR space within an organization is the tendency to continue to do what you’ve always been doing by offering the same benefits year after year. In some instances that may make sense because you view certain aspects of your TR portfolio as critical to your employee engagement. But it’s a good exercise to question your portfolio on a periodic basis. At SAP, we provide all our US based employees with very rich medical and prescription benefits, and we’ve always done so. But that didn’t stop us from introducing consumer directed health plans a few years ago when they were proven to be an effective way to make employees aware of the high cost of medical services in the US.

So while we introduced these plans just as most large employers have already done by now, we did it in a way that introduced consumer behavior to our employees while still offering a very rich benefit (low deductibles with low out of pocket maximums and generous seed money). My point is this: if we weren’t questioning why we were doing what we were doing at that time, we might never have made the improvements we made, which over time undoubtedly lowered our overall costs and enabled us to invest in other valuable benefits like telemedicine, healthcare advocacy, and our COPE program, a one of a kind gene mapping program that helps employees fight cancer.

5) Understand Your Markets for Talent and Differentiate

Michael Porter, one of the great minds in business strategy, emphasized differentiated products and services as a key to business success. Similarly, differentiating your TR portfolio to attract the talent that your organization needs to achieve its business objectives is just as crucial to success. What are some ideas beyond competitive compensation and core benefits offerings? Well, if you oversee a predominantly male, rural workforce at a manufacturing plant that is passionate about the outdoors, you might want to get creative with working hours during hunting and fishing season to encourage employees to enjoy what they are passionate about.

Or let’s suppose that your organization has just expanded its research facility and you’re aggressively recruiting veterans with advanced technical training into your workforce. Veterans are accustomed to traveling and working anywhere in the world, so why should they come work for your organization? Does your organization even have Veterans Day off, or do anything unique if you’re like the 60% or more of organizations that are open for business that day? The chances are probably not. What would it mean to the veteran talent you’re recruiting if you added an additional day off, or if you had your HR staff organize some phenomenal and well-funded event in the office, and then maybe even let your veterans out early that day?

Here’s my point with these two illustrations: your TR portfolio beyond compensation and traditional benefits doesn’t need to dramatically add costs to your bottom line, but it should resonate with your organization’s talent pool and it should differentiate you from your competitors. And in doing so, it should enforce the cultural DNA of your organization that leads to its success.

6) Managers with Flexible Frameworks

There’s a challenge for organizations that span an entire large country like the US—and larger companies with a global footprint like SAP—to attempt to manage an entire portfolio of benefits from a central location, or otherwise install a rigid framework that all regions must follow. Having a framework for your TR portfolio is fine, but it needs to be flexible and adaptable enough so that regional management is empowered to address the unique needs of employees in a given region. If it’s not, your TR portfolio is not going to resonate with your employees. Just as consumer brands need to be customized to local markets, so must your TR portfolio. Otherwise you’ll likely miss the mark with your target audience: current and prospective employees. Your company can’t afford it.

A Few Last Words

The challenge facing every organization today is how to best attract and retain a talented workforce to deliver exceptional value to customers. It’s no longer the case where employees just want competitive compensation, so leaders have to look more holistically at the total rewards framework. Employees want unique and differentiated benefits, the opportunity to grow and develop their careers, rewards and recognition for their hard work, and adequate work-life balance. They also want to work for companies that care about the world around them and about the employees themselves. These areas of focus are at the heart of what TR professionals spend their time and energy on, and they’ve become enormous differentiators in the marketplace today. The firms that best align them in unique and authentic ways will not only attract the best and brightest minds in the marketplace, but they’ll come to dominate their industries over time. The only question is whether your firm will be one of them.

To learn more about how total rewards can give you a competitive edge and enable success at your company, check out the latest assets from SAP SuccessFactors on the newly launched Total Compensation Management Digital Hub. From leading analyst reports and white papers to customer success stories and on-demand webinars, you’ll find plenty of information to help you navigate the complex world of compensation.  

I had the privilege of presenting the new Ideas & Innovation Award at SuccessConnect this year.  The award recognizes a customer that has contributed insightful product-enhancement ideas in our virtual Customer Community.  The Community is the place where ideas are shared and discussed with customers and product managers, providing critical feedback for advancing our products to new levels of innovation and business efficiencies.

Our award winner, Mike McKinney, Sr. Manager, Enterprise Learning Services at Marriott International, is an invaluable member of our Community, having written over 700 general posts and 200 product-enhancement ideas.  Mike’s enhancement ideas for the Learning home page alone, led to six new improvements to the home page tile configuration and user experience. He’s also contributed great ideas to JAM, such as the ability to upload multiple documents at once or customize email headers and footers.    Product management is not the only audience that keeps up with Mike. He is also a valuable resource for his peers in the Community, ranking in the top three authors, with over 1,300 kudos.

I asked Mike a few questions about the Customer Community and the Innovation & Ideas Award.  Here is what he has to say…

What has been the most significant benefit you've gained from the Customer Community?

The most significant benefit of the Customer Community is having a place to share our ideas for product enhancements and new features with the SuccessFactors team directly, and having a collaborative platform to connect with other companies and the SuccessFactors product management team.

Is there anything you'd like to see in the Customer Community that is not there (yet)?

I would love to see an app for customers to access the community more easily from their mobile devices and get notifications on replies to their posts or when there is conversation happening around an area of interest for them.

What advice would you give a new Customer Community member?

I’d say when posting new ideas or discussions, do a quick search to see if your topic is already out there. Much of the time you’ll find that the answer is already on the Community.

What do you think of winning the Ideas & Innovation award?

It's an honor to be recognized for my contributions to the Community.  Thank you for such a great resource!

JOIN THE CUSTOMER COMMUNITY

If you are a SuccessFactors customer please join the conversation in the Customer Community.  Not only will you find a place to share your product-enhancement ideas, you’ll also discover a hub for training, implementation resources, documentation, and events, and it is the gateway to our user groups. Members stay informed on new features, product updates, and news on HR trends and predictions, thought leadership and best practices. We’ve found that customers who engage in the Community have increased success and longevity with SuccessFactors. When customers have a forum to share their ideas, find what they need, have their issues resolved, and get their questions answered, they are happy and eager to help others. It’s a win-win for everyone.

https://connect.successfactors.com

SuccessFactors Q3 2015 Release

By Nicole Saunders, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SAP-SuccessFactors

If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas or stepped foot in a Casino, you’ve undoubtedly felt the rush of emotion of people gambling. As you look around, you see people gloating over their winnings, while others have not been so lucky.  Although gambling can be a fun sport and provide hours of entertainment, the risks are high and more often then not, the rewards do not outweigh the risks.

When it comes to securing the future of your company, are you willing to gamble? 

Getting succession right has huge benefits to a company, including reducing organizational risk by ensuring talent continuity in key roles, increasing employee engagement and retention, and cost and time savings by having a ready now supply of talent with the skills needed to fill internal positions quickly with qualified candidates, just to name a few. On the flip side, the risks of not getting succession right can greatly hurt a company, resulting in poor financial performance, loss of intellectual property as high performers and high potentials leave, disruptions to business operations due to vacancies in business critical positions, and lack of agility to respond to environmental factors.

Win every time with SAP SuccessFactors.

With four product releases a year, SAP SuccessFactors is continually delivering new features across the HCM Suite that will help you innovate and compete and the Q3 15 release is no exception!  Following our commitment to simplify the SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development solution, we’re proud to unveil a redesigned succession org chart designed to make succession planning faster and easier.

The new org chart includes a ‘smart’ layout that automatically adjusts to fit your screen, maximizing the amount of information you see, while also displaying pictures of successors on each org chart node.

Image 1: Succession Org Chart

With Suggested Successors, you can now identify successors that are a “good fit” without having to conduct a company-wide talent search. This new feature automatically, and intelligently matches employee competencies with job role competencies to recommend employees who may be natural successors for a specific role in an organization.

Image 2: Suggested Successors

Direct access to talent quick cards enables you to gain comprehensive insight into employees and conduct side-by-side comparisons to find the best successors quickly.

Image 3: Side-by-side comparison with talent cards

Perform key succession tasks with ease – such as add, edit and remove successors – these actions are now prominently displayed on the org chart and are easily accessible. 

Image 4: Add, edit and remove successors

Additional functionality:

- Save time from searching and navigating the successor org chart for key positions with the ability to see recently viewed and frequently viewed users in the search box

- Expanded options and increased flexibility to highlight multiple types of critical positions as defined by the company, such as business critical, skills critical, regulatory, etc.

- Address skills and competency gaps immediately by adding development goals directly from the succession org chart 

To learn more about all the great features of the Succession Org Chart and to access more detailed information about the SuccessFactors Q3 15’ release, please visit theSuccessFactors Customer Community. (Login required)

Hi ,

Can anybody suggest how we can delimit IT 2006 (Absence quota) in termination action.

When IT 2006 is invoked as part of the info group while performing termination action, the existing quota number changes to 0 instead of delimiting.

I have used the operation LIS9 in table V_T588D but this is delimiting only the date and not the quota number.

Can any one suggest an alternate as how to solve this issue.

Appreciate an early response.

Thank you.

Subashini.

     This is another one of those "I have been putting this off for a long time" kind of blogs. It is a pretty basic concept of HCM P&F, but it does tend to trip up those that are new to it. Even those experienced with HCM P&F might at times "scratch their head" wondering why it is not working as expected at times. I thought someone else might have discussed this by now, but to my knowledge, no one has yet blogged about the "how's" and "why's" of "help" values in HCM P&F.....so I guess, much like cleaning up my office, it is just time for me to get it out of the way. haha

     So first off, what the heck are we even talking about?!?!?! This is about the "help" values we present to the user on our forms to make their life (and data entry) easier. This is most often visualized on our forms as a drop-down list control as follows:

For the longest time, this was our only option. However, this has been extended a bit to allows us to use an input box control that will "pop up" a window in which we can run more complex "help" searches (such as showing more than just one values or even using a standard or custom ABAP Webdynpro application...which I have covered in previous blogs as well).

How "help" is configured?

    I guess the first place to start is "where" we tell our form "for THIS field, we want help values to come from WHERE". This can be done in one of two ways.

(1) We can set this in our form scenario's "form fields" configuration as "input help".

     We set whether the "help" values will come from manually entered entries (ie. you config a list of value/text pairs), a standard service (like SAP_PA), from a custom generic service (one we write which I will discuss later) or from a Web Dynpro application (standard or custom).

(2) We can set it in our FPM form layout configuration in FLUID as a "search help". This can be a standard or custom ("Z") search help.

Where "help" is triggered?

     I have covered help values from Webdynpro applications in previous blogs, so I will not rehash that here. If you help comes from search helps, that is outside what we will cover here (search helps have been around for ages, so plenty of information already out there...no need for me to add to the "noise"....for once. haha). However if your help values come from a "generic service" (standard or custom), the way in which it is done (ie. "how the magic happens") is pretty straightforward. For our custom services, you can actually populate your "help" values from pretty much any of the "runtime" methods of your generic service (Initialize, do_operations and get_help_values). However, if you read the documentation from the IMG for the IF_HRASR00GEN_SERVICE (basic generic service), you will see that it notes:

"We recommend that you always us the GET_HELP_VALUES method to provide input help. Note that errors occur if you provide input help with the methods DO_OPERTATIONS or INITIALIZE as well as with the GET_HELP_VALUES method."

So what does that mean? (1) choose ONE place to populate your help values from....problems do occur if you "mix and match" them (2) they say "always" use the GET_HELP_VALUES method to do this, but I disagree and will tell you why by way of "pros vs. cons" of each.

DO_OPERATIONS

PROS:

     As you see, we have full control over the SERVICE_DATASETS (ie. the values of our form fields). This means that we can "adjust" our form field value related to our help values. This is useful if we want to set some default dynamically for the form field based on the help values, and the much more common scenario of "clearing" the form field if it's value is not in our help values. For example, suppose we have the following option for something like:

form field value          help values

chicken                         beef

                                    chicken

                                    fish

                                    pork

...and then somewhere on the form, something changes so that the help values now change....

form field value          help values

chicken                         beans

                                    carrots

                                    eggplant

                                    peas

So as you can see, "chicken" is no longer a valid value (and will throw an error if we tried to use it). However, because we are doing this in "do operations", we can now check the form field value against our help value list and either (1) clear the form field value since it does not exist in the help list or (2) add it to our help list as a valid value. This might sound like a very small difference but it is THE determining factor for me always when deciding whether to use either method. In some cases, you might even handle it in a "hybrid" way such as set/clear your form field in your "do operations" but then let the "get help values" actually build the list. However, this often will require a duplication of code, so I avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

CONS:

     Because we are now trying to control our help values via "do operations", the downside of this approach is that we must have an "operation" defined for our help value population (which means we must do all the extra work of defining an operation, defining field for the operation, blah blah blah).

     Secondly, it only gets triggered/called when the "check" event issued by the framework. This is important to note as the "order" of your backend services will very much dictate how this occurs.

GET_HELP_VALUES

Not to be a spoiler, but you should be able to guess that these are almost directly opposite of "do operations" above.

PROS:

     Since our help values are always "built" in this method, we do not have to define and build any specific "operations" for them. It is typical that in this method, we simply loop through all fields set/configured for us to build the help list, and we handle each one. If you are sticking to good OO programming habits, this still means that we should be doing "pass through"/handoff of the key method parameter values and calling our own methods for each help list (ie. modularized code). I mentioned this only because I have seen others attempt to place ALL of their code directly in this method to build their help values, and it becomes a mess.

     Secondly, this method always gets called by the framework both after the "initialize" event and the "check" event. This means that we know exactly when/where it will happen.

CONS:

     Notice one glaring thing with this method's signature? SERVICE_FIELD_VALUES (our "service dataset") is an "import only" parameter. This means that we can read our form field values but we cannot change them. Why is this important? Please refer to the "pros" for "do operations" above. This means that we can not dynamically set/clear our form field values based on the values of our help list. This may not be an issue if you have a rather stagnant help list (ie. it does not dynamically change based on other form field value selections)

How it works behind the scenes?

     Now, let us talk about how our form fields gets the help values assigned to it (ie. the "binding"). Because we configured our field to have input help, it will be added to the HELP_DATASETS structure. We should be able to see all of our fields configured to have "help" in this dataset, but here, we are looking at one particular entry. As it first "goes into" our "get help values" method, we can see it initialized as:

After being "set", we can see the main fields have been populated. These are FIELD_CATALOG, KEYCOLUMNNAME, VALUECOLUMNNAME and DATA.

The Field Catalog, as the name suggests, is our way of being able to define dynamically what the "fields" of our help list are. The FIELDNAME column defines the data "type" of our "data" values. The first entry/row is our "value" field (ie. when the user makes a selection from the help list, this is the actual value that is stored), so here, we are defining what the data type/element of that "value" will be. Our second entry/row is our "text" field (ie. this is the one that is displayed in the help list to the user). Therefore since it is just our "display" field, I will typically set it to some long string data element. The column HEADERTITLE can really be anything you like, but I just name them the same to keep it consistent.

One very important thing to note here is that the whatever is used as our "key column" FIELDNAME value must be the same data element as the one assigned to the form field that our help is attached too.For example, if our form field "Employee Number" has data type "PERNR", but here in our help list field catalog, we assign row 1 FIELDNAME as "CHAR8", we will get an error/no help list created. We should have the row 1 FIELDNAME assigned as "PERNR" to match our form field's data type. This has cause MANY people more than a few headaches before! hahaha

As our help lists are simply "key/value" pairs, you can guess what KEYCOLUMNNAME and VALUECOLUMNNAME are used for. These names tell us WHERE/WHAT are "key/value" pairs are based on our FIELD_CATALOG definition. As you might guess, these must match exactly the values used in our "field catalog". So for example, we might have a field catalog defined with many fields...

FIELD_CATALOG

row   fieldname   headertitle

1      pernr          employee number

2      ename        employee name

3      plans          employee position

4      descr         employee name+position

But from this, we might only define our "key/value" pair as .....

KEYCOLUMNNAME         = pernr   (matches row 1 of field catalog)

VALUECOLUMNNAME     = descr   (matches row 4 of field catalog)

So then our "help list" would display "descr" in the dropdown and assign key "pernr" when the user makes a selection. The cool thing here though is that if we use this in an "input control", the pop-up window would actually show the whole "field catalog" (ie. it shows much more information that what a "drop down" list constrains us to).

Finally, we have our Data structure. Now hold on to your seat because this just might blow your mind! (haha) THIS is our actual help values/data!!!! Crazy eh?!?!?! haha As you might notice, it's column layout is exactly what we defined in our "field catalog" (and we actually have a 3rd column for "SACHN" that we did not define in the field catalog because we want to ignore it as we know this is for a drop down and only needs 2 columns).

So we collect our data....then we build our field catalog to tell the framework how our data is laid out (ie. we tell it what data type each column of our Data is)...and finally, we tell it from the field catalog, which columns are our "key" and "value" values. See how it all ties together now?

Typical code?

     If you spend enough time with HCM P&F, you will notice how every "get help" chunk of code all starts to look the same. Whether standard or checking out someone's previous "custom" work, you will notice they follow a very similar pattern. Read/get data.....define field catalog....set data to "help" field....set key/value column names....wash....rinse....repeat. Here as a "standard" service with a help value being defined....

First off, we normally will the code "collect" our data (or "Data" from above). We can see this below around line 18 and onward.

Next, you will often see a "loop" through the HELP_DATASETS "looking" for our particular "help" form field. I do not like this way as we already know what field we want, so I prefer a "read" on that dataset looking for specific field...but anyways....so we find our "help dataset" field, and then you will normally define/attach the "field catalog" to it. You can see this in lines 35 through 41. Lines 43 through 51 show an example (as mentioned above) where the actual form field value is being set/cleared directly...which tells us this is called from "do operations" because "get help values" does not allows us to change the "service field values" values. From line 54 onward, you can see how it is assigning the "data" to the "help dataset" field.

Lastly, you can see how it defines/sets what the "key" and "value" columns will be based on the "field catalog". This could be done right after defining the field catalog, but you will often see it done last as well.

How to make it easier?

     Having done my share of HCM P&F projects and written my fair share of generic services, I thought there must be an easier way to do this. Now, I am not saying this is the "best" way....it is just my way of handling populating help values (most often for simple drop down lists).

     As always, it starts in our "standard" HCM P&F method. In this case, this is the "get help values" method. I start by simply looping through all of my "help" fields and setting them to a field symbol to handle directly using a "case" statement.

For each of my "help fields", a case will "catch" them to handle (nothing new or groundbreaking here)...

To keep my code easy to manage and follow good OO habits, I keep the actually "handling" of the "help" field assignment in it's own method. I simply "pass through" the values from the "standard" method that I need. Again, nothing out of the ordinary here. However, within each of my "help" methods is where I kind of "do my own thing"...

The only "work" my specific help methods do is the data gathering/reading (and even then,  if used in several process, I create another class/method for that). Lines 4 and 5 are important as they reference what my actual help data structure will look like. This might be a standard type or possibly a public type I have defined here or elsewhere....but we will be using it again later when setting our "data" to our help list field.

Remember when I said line 4 and 5 would come up again later? Well, line 27 is where this happens. We have to set what our "data" structure of our help dataset field is going to be. From here onward, actually creating/building the whole help list is handled by a "common" class that I created. In this way, it handles my help list creation across all of my process (which is nice in keeping them consistent).

In my "common" help class, I have a public "Create" method. It actually calls two other public methods. Having these other methods public allows me some flexibility if I need to set up my help list differently (for example, for use with an "input box" versus a "drop down" list control).

You can see how basic this public "initialize helplist" method is, but it does save us from a lot of redundant code in our services. Seems simple enough, but its the little things. haha You can see that I also set my field catalog columns here too, but you should be able to figure out the internals of that one too.

After "initialize" of the helplist (which just sets our "key column name", "value column name" and field catalog), we are just assigning our "data" to our help field via some good old "dereferencing". This code always happens and always in this order, so why not make it into a simple, reusable method call!?!?!? I did.

Again, I am not gone to pat myself on the back and say that this is the "best" way to do it, but I will say it has saved me a lot of time from having to duplicate code. Saving time directly translates into money I have saved my clients, and for that, I do feel pretty proud of myself.

All done?

     That is really about it. I know the blog might have seemed lengthy for such a basic topic, but I wanted to make sure I covered it well (as I could). As always, I hope it helps others and saves you some time/headaches down the road. Feel free to leave your own take on this below in the comments. For more info on HCM Processes and Forms, you can read through my other blogs ( HCM Processes & Forms: My Blogs ). I also recommend HIGHLY that you buy and read the HCM Processes & Forms book by Brandon Toombs and Justin Morgalis (rumor has it, a new edition is just around the corner covering all the "new" stuff!) With that, I am outta here! Till next time...

... you've probably missed an announcement from SAP and HMRC, and need to talk to your technical team asap. Otherwise RTI won't work and this affects FPS, EPS and EYU. You may also experience issues accessing HMRC via the government gateway in your web browser. So, here are a few important points, if you hit RTI issues around these days.

HMRC Technical Changes for RTI

There are significant technical changes for RTI on HMRC's end on 30th September. If you don't get any response or just an obscure rejection for technical reasons (ssl error, encryption error, communication error sending XML document) from the Government Gateway at this time of the year, the corresponding SAP PI changes have probably not been fully implemented in your system yet.

At this date HMRC switches from SSL encryption to the new, more secure encryption called TLS. As a SAP payroll specialist you don't need to understand the technical detail and there's no point bothering your HR/Payroll consultants with this either (unless you want them to help you with RTI testing). Give this information to your technical / SAP basis administrators or consultants responsible for the XI or PI or PO system (the special SAP system managing 3rd party communication including HMRC). Usually they'd be able to fix this issue very quickly based on the information provided:

• electronic communication with HMRC will switch from  SSLv3 to TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2 on 30th September 2015
• make sure your PI (or equivalent system) does support SSL as well as TLS on that day
• this is not a payroll change, but one on the basis level
• follow the SAP notes 510007 (background info) and 2065806 to implement the change

Once the changes are implemented, run a "test in live" submission as early as possible to verify it's really working.

Access Government Gateway via Web Browser

This is not SAP related, but if you have issues accessing your government gateway account in your normal web browser, it's the same root cause: some older browser versions can't deal with the new encryption, so you'll need to install a new version of your browser (check with your PC support for this) or try a different browser (e.g. Firefox instead of Internet Explorer).

Related RTI Issues Observed Even Before 30th September 2015

Some SAP UK Payroll customers reported connection issues / certificate related issues with HMRC for RTI earlier in September. Please observe these notes, if you experience further issues:

• SAP note 2012035: System failure HTTP client code 407 reason ICM_HTTP_SSL_ERROR.
• SAP note 2110020: Enabling TLS or disabling SSLv3 protocol versions on SAP WebDispatcher, or SAP WebAS (AS ABAP 6xx, 7xx or AS Java >= 710)

If you learn about further issues / required changes during the HMRC switch over period, please share your experience in the comment section

Back in August, Gartner published their 2015 Talent Management Suites Magic Quadrant, where SuccessFactors was named a leader. Talent Management covers the entire spectrum of the hire to retire lifecycle of an employee, but I am personally pleased to talk about the Talent Acquisition components of this report.

To start, Leaders are defined by Gartner as organizations that “demonstrate a market-defining vision of how TM technology can help HR leaders achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products and services, and have demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings.”

Talent Acquisition on a global scale is a highly complex set of processes. It is the face of your company when it comes to talent management, it is a blending of marketing, content, culture, technology, process and cross department collaboration:    

• Employer Branding    
• Agency Management    
• Sourcing Analytics    
• Candidate Relationship Marketing    
• New Hire Paperwork    
• Procurement    
• New Hire development and goals   
• The list goes on and on

To be able to meet the needs as leaders, we have to help our customers meet the challenges on a global scale. The dedication that our customers and our product teams is unparalleled and has helped us to achieve this wonderful recognition. We continue this dedication with recent developments such as:

SMS notifications– giving recruiters and managers the ability to communicate with candidates, not only in developed nations but it helps exponentially in developing regions where cellphones are much more prevalent than email.

Continued compliance updates– So customers can keep in compliance with various regional, and local laws and regulations. In this release, we made updates to the many US compliance forms while improving workflows to support global compliance in 2015.

Hiring Manager Configuration Tools - Giving hiring managers the ability to set default content, collateral and links for new hires as well as set notification and welcome message content.

Google Maps Search - So customers can leverage Google’s mapping technology to not only present the candidate in their native language and with appropriate political boundaries.

We are honored to be recognized as a leader and will continue to provide innovative solutions to reduce complexity greatly improve the fundamentals of talent acquisition so you can achieve even greater results.