Register: http://bit.ly/11DcBuv

Although  the term “social recruiting” has become somewhat of a catch-all phrase, the practice is a vital component in successful recruiting strategies that provides benefits such as:

• Higher quality candidates
• Lower cost for sourcing candidates
• Broader reach

On June 25, 2012 at 10 a.m. PT, join Jessica Miller-Merrell, president and CEO of Xceptional HR, for a follow-up to her widely popular “7 Recruiting Trends You Need to Know” webcast earlier this year. In the upcoming webinar, Jessica will focus on the 6 things you may not  know about social recruiting — and answer concrete questions such as:

• What social channels are working best for my peers?
• Is Facebook better than LinkedIn for finding talent?
• Who’s on social channels and where are they spending their time?
• What’s the best way to build and leverage talent communities?

Don’t miss this chance to find out what you don’t know about social recruiting – it can make all the difference when it comes to results.

About the speaker …

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is an Internet television host, author, speaker, and human resources professional with a passion for recruiting, training, and all things social media. Jessica is a leader in the HR community, with more than 10 years of experience in human resources and recruiting.

If you like to know more about our SuccessFactors' Recruiting solution please visit the website.

Customer connection: brace for SAP's HANA and Cloud strategy in HCM

What is customer connection?

I have been with SAP for almost 10 years and one feedback customers often passed to me is that facilitating and pushing through these types of smaller SAP development requests for products in mainstream maintenance—the type of improvements or changes that are delivered through notes or support packs—has long been a black hole in the development process. There are clear processes for bigger improvements delivered through enhancement packages and bigger projects via channels such as ASUG Influence Councils and SAP’s co-innovation program, but for incremental improvements, the path hasn’t been clear.

For the past 26 months, SAP, DSAG and ASUG have been working together to bridge that gap with a program called SAP Customer Connection. It replaced the defunct DRQ (Development Requests) process, and customers have been able to submit smaller improvements, under the condition they had a minimum of five fellow customers willing to implement the change. The improvements take on average, six to seven months to deliver. The key difference between this process and the old DRQ is that the user groups are working closely in partnership with SAP to deliver ideas when SAP is ready to invest in developing them. This video also provides some details on Focus Topics and how can customers get engaged.

Figure 1 A few key facts about customer connection

Fast, inclusive and effective

The process of idea submission and selections was designed to be simple and fast, inclusive and effective. It is simple and fast because members of customer group such as ASUG can petition a change through a simple channel as long as they have a total of five fellow customers committing to implement the change.

Figure 2. The customer connection process

It is inclusive because any member of a group can petition a change and SAP will have to take notice. It is effective because SAP put the people and the money to deliver those changes within a few months. As exemplified by the numbers, those changes are taking place.

But exactly how much money and resources is marshaled by SAP to make Customer Connection happen? How many developers are working on the program is difficult to tell, because in the area of Business Suite, the actual numbers fluctuate greatly depending on the time of the year and the quantity of submissions. However, the average number of developers is in the many dozens and a general rule of thumb is that roughly 10 percent of the suite development capacity can work on Customer Connection topics.

In the case of HCM, which is my focus area, literally hundreds of days of development have been dedicated to Costumer Connection projects in the past 12 months.

Now, how effective has it been? Let's look at the numbers.  Overall, 381 improvements were delivered to customers so far and an additional 104 are currently in development, split across 42 focus topics. The details of those changes can be found here. An example of such development can be seen here, on the topic of iDoc Monitor” (SAP note 1724644)

Customer Connection innovation in the area of HCM has started later than for other topics. The focus areas were Time management and Organization Management and Personal Administration, which were started in Q2/2012, as well as Compensation and Recruiting which are the current focus areas. There were a total of 155 submitted Improvement Requests, which turned into 53 qualified Improvement Requests. Thereof 12 Improvement Requests were scoped for development, which means on average 40 or 45 percent of the qualified IR were delivered, somewhat below the overall average of 66 percent. Overall HCM represent 12 out of 381 delivered IR.

For our customers, it is critical to get a sense of what was delivered and what will be delivered going forward. This is the purpose of the customer connection roadmap,

Customeradoption

Figure 3 How effective is Customer Connection

Figure 4 Customer connection improvement note installation

How are customers reacting to these multiple developments? In date of today, we have a total of 20,138 improvement note downloads by 4,300 customers. Live customers on those notes are in the 4,000+.

On this video on ASUG TV, EVP Tanja Rueckert and program executive sponsor is talking about the value of Customer Connection.  I concur with her thoughts: we, as SAPs really need the input and feedback from customers and ASUG members. It is complementary to our standard development. With Customer Connection, we really focus on smaller improvements. What can make a difference quickly?  Customers can directly impact the portfolio. That’s why we have reserved some development capacity. If you, as an ASUG or DSAG member have an idea, by all means report it.

Customer Connection did not initiate the direct collaboration between SAP’s development organization and customers.  It was never really possible to draw a clear line, as customers always had contacts within Product Management, but Customer Connection is bringing some clarity to the process. I was privileged enough to talk with a few customers who participated in customer connect, or to process interviews they had with SAP. Dirk-Alexander Kogel is the spokesperson of the Project Management Special Interest Group, IT project manager, and member of the SAP BW and Document Management System teams at Südzucker AG.As Dirk-Alexander Kogel puts it this way: "The Special Interest Group did not have any adequate contact persons on the SAP side for a significant period of time. For many users, this was a reason to search for alternative project systems."

Dirk-Alexander Kogel  explains how to ensure that the flow of information to SAP Development did not dry up: "It is important that suggested improvements be contributed exclusively through the Special Interest Group, channeled by the spokespersons, and coordinated with the SAP contacts. It's the only way to guarantee that the process for short-term intervention can work seamlessly." And Knut Kämpfert, vice-spokesperson of the Project Management Special Interest Group and Head of Project Portfolio Management at the ZF Group, adds: "The participants should use the opportunity to exchange information in the Special Interest Group before they start a project, instead of waiting to get active until after a system has been installed."

CustomerConnection in the HCM strategy going forward

The standard collection process for new requirements is continuing. For example, in June 2013, the collect phase for GRC Access Control 2013 started on June 17th. A collect phase is ongoing in Public Sector Management for IPSAS and Funds and Grants Mgmt. After talking to James Barron and Jeff Wible, representing the user groups, I believe that only SAP is able to offer is non-disruptive, controlled, orderly path for customers that will allow them to go to the next generation of applications at their own speed, very often the cloud. This blogentry provides more details on this strategy.

So how does Customer Connection fit in SAP’s strategy for HCM solutions? I believe it plays three key roles

1.    For on-premise solutions, in particular Talent Management on-premise, where there will only be spot investment going forward, it is the best way of channeling requests for those on-premise solutions and getting them approved

2.    As we embark on the cloud journey, changes to the software will be strategic, long –term changes. There WILL be needs for smaller improvements going forward. I believe that Customer Connection needs to be used to make sure no small improvement has been left behind by addressing the bigger picture. Let me give you an example.  As migration to Employee Central from our core HCM system becomes a priority for customers with a deliberate cloud strategy, the question arises of: what about regional Infotypes previously maintained in on-premise core HR? This is the kind of improvement that can be handled by Customer Connection

3.    As strategic topics are being delivered by SAP, Customer Connection can serve as a feedback channel on new cloud or mobile development as well.

The innovation delivered was as follows:

For OM/PA:

• Add Position title history in IT0001 Overview
• Bank Details Overview Screen
• New field in  for Maternity Protection/Parental leave

For time management

• Work Schedule finder for infotype 7
• Control Dates in Quota Overview Screen via Configuration
• New Infotype for Quota Type Selection Group (10663)

The indicative plan for new functionality is as follows

The overall feedback about the program was positive. According to James Barron, Implementation Consultant for Telecom New Zealand and one of the key facilitators of the program, Customer Connection is a form of crowdsourcing. It makes a lot of sense to tap into the knowledge that is in the business. The biggest success was work schedule search. Six companies have adopted this, or are about to adopt it.

I talked to Jeff Wible, one of the ASUG HCM leader, who stated: “what I liked about Customer Connection, a big plus was the fact the topics were good. OM/PA and Time Management had little done in the past few years, before renewal came out, so those changes were welcome. It was also really good that ASUG was involved. There used to be a major gap in involving ASUG and the mentors. ASUG is about to publish the list of deliveries. Hopefully we will have a good wave of adopter.”

Update on 7/9/2013 Here is a nice feedback from Mr. Rudolf Hofmeister from the Ministery of Finance of Bavaria

What was your involvement with Customer Connection?  For what  solution?

I am speaker of the DSAG user group “Stellenwirtschaft”. In this function I had to deal with the Customer Connection Program.  The subject “Stellenwirtschaft” was a Focus Topic in 2011. Several development requests were set in the Idea Place. The SAP developed the requirements in 2011/2012 and delivered them promptly.  I was also involved in 2012 in the Customer Connection Program with the Focus Topic “PA/Organization”. Here, the experience was not so good. Only very few applications have been put into the development. The further handling of rejected topic remains open.

Is your company using the Customer Connection innovation?

Yes, we use the business function “Stellenwirtschaft” since 2013 (EHP 6). Before that we had customer-specific developments and several modifications.

What is your overall feedback about Customer Connection?

Customer Connection is a good way to further develop SAP program. The development cycle by SAP is manageable.  With customers and DSAG members there is a high expectation. But it's hard to convince the DSAG members to participate in the Customer Connection program.  In recent years, the handling of the Customer Connection Idea Place was difficult (f.e. access to the platform, information about requests). Also less satisfactory is the requirement to formulate development proposals only in English. It is also difficult to get enough voters and submitters, especially for request in very special functions of the SAP system.

This statement is especially true when many applications are finally rejected by SAP.

Mr. Hofmeister's feedback is consistent with the feedback I gathered, which stressed the need to change three aspects of the program:

• The platform, the necessity to register and have an SCN ID. Quite a painful process for a lot of people. The ID should be publicly available.
• The phasing of it: some good ideas could not be properly evaluated. The same ideas were logged several times with different ideas, thus diluting the number of votes. So consolidation by somebody would help. For example graphical org charting were put 4-5 times by different people but all the ideas were really the same ideas
• Communication and sticking to the timeline after the voting could also be improved

Overall, I am looking forward to working more actively on these topics going forward.

He is limiting the configuration only on Health Plans enrollment.while there are also other Plans like Insurance plans,Saving Plans,Stock purchase plans,Flexible spending accounts,Credit Plans,Miscellaneous plans,Holiday Plans,Pension plans,Company plans,Claims.He encourages audience to play around configuring the same

continued in the next one..

     In my recent blog HCM Processes & Forms: Images/Logos and Reusable Components for FPM forms, I touched on the fact that more advanced things could be done with FPM forms using composite UIBBs, but I left it pretty much at that point and to your own mind to come up with examples. Well, in this blog, I want dive deeper into this topic. I will not give away all of my secrets, but I will show off a little. (haha) Just kidding.

     Seriously, I put together this blog in hopes that people will really "get it" and embrace the idea that with the "new" evolution of HCM P&F via HR Renewal, our FPM-framework based forms can be so much more than just a "form". We can now create fairly complex applications WITHIN the HCM P&F and FPM frameworks themselves!!!

How it all began....

     Again, as I showed in my blog HCM Processes & Forms: Images/Logos and Reusable Components for FPM forms, you can create a "composite configuration" and display multiple UIBBs on a form. In the example I showed, I displayed a company logo along with the process information coming from your HCM P&F configuration in the "header" of your form. However, our "non-HCM P&F component" was just a static image. There was not a whole lot going on there, but I alluded to the notion that much more could be done. So what was I talking about? What if......what if our HCM P&F UIBB could "talk" to our non-HCM P&F component? What if we could exchange data? Hmmmmm.....that would be kinda neat eh? An immediate example came to mind for me.

     What if we had some form that showed an employee's address from our HCM P&F configuration but then we displayed a non-HCM P&F component on the same form that displays a Google Map that showed that address location? It would be pretty cool eh? What if we made our "Google Map component" simple and generic enough that we could use it any where to show an address? That would be cooler! So I set off to build this.

     My search began first looking at what the HCM P&F framework might expose to us (such as a class or interface). I was hoping I could simply write some code that would get a "handle" on the instance of one of our HCM P&F classes that would provide me all the form fields and values. I searched and searched. But as I was searching, digging deep into code, following down this idea and that, it hit me that if I went that path, I would be building something TOO tightly coupled and dependent on the HCM P&F framework. Remember....I wanted to create a simple, generic "Google Map" component that I could use in HCM P&F and elsewhere if needed (Reusability for the win! haha).

     So then, I looked at how the FPM framework allows us to create "interaction" between our UIBB components. For UIBB-to-UIBB communication, SAP provides a number of options. Kunath Uwe covered this BRILLIANTLY in his simple, concise blog Data exchange possibilities in Floorplan Manager(I advise you to read and absorb this!) Also, from the mouth of the King of ABAP himself, Thomas Jung, he states in a 2010 forum thread http://scn.sap.com/thread/1832040 (prior to the "wiring" option)...

"There are generally two different approaches to this.  You can use a faceless shared data Web Dynpro Component. This is special interface for the WD Component that is part of the FPM framework.  You then use cross component context binding to share a single context between all inner UIBB Components.   The other approach is simply to share data via a normal ABAP class.  Generally you use a singleton pattern so that all UIBBs share a single instance of the class.  This approach has lower memory requirements because the cross component context binding approach needs to copy the data of the share context into each UIBB.  This approach is also easier to use when you have Generic UIBBs which are implemented as feeder classes instead of Web Dynpro Components.  The last 15 minutes of the TechEd session CD203 - Best Practices for Web Dynpro ABAP was dedicated to this very topic."

In the same thread, fellow SAP Mentor, Chris Paine mentions...

"I've actually combined these two approaches to data sharing - I've passed a class reference in the shared data component. This is nice (in my opinion) because it is very obvious where the data is coming from and who it is shared with. It also means that there is not a huge overhead in passing data through the shared context, because you are just replicating a reference to a class instance.   And -  you don't have to deal with singleton classes :-). So if you want/need to extend your implementation at a later date (for example embedding multiple instances of the same "app" in the one window - or suspending and resuming to another instance of the same app you can then do this. (NB - suspend resume to launch another FPM app does not work because of this (amongst other things)).   NB a shared data component need not be faceless! I certainly have "shared data" UIBBs that also have UI components - possibly not best practice - but it certainly can be done."

I decided to go the Singleton route for a number of reasons. First off, it is EASY! (haha) Second, I could have gone the "fancy" route and use FPM "wires", but I thought it would be really cool to show an interaction between our HCM P&F configuration using a Generic Service (backend) and our Google map WDA component view (frontend). Now of course this probably flies in the face of "separation of concerns" but oh well....I am a bit of a rebel (haha).

Making magic happen...

     First off, I built a very basic Singleton class (there are PLENTY of links/sources/tutorials you can find with a simple web search on "what" makes an ABAP class a Singleton and "how" to create one). My class had the typical "GET_INSTANCE" static method (which controls the fact that only ONE instance of our class can exist...ie. SINGLE-ton), and a handful of "public" attributes I would need for an address (street, city, state and zip). I could make this more OO strict and make "private" versions of each attribute and create SET/GET methods for each, but that is more work than is needed for now.

     Second, I created my "Google Mappers" WDA component. Make sure you make it a FPM UIBB component by implementing the correct interface!

     The rest is very simple. There are MANY links and examples around the web for how to integrate Google Maps with WDA in all manner of ways, however, I took a few ideas from this very basic example by Fareez Ahamed in his blog http://webdynpro4abap.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-in-web-dynpro-abap.html (again, to keep this easy and develop quickly as a proof of concept...his example does not work exactly as what I built but it did give me ideas). I have a "view" with just an "image" element on it (static Google Maps use a  "<img>" tag to create the map image...do NOT use an iFrame).

The context for my WDA is very simply 3 attribute values:

• LOC :this is our "location"/point of interest

  URL: this will be our constructed URL and is what we bind as the "source" for our image element in our view

ZOOM: this allows us to set a value for the "zoom" on the map that we pass as a URL parameter (default value = 15)

     In the method PROCESS_BEFORE_OUTPUT of our component controller for our "Google Mapper" WDA, we call our own private method SET_MAP_DATA that handles "talking" to our Singleton instance to pull (GET) the address information and set our context values. You might think that this would be better handled in the method WDDOINITof our component controller, however, you will find in debugging that that method gets called before our HCM P&F Generic Service INITIALIZE method can set the address values. You really have to keep in mind the WDA Phase Model calls.

WARNING: I only put in the images of code. This keeps people from simply cut-n-paste coding instead of doing a little work and understanding what is going on. 

     The real "magic" happens in our view's WDDOINIT method where we set the URL "source" for our image to use (per binding to our context). The parameters we pass as we construct this URL are very important. I read the Google documentation to figure this all out (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/staticmaps/ ).

     So this is a pretty simple WDA component now. The VERY nice thing now is that this generic "Google Mapper" component can be used with ANY other component as long as the interact with our Singleton class (could change this later). So not only for HR and things like employee's addresses, but also warehouse locations, customer locations, etc. where a simple address is used. (WOW! haha).

     Finally, we created a Generic Service called Z_GOOGLE_MAPPER in our form scenario configuration for our process.

     It is a very basic service with one operation that we have mapped our address related fields to call.

     Because we just want to show the employee's "current" permanent address when the form first is displayed, we can handle this in our INITIALIZE method (for now, our SET_MAPPER operation is just empty and used to get our fields to our Generic Service (old HCM P&F trick haha).

     Our INITIALIZE method calls a private method SET_MAPPER_VALUES. I made this a separate private method because I might want to use it later so it is now reusable (*hint hint*).

     So in summary, we have a HCM P&F Generic Service that will first create the instance of our Singleton class and then set it's address attributes. Then we have our "Google Mapper" WDA component that will get reference to and read the Singleton class address attributes and set it's own context. Because we have bound one of the context values to our view's "image" element, it will then display our static Google Map showing a "pin" on the employee's address. Don't believe me? Here is the process when we execute it...

     So yeh....there it is....Pretty cool eh? But let's step it up another notch! (haha)

Taking it to another other level...

     I will not give away all the details (the "how" and "where" and "what" I did), but let's just say that I....

• extended the Singleton class to handle both single locations and distance between points
• fleshed out the "Do Operations" method in my Generic Service to handle our "new" address
• added zoom functionality to my "Google Mapper" component
• added handling of distance/pathing between two map points to the "Google Mapper" component when constructing the URL

     So now if I execute my "Relocation" process, it first shows the employee's current address as before...

    You can also see how I can control the "Map" component independent of the HCM P&F FPM framework when I use the "zoom controls" buttons (here I clicked twice to zoom in).

Now the employee's "new" address is entered and the user clicks "Check"....

     We can now see the path/distance between the "old" and "new" address (this is just a "path" and not driving directions...which can be done...but requires using other APIs and services which is more work than this example really needs for "proof of concept"). Just for grins, I also show here that I bound my zoom buttons to a context attribute so that I can hide them when the maps is showing distance between 2 points (they show when only the first address is shown). Ok...ok....too much showing off eh? haha

     Now THAT is REALLY cool eh?!?!?!  haha This should REALLY get your gears spinning and thinking about all the many more possibilities out there. As I said, whereas we use to think of HCM P&F as an easy "form" handling framework, we can think of it in a whole new way....as a rapid application development tool.

     I must say....this was VERY fun to build! As always, I really hope this helps others. More blogs coming as long as folks keep enjoying them (or if I win the lottery haha). Till next time...

Hello.

SAP HCM  is a module that deals a lot with documents.

Templates and documents are key words  with HCM.

i like to show you a screen cast of using Open XML  standards

to  produce MS-Office documents on  SAP  server

without  the need of using MS-Office.

MS-Office using Open XML from version 2007.

this solution can produce mass amount of documents

and  also using documents as Interactive  documents.

so, let's see it on  live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUk6aoHWPg

enjoy

    Ronen Almog

Having launched three parts of our video series we just got three left to go from our SAPinsider footage! If you missed the previous entries you can find the contribution from Mico Yukhere, Luke Marsonhere and Babak Hosseinianhere. Great input from the three on BI2013, HR2013 and GRC2013!

Martin Gillet is the fourth contributor in our series and yet again another member of the SAP Mentor community. Many of you probably know of Martin Gillet, especially if you’re active on SCN. He’s the man behind the scenes of pretty much the entire photo reel covering the SAP Mentors and their body of work over the years. You’ll typically find him at events carrying a large Nikon camera around his neck with an 18-55mm VR Camera lens. You MIGHT be aware that he’s also a well-recognised SAP HCM expert and been working in the SAP field for more than a decade now. Beyond his personal contribution to the online SAP space you can also find his handiwork on bookshelves and if you want to become a wiz on ESS & MSS you got to get his book - Configuring and Customizing Employee and Manager Self-Services in SAP ERP HCM - SAP PRESS Bookstore

I would warmly recommend that you view Luke Marson’s video as well in conjunction with Martin’s input as it will give you the complete 360 degree coverage of the entire event. It’s also interesting to compare and see if these two guys got a different set of opinions?

Now enjoy:

That wraps up the 4^th video in our 6 part video series. We got one video left of Joshua Fletcher covering BI and EIM, which will then be followed by a post by yours truly recapping my key takeaways on the event. Martin will surely keep an eye on this post, so if you got any questions fire away.

I’d like to recommend everyone to go to Martin’s own Storify silo covering the HR2013 event  SAP Insider HR 2013 Conference Wrap Up  and in general keeping an eye on his Flickr photostream is always enjoyable!

I’ve been a sporadic contributor to the SAP Community Network; recent posts including Managing a Global Talent Supply Chain and What Does the Future Hold for HR Professionals?. To tie together some of these themes, I want to spend some time writing over the summer on how workforce analytics bolsters efforts to measure the impact of activities across several specific talent management domains – Learning, Recruiting, Performance & Goals, Succession, and Compensation Planning.

Rather than simply providing my perspective, however, each post will also include an interview with a SuccessFactors subject matter expert close to the topic, as a way to tap into the conventional wisdom and future aspirations of colleagues who are leading the charge in communicating the value of data within their domains.

Below, I’ve started by looking at Learning Analytics, aimed at professionals in the learning/training field; subsequent posts will cover the four terrains mentioned above.

Finally, the title of the blog ("Seize the Data") is not without meaning for workforce analytics - many organizations see "analytics as the future" but a lower technology priority than investments in core or transactional talent management systems. I would like to see HR leaders "seize the day" - holding a conversation today about how workforce analytics can deliver immediate business impact by leveraging data from across the talent enterprise.

1. What’s conventional practice for using data to measure the impact of learning?

According to Peter Howes and Ed Cohen who collaborated on a SuccessFactors white paper entitled Learning and Analytics (registration required), “the relationship between learning and analytics is often misunderstood and under-utilized. Typically, when people discuss analytics they are talking about reporting within a specific learning management system. They are talking about course completions, scores, pass rates and usage data.”

These points were echoed in speaking with two colleagues who are experts in the field of learning and who support SuccessFactors Learning – Andy Shean, Senior Solutions Consultant, and Nate Hurto, Vice President of Solution Consulting. Their view is that “reporting and analytics have always been important to Learning, however, are under-represented. This is especially true when looking at the impact of training on organizational KPIs”. For example, Andy and Nate agree that compliance reporting – listing which employees are in, or out of, compliance with a specific training item – is very powerful data for a shift supervisor who needs to roster staff according to who is qualified to operate a particular machine or follow a specific process.

Similarly, data on training utilization are also very worthwhile. For example, a SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics customer regularly publishes an automated national training scorecard – data includes % of employees trained, training hours completed, types of courses (blended, classroom, elearning), and reasons for course cancellation (the most common of which is a lack of participants).

2. What’s missing from this approach?

However, as noted by Andy and Nate, analytics showing the business impact of learning are limited in their adoption. They argue that there is a “clear opportunity to build on transactional reporting with analytics that utilize trend data from across the enterprise. This demonstrates the value of training to the enterprise, allows for re-allocating scare resources from low-impact to high-impact curricula, and, in cases of programmatic skepticism, ‘objectively justify the importance of the training function’”. Peter and Ed put it a slightly different way, saying that LMS reporting “doesn’t really help you to make the connection with what is happening in your organization, or whether the training is having the desired effect of boosting productivity, improving service and raising levels of efficiency.”

Efforts to instill an analytics culture within learning have been mixed. For every organization publicly cited for excellence in learning analytics (Bersin’s 2012 Learning Leaders included AT&T, Cisco, and Grant Thornton), there are others that are just getting started, often with mixed, or troubling, results.  For example, a senior HR manager at a public institution recently shared a story of how his HR leader brought to the executive table analysis of how the institution’s high-potential staff were more likely to receive promotions and pay increases after going through leadership training. This analysis was conducted without a control group (how did the trained high-potentials compare to high-potentials who didn’t attend the training?) or any measures of impact on the institution’s mission, financials, or people outcomes.

3. What might be examples of foundational metrics to apply to learning?

Of course (no pun intended), there are different approaches to moving beyond LMS reporting. One would just be to slice your training/learning data to arrive at specific problem areas or insights that lend themselves to interventions – it is difficult to change results for the entire organization; better to start small and focus on problems requiring small fixes but with the possibility of high returns. Another would be to create output-based scorecards (as opposed to those with focus on inputs or throughputs to the learning process); examples of measures used by SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics customers include:

• Courses Supporting The Completion of Development Objectives

• Training Penetration Rate • Employee Satisfaction With Training

• Trained/Untrained Employees Average Performance Rating

• Training Investment per Employee

4. What about more advanced analytics?

The list above is still fairly Training Function-oriented, so a different approach is to stand back and consider what outcome/process change/decision we are seeking to better understand through the inclusion of learning data. For example:

• What type/frequency/format of training can provide the biggest boost to sales? Several years ago, we looked at sales rep training at one of our customers and found a $250,000 difference (in terms of annual sales) between reps who had taken all of the prescribed training modules for their role and those who had taken none of the training.

• Do development efforts pay-off in terms of building organizational flexibility & capability? Increasing learning agility, as discussed in this HR Executive article, would improve an employee’s ability to adapt to new situations and cultures (though the success of which might be difficult to measure).

• What business impact does social learning have? Many employees have access to corporate social networking tools, such as SAP Jam; firms are investing with the understanding that such applications drive productivity and reduce time-to-proficiency for new hires.

5. Any final words of advice?

Andy and Nate suggest three principles to guide your approach to learning metrics:

1. Unify your learning data with other talent management data sources, especially performance, goals, and succession

2. Make the data easily available – if one of your goals is to create a culture of data-driven talent management decisions, confining learning metrics to those in the training department makes no sense. Share insights and encourage questions.

3. Get real results – Don’t stop with showing how leadership training helped your high-potentials get a promotion; be creative about working through a set of possible business outcomes – higher productivity, faster completion of goals, higher levels of product innovation, reduced costs, etc.

Stay tuned for future blogs that apply the same approach to other Talent Management domains.

Following up on my recent blog Extending SuccessFactors with the Metadata Framework, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the Rules Engine that forms part of the SuccessFactors Metadata Framework (MDF) and also look at Picklists. Both of these form an integral part of data validations, approvals, and business logic that is used within the SuccessFactors system and, in particular, Employee Central.

Rules Engine

As mentioned in my blog on the MDF, it provides a flexible and consistent framework for customers and consultants to extend the object model of SuccessFactors and add their own unique rules, validations, and business logic to SuccessFactors. Rules can be used where user exits, BAdIs, or ABAP program Enhancement points would be used in SAP HCM to provide customer-specific business logic or validation of data input.

The Rules Engine allows you to create rules by modeling statements and flow logic to define the business logic of the rule. Rules have two sets of logic that is configured in the MDF: If logic and Then logic.

If logic uses statements “and” and “or” statements to determine if the Then logic should occur. Each of these statements involves checking a field for a particular value or object attribute. If logic can also be set to Always True, which means that the Then logic automatically executes when the rule is triggered. An example can be seen in the screenshot below, along with Then logic.

The Then logic determines either the value to be set and/or the message to be raised if the If logic conditions are met. When the Set Output Type is selected then a value will be set to the field that is configured, either from a selected value or an object attribute.

Hooks

Once a rule has been created, it can be assigned to one or more Hooks. Hooks are points at which Rules can be triggered and can be either at the object level or the field level.

At the object level Rules can be added at four points of the object “lifecycle”:

• Initialization
• Validation (pre-save)
• Saving
• Deleting

At each point one or more rules can be defined. They will be triggered once the object gets to that point of its maintenance.

Within the object level rules can be added at field level. Here one or more rules can be defined so that they will be triggered when a field is modified.

Picklists

Picklists are, simply, selection lists used to populate a data input field with one of a number of predefined values. They act in the same way as F4 Helps in SAP HCM. Picklists provided in the standard system can be altered to use customer-specific values. The screenshot below shows a simple example of a Picklist for Marital Status.

Picklists are configured using the option Manage Configure Generic Object Definition under Company Settings in OneAdmin or under Generic Objects in the old Admin Tools. Below shows a Picklist being created for the different types of documents that you can contribute on SCN.

This Picklist can then be assigned to a field in the MDF as below. You can also see the Rules section to define one or more rules at the field level.

Summary

When combined, the Rules Engine and Picklists provide customers to add their own business logic, rules, and validations to objects and fields. This means that customers can have a significant level of control on ensuring that data is created, maintained, and deleted the way that they need it. It also means that data quality can be upheld by using the system to validate data entry or provide users with picklists from which to select values.

The MDF is covered in detail in the SAP PRESS title SuccessFactors for SAP ERP HCM, due for release in August 2013.

It’s always sobering to discover that a colleague sees something quite differently from you. Especially when the something is your role in the company. So I was hit hard by the latest 20 Minute Master Class from SuccessFactors: “Future priorities for HR: how can you make sure you’re on track”, which is based on a recent CIPD HR Outlook survey.

CIPD had asked HR and non-HR business leaders about corporate priorities and the role of HR and, for a couple of slides, everything was reassuring. Everyone seemed to agree that in the current economic conditions companies were concentrating on short-term issues, such as cost management, productivity and customer focus.

Looking ahead a couple of years, the consensus remained. Yes, HR people were naturally more concerned with longer-term capabilities, but by and large they were talking the same language as their colleagues.

However, when we got to HR’s involvement in strategy, things got a lot more interesting – and uncomfortable. While HR leaders were convinced they were integral to setting, communicating and executing business strategy, non-HR leaders were much less sure. In fact, more than a third of them either said that senior HR people had no involvement in strategy or didn’t know whether they did or not. The implication was that they didn’t really care.

This rang several alarm bells, so it was good to see that the second half of the Masterclass focused on six key messages we can all take from the research to help put HR at the heart of business strategy.

These included raising our visibility and impact by demonstrating the value we bring. We must use evidence and demonstrate the business benefits of HR initiatives. Above all, we need to embrace data and use it not just to illustrate trends, but to initiate change.

I learned that HR people almost always have broad business experience from outside the HR function. They also have a unique understanding of the long-term value of a company’s people. That’s why it’s time to really expose the contribution we can make to business transformation. In tough economic times, businesses are more receptive than ever to creative ideas. But to make sure ours are heard and acted on, we need to present an informed and convincing business case.

***Note that the content below has already appeared in my personal blog; I am adding it here as I've often seen questions raised on the topic***

Ever since I have been working with HRIS in the context of global companies, I’ve been collecting notes on how the HR data, sensitive and private as it is, can be protected. I’ve decided to publish this blog, but here goes the DISCLAIMER: these notes are of an informative and general nature, and share my personal ramblings and thoughts on the matter. It should not be construed as an attempt to offer or render legal opinion or engage in the practice of law. Please consult the advice of a licensed professional experienced if you require it. 

What is what?

Data privacy in general is a question many IT professionals are wondering about, to the point that the 28th of January has been appointed "Data Privacy Day". The day has been chosen to remember the signing of the EU agreements in .... ; the day is meant to raise awareness about data privacy rights, and is "celebrated" in the US, Canada and all the countries of the EU (27 at the time of writing).

One of the modern-age most compelling frauds includes one form or another of identity theft (identity cloning, financial ID theft, medical ID theft); most have seen first-hand phishing attempts received by mail and e-mail, and are careful in shredding personal documents rather than just throwing them on the recycling pile. As HR professionals, working with HR information, we are aware of the sensitivity of the data entrusted upon us by our company; and as employees, we expect that our information will be appropriately protected and remain private. 

Governments have produced laws and guidelines, and since 1981, groups of countries have entered agreements to decide how data (and in particular, HR data) can be shared across borders.

Plenty of information is available, often fairly indigestible and written in “legalese”. Several terms appear to be used in alternance, are they really synonyms? Not quite.

• Data integrity addresses the concern that data should be correct and complete for the use we want to make. As a simple example, if the address held about your employee is not updated, correspondence will fail to reach him/her, and consequently data is trash.
• Data security is focused in keeping information safe, seeking protection from access by unauthorized entities. The idea is to avoid hacking and intruders; both to prevent theft of ideas or valuable information and to protect the integrity of the data (as above) against corruption (either accidental or willful).
• Data privacy is often confused with data security, but actually spans a wider area. Its concern is to ensure legal compliance with the multiple international regulations controlling and protecting the individuals’ rights to keep their data safe and private; it isn’t merely protecting against external intrusions, but supervising the way HR data is shared internationally, where it is stored, how it is accessed. It means providing adherence to data privacy guidelines and regulations, all around the world where your organization is active.

As an individual, my concern is to keep my data secure – I make sure my passwords are up to the task (by the way, here is a great post on Password Security), that my firewall protects my home computers, that my antivirus is up to date. As a corporation, or as an individual representing a corporation, I must gain an understanding of what my responsibility entails and extend my concern to data privacy.

The recent NSA scandal has made painfully obvious how unaware we are of who is looking at the information we share; in NSA case we are only talking about metadata, but the fact remain that the same can be done with other data types and/or systems.

Is this also true if working for a company is based and/or incorporated in the US? Yes, of course! Living in a more and more global world, our companies are involved in the global market and our employees are global citizens.  Information is easier to access from anywhere, and can be moved across borders without the data owner even realizing it, nor knowing who is accessing it. If your company has operations in more than one country, you are immediately concerned by Data Privacy International regulations. You need to keep an eye out to know what are the requirements, how can you ensure compliance, and how it evolves.

Laws

Lets start with the European Data Protection Regulation (EDPR), released on the 25 Jan 2012. The EDPR regulates the processing and movement of personal data within, to and from the European Union. Still, keep in mind that EDPR only sets the standard accepted by all 27 member states, while single states often require additional local compliance obligations.

I’d like to go through the meaning of this regulation in steps.

• Personal data or “Personally Identifiable Information” (PII) is defined as all information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. Any information that distinguishes two individuals can be used for identification – so it isn’t just about names and date of birth, social security and credit cards, but is a much more extensive set of data that in combination can provide identification.
• EDPR defines how it is acceptable to move personal data out of the European Economic Area (EEA: EU plus Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway), and is pretty restrictive. In fact, all movements are prohibited UNLESS specific conditions are met.
• When we talk about moving data out of the EEA, it doesn’t apply only to European companies’ data, but all personal data referring to employees of European subsidiaries from corporations headquartered in other geographies must also comply. This has an immediate impact on a company designing global HRIS.
• Personal data movement is permitted to a set of countries that the European Commission has recognized as offering adequate protection for the data: Andorra, Argentina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Israel, Jersey, New Zealand, Switzerland and Uruguay. It is important to note that the US are not included in this list.
• US and EU companies requiring to share data across the borders can adopt a Safe Harbor process to streamline the compliance. Safe Harbor is undersigned by a specific company and must be re-certified on a yearly basis. It is based on the following 7 principles:
  • Notice– right of being informed: employees must know what data is collected and stored by the company, and made aware of how it is used and disclosed.
  • ChoiceIn case information is to be shared onward to third parties, it must be clearly explained to the employee and an opt-out option is to be made available.
  • Onward Transfer– In addition with Notice and Choice, transfers of data to third parties may only occur to other organizations follows Safe Harbor.
  • Security- Reasonable efforts must be made to prevent disclosure, loss or alteration of collected information.
  • Data Integrity- Data must be relevant and reliable for the purpose it was collected for.
  • Access– Reasonable access to the stored information is to be provided, both to the EU subsidiary and to the individual. The means of such access aren’t specified (paper vs. Self-Service, for instance).
  • Enforcement– Commitment to cooperate with authorities to ensure investigation and resolution of complaints.

For more information on the 7 principles and on how Safe Harbor applies to HR, export.gov has a good FAQ.

• The Safe Harbor sign-off is the solution in case of EU to US (and back) data transfers; so in these terms it is NOT SUFFICIENT to allow global companies to consolidate data globally.
• In the case of a multinational corporation, the geographical extension require the adoption of Binding Corporate Rules, covering the steps taken to ensure compliance with “adequate protection”. To put it simply, a BCR document is an internal, company-wide privacy policy, drafted to meet specific business needs relative to the operation of the company. Drafted by the corporation, it is subject to approval by authority; not all EU countries require such an approval, but many do. (ex. GE approach here or BP here).

Hosted by, Kira Swain, Social Media Manager

The convergence of social, mobile, cloud and big data is significantly changing the HR technology software market. Join Thomas Otter, and a panel of experts on Wednesday, July 16 at 9am PT/12pm ET/6pm CET for a #SAPChat on the Core HR Market. The panel includes:

Panelists

• Thomas Otter, VP of Product Management, Employee Central (@vendorprisey)
• Sven Denecken, VP of Strategy and Head of Co-Innovation (@SDenecken)
• Oliver Conze, VP for Product Portfolio Strategy (@oliverconze)
• Joachim Förderer, Senior Director, Product Management, Employee Central (@jf04)
• Luke Marson, SAP Mentor (@lukemarson)
• SuccessFactors (@SuccessFactors)

During the #SAPChat, we’ll cover key HR tech trends, what makes a true core HR system, what global and local really mean in HR, and the intersection of social and HR. We’ll also talk about the momentum we’ve made with our own core HR system, Employee Central.

What is a #SAPChat?

A #SAPChat is an SAP-organized online conversation, held at a pre-arranged time, between a group of Twitter users, using a specific Twitter hashtag to identify the discussion.

How Do I Participate?

On the day of the event, log-in into your favorite Twitter client and enter #SAPChat into the search bar. We will likely use tweetchat.com (pending their server migration) because it will automatically add the hashtag to your tweets as you participate in the chat. Other Twitter clients to use include TweetDeck, TweetBot, Twitter Search etc. Just follow the chat hashtag, #SAPChat.  During the event, you can follow the discussion, contribute questions, and submit your own comments by using the same hashtag.

Be there - tweet there!

Have you ever had the need to create and read the contents of Office documents?

Have  you  ever needed to produce it  on a  mass process?

Well ,  it is possible  now with the new Open XML  technology.

watch this screen cast witch with a  demo process

of  how  to use MS-Office  direct from  SAP 

without the  need  of MS-office to be installed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhcnDwK-88

  Ronen Almog

I like to announce you about a new way of producing

MS-office applications within SAP.

Until now we had the option to produce MS  Word or Excel

using the SAP-Gui.

that means, that the Gui uses macros in order to connect to MS-Office.

This made the use of MS-Office with SAP very poor one.

we had to open the Office Application on the Client , and production was just one document at a time.

Open  XML is a standard that Microsoft contributes for documents generation and manipulation.

with  Open XML  ( or in short -  OOXML  ), we can handle MS-Office  documents

in a lot and infinite ways.

Open XML is  very good option for SAP users.

you can produce documents in mass production

and also read the documents content back into SAP ( Interactive Forms ).

all the process could be automatically without the need of human interaction.

you can watch demos  of Open XML

on a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ronenal33

I would like to answer any question

and also get your ideas regarding the subject.

     Ronen Almog

There are many like me who must have struggled enabling the HR Renewal Landing page functionality for the first time. Today, I decided to list down the steps for configuring the HR Renewal Landing Page which makes life easy for guys like me.

Quick Introduction from SAP help -

Using UI5 technology, this landing page is a web-based UI for HR professionals offering a single point of access to employee and organizational master data.

Features -

• Rich client application using standard JavaScript technologies
• Distinct separation of feed-like informational sources and transactional UIs
• Use of OData channels (SAP Gateway) enables the bundling of several information sources
• Extensible for customers
• Role-based state-of-the-art UI
• Intuitive UI that users can personalize to meet their requirements
• Homogenous UIs for employee and master data
• Single point of access to employee and organizational data
• Universal search for employee and organizational data
• SAP delivers the following lanes Actions, Analytics, Organizations, Tasks by Drafts, Tasks by Priority, Tasks by Time, Search and an integrated collaboration platform, Discussions
• Easy overview of tasks on the initial page, including draft tasks

Steps -

1. As a first step, install the HR Renewal components. Please refer SAP Note#1701634 for the release information. Kindly make sure that you install the     

   Gateway related components like IW_FND, IW_PGW, IW_SCS, GW_CORE, UI2_700/UI2_701/UI2_702/UI2_731, UI2_FND, UI2_SRVC, UISAPUI5 that are    

   compatible to your EA-HR Components installed.

2. Activate the below mentioned business functions -

• HCM_PAO_CI_1 - HCM, Personnel & Organization
• HCM_PAO_CI_2 - HCM, Personnel & Organization 2 ( for new functionality - "Processes")
• BC_SRV_STW_01 - Enable SAP Streamwork ABAP Integration 1 ( for Discussions functionality)
• BC_SRV_STW_02 - Enable SAP Streamwork ABAP Integration 2 ( for Discussions functionality)
• BC_SRV_STW_03 - Enable Social Media ABAP Integration 3 ( for Discussions functionality)

3. Activate the SAP Netweaver Gateway Services in the below SPRO node - SAP Netweaver > Gateway > OData Channel > Configuration > Connection

   Settings > Activate or Deactivate SAP Netweaver Gateway.

Click on "Activate" button to view the below confirmation screen -

4. Define SAP System Alias in the below SPRO node - SAP Netweaver > Gateway > OData Channel > Configuration > Connection Settings > SAP Netweaver

   Gateway to SAP System > Manage SAP System Aliases.

Make sure you maintain the SAP System Alias, Description, RFC Destination, System ID, Client and WS Provider System details. In our case, we have maintained these entries with SAP ECC system itself.

5. Activate and Maintain ODATA Services. OData Channel implementations retrieve the data from an SAP Business Suite system, that is, a backend system. Once a service has been defined in the backend system, the service must be registered or activated on the SAP NetWeaver Gateway system.  You may perform this activity in the below SPRO Node -

SAP Netweaver > Gateway > OData Channel > Administration > General Settings > Activate and Maintain Services.

On opening this node, you would have the list of services listed and you could activate these services as shown below  -

At times, not all needed services would be listed by default, we should add the missing services by clicking on "Add Service" button. Enter your System Alias and click on "Get Services" button as shown below -

Double click on the services that you want to add and select the package as shown below. By default SAP proposes the Technical Service Name and Technical Model Name.

I managed to list down the services that needs to be activated by reading the documentation of Landing Page in SPRO node -

6. Launch the Landing page application from PFCG Role - SAP_PAO_PROFESSIONAL as shown below -

To view the beautiful UI5 Application -

Note : Please make sure that you open/run this application in IE9 or above versions only.

Thanks for your time !

My background is technical and focused on SAP, so invariably cloud implementations were going to bring new challenges. Looking for knowledge on what to expect in terms of project management I found there are a few blogs (the new  manual), some notes on Employee Central project implementations, each giving details and recommendations on how to be successful. No criticism on any of these, but I haven’t found the direct Employee Central specific items that I experienced on an implementation. The article listed the project methodology adjustments and impacts without detailing the causes. I won’t address any of the project methodology principles but wanted to highlight a few very specific impacts an Employee Central implementation will have any project.

Since some of these items increase your project risks it will be prudent to ensure that you offset these risks against the business decisions and benefits that you aim to achieve from implementing Employee Central. The project impacts and risks are temporary (months) while the implementation and planned benefits should have a much longer lifespan (years).

Cloud landscapes versus traditional SAP landscapes

One of the first and seemingly simple differences are that SAP has a strict three tiered landscape. Something etched into every trained SAP Basis consultants mind! The three tiered landscape is supported by a robust transport layer that was built to enable a mechanism to move configuration between systems (development, quality and production). With Employee Central you don’t have a tiered landscape. You may choose to have more than one Employee Central instance and use each of the instance for a specific purpose (development or production), but the instances will not be linked within the landscape. There is no transport layer and system to move the configuration and provide version control. The configuration is moved (some XML imports can be done) and recreated on each instance.

Without this help on the system level, the configuration and version control need to move up to the project management methodology. The project team will need to track it and ensure that they care of it.

Release schedules

SAP is known for upgrades and support packs. Both for the complexity and regular maintenance caused. Unfortunately, some of the bad rapport is incorrect assigned because some of the changes come from the fact the legal requirements dictate these changes. Also, because of the power of SAP’s limitless customization the balance between simplicity and future maintenance is not always the easy path to follow.

Employee Central promise to take care of all of this pain since the solution and releases are in the cloud the releases schedules are applied and takes care of changes. The tradeoff for this benefit is the lack of control of applying new releases and the visibility of what is contained in each release. You won’t have the detailed notes, version control to do comparisons or even SPAU (you may even miss the SPAU).

EC debugging and error handling vs SAP development workbench

Good or bad, every SAP consultants used the workbench to search data dictionary or the trace through some ABAP code. Find the exact failure point or even using the code as a roadmap for understand was and still is key.

Employee Central is a closed system. There is no application development interface, and the only access is via configuration layer. If the only benefit was simplicity, and reduced maintenance it would be ideal, but a great deal of self determination and control is given up in return. Taking into consideration that error handling is still in the initial stages of maturity (I am sure it will improve with future releases) the project will have to deal with very vague errors and no solution to debug or resolve the issues. The solution in place the Employee Central support channel and I comment more on this later.

Employee Central data migrations and data handling

SAP started with the batch import system and later LSMW became the staple food of many data imports. Both provided options and included enough control with error handling and feedback.

With EC the foundation object configuration generates import templates (spreadsheets) that need to populated and re-imported. The design is focused on simplicity and low maintenance. The error handling during the import process does however need to improve. Experiences included successful error reporting, but without any data in Employee Central. Also because the relationships between Employee Central objects (any HR objects on SAP as well) is so fundamental if any of these are not correctly configured the import will fail but without a clear indication of why or where to look to resolve the issue.

A last point to note is that the SAP landscape firstly lacked an ability to copy data between systems. For example from production to quality for testing purposes. This was initially solved by the Data Sync Manager and later developed into a huge market with many solutions. Employee Central has reset the clock and the last few years, and there is again no solution to move that one employee from production to quality to test. Because Employee Central is a closed solution (no third party software development solutions) I am not sure what the future holds in terms of solving this issue.

Employee Central support layer and channels

Logging a SAP support request was simple and provided direct feedback on the progress. Granted not all requests were resolved on the first attempt, but the support interface was simple and partly transparent. The body of knowledge that was generated at the back of all the support was staggering. Searching through the notes and finding a similar problem and associated solution was very powerful.

Employee Central will have build body of knowledge over time, but currently the main concern is that access the JIRA support is not available in the same sense that SAP was. It is effective an internal only support solution that cannot be accessed for logging or even search only access. Hopefully the access improves or alternatively that a secondary body of knowledge is made available to assist clients and partners.

I hope some of the expected impacts are clearer. If you are involved in a current Employee Central implementation, I wish you success. If you are planning an EC implementation make the adjustment and planning to ensure that cover and manage the few items I highlighted. Lastly, make sure have an implementation partner that is able and willing walk this road with you.

The 16th Annual HR Technology Conference will be in Las Vegas, at the Mandalay Bay, from October 7th to October 9th and it is regularlyconsidered the premier event for HR professionals, HR Technologists, consultants and customers. Thereare 43 in-depth sessions, great keynote speakers, over 250 vendors, networking events and 20 live one-hour demos by most of the major HR technology vendors. Theevent will bring out some of the smartest and most well respected individuals and customers in the HR Technology industry. I will be attending this year and taking part in special panel discussion moderated by Bill Kutik calledFirst Annual NextGen Influencers Panel: Getting Out From Behind the Baby Boomers. I am happy to announce I talked Bill Kutik into providing me a special $500 discount by using Promo Code JARRET13 (all caps) when you register online at www.HRTechConference.com so hope to see you there.

                                       Picture courtesy of Michael Krupa of the 2011 event and expected to be 50% bigger this year

If you are still on the fence I thought I would outline my top five reasons to go the HR Technology Conference this year.

Sessions- There will be 43 sessions. 20 live one-hour demos. 81 presenters, 65 are VPs or higher, including 26 C-level executives that cover all the major technology vendors including one that SAP and SuccessFactors folks wont want to miss called Pepsi Accepts the Challenge of the Cloud for HR using SuccessFactors. One of the sessions I am personally excited about is the HR Tonight Show Starring Bill Kutik and Naomi Bloom with a great line up including Leighanne Levensaler,Brian Sommer, Patricia Milligan and John Sumser. There is truly something for everyone and if you have any doubts just review the conference agenda as you will quickly get a sense of how difficult it is to choose amongst all the excellent content.

Networking- One of the under rated parts of any major event and something I outlined in my Valuable Lessons to Make the Most of your SAP Career is networking. The HR Technology Conference is a great opportunity to network with peers, meet new people and talking with fellow customers. The who’s who of the HR Technology industry will be at this event looking to swap war stories and business cards, connect on LinkedIn and Twitter and share information as well as discuss the sessions from each day. Please reach out to set up a meeting or stop me to say hi if you see me walking around as always enjoy meeting new people as well talking about HR.

SuccessConnect –Attending the HR Technology Conference this year is a no-brainer especially with SuccessConnect happening in Las Vegas at the Venetian on October 9^th through October 11^th.  I think it was a very smart decision by SuccessFactors to coordinate their annual SuccessConnect Conference to start 5 hours after the HR Technology conference ends as I would expect record attendance and it will be a great week for HR Technology.

Bill Kutik - This will be the last HR Technology Conference the Bill Kutik co-chairs before it falls into the capable hands of Steve Boese as he announced his retirement late last year. Bill does a great job and really pounds the pavement to promote this conference and it is only fitting to give him the proper send off in person. I reached out to Bill last week to get his take on why people should attend the conference and he told me “After 16 years HR Tech is finally becoming the HR conference for everybody.Technology has crept into every function and everybody needs to learn more about it. That’s why the conference has become so large and popular: It’s the best place to learn how to get the business benefits from technology.Counting everyone, there were 6,000 people in Chicago last year and if HR technology is ultimately your executive responsibility, your actual job, your current headache, or something you know you just need to learn more about for your career – you need to be there.” Hard to add any more of a convincing argument than that

Las Vegas- If you are still on the fence about the HR Technology Conference remember that this is being held in Las Vegas, which is a great city for conferences. Las Vegas is always a perfect spot to mix business and pleasure especially at the end of a long day of learning.

Hopefully I have outlined why you should attend and if there is any doubt you should also review Why Should You Attend the HR Technology Conference. If you are an SAP HCM or SuccessFactors professional this is one event that you won’t want to miss and don’t forget to use the special $500 discount by using Promo Code JARRET13 (all caps) when you register online at www.HRTechConference.com.

Hello.

Open  XML is  the new format of MS-Office documents.

take for example - Word Excel and PowerPoint.

all the files with extension ended with "x" are Open XML documents.

these files  replace the old Binary files

with a new technology.

this gives developers a new approach of handling Office documents.

in the link below is a post at Microsoft Site for Open  XML

about an Innovative application combines Open XML and ABAP

for documents generation and manipulation.

http://openxmldeveloper.org/blog/b/openxmldeveloper/archive/2013/02/13/innovative-use-of-open-xml-with-sap.aspx

Ronen Almog

Join SuccessFactors on Wednesday, July 31, 2013, at 10:00 a.m. PT and learn how to ensure your corporate career site reflects and enhances your
employer brand. In a LinkedIn survey of more than 4,700 talent acquisition decision makers, 50 percent reported that a strong employer brand resulted in significant cost-per-hire savings. And although employer branding involves more than your career site, it should be at the heart of your branding strategy.

Join Jessica Miller-Merrell for a discussion of employer branding best practices, with a special focus on the corporate career site, including:

• Insight into the latest career site findings and trends
• How to creatively market your career site
• How to measure your career site's success

Find out how you can reduce costs while promoting your employer brand.

Register today.

We are all talents!

Talents and associated costs make up for the biggest chunk on our P/L at SAP.

Talents are the future of our company.

Talents are SAP's most valuable asset.

Why shouldn't we take a closer look at investing intelligently in our talent?

Deeper Talent Analysis is needed to better manage investments.

Read how we leverage our flagship Analytics solution - SAP Predictive Analysis - to support our existing Workforce Planning and Analysis processes. Enrico Palumbo, heading our Strategic Workforce Planning initiatives, shares his take on SAP Lumira, embedded in Predictive Analysis for sophisticated visualization of data, as well as how business user data mining and predictive modeling can help Corporate HR guide SAP's talent through career paths to be more efficient, performing and highly engaged to lead SAP into a glorious future.

HERE'S THE BLOG: http://bit.ly/SAP-TA-blog

Have fun reading, share your feedback.

In case you are having further ideas how we can leverage Lumira or Predictive Analysis please share with me

We get a quick idea of "What's new in HR Renewal Feature Pack 3" from Robert Muller's blog. But he didn't get into many details with respect to one of the important feature - Mass Processing functionality.  I decided to put down my thoughts about this new tool/functionality in this blog.

Quick Introduction -

After getting the Feature Pack 3 installed in our system, I started my hunt for the new features from my favorite transaction code - Activate Business Functions(SFW5) . I found the following switches which is new and interesting -

1. HCM_PAO_MP_1 - HCM, Mass Processing and Organization

Quickly browsed through the release notes -

Short text

HCM_607_PAOMP1_M: Business Function HCM, Mass Processing for Personnel and Organization (new)

Use

As of EA-HRGXX 607 SP10, the business function HCM, Mass Processing for Personnel and Organization is available. With this business function, you can enable HR professionals to process the data of multiple candidates using  the Mass Hiring Web application.

This business function offers the following features:

• Integration of the Mass Hiring Web application into the landing page

• Appealing and intuitive Web user interface, which offers a central workspace for an HR professional to manage data of multiple candidates when hiring employees.

            With the Excel-like Web UI, an HR professional can complete the whole maintenance process for candidates   by carrying out the following: 

• Download an empty excel template for mass hiring - an HR professional can forward the downloaded Excel template to a third party, for example, an external job agency, to maintain candidates' data. The empty excel then can be forwarded to the third party, for example, the external job agencies, for data maintenance of candidates. The structure and layout of the Excel template can be customized using the Design Time tool, for example, to include value help and remarks, and to set important fields as leading fields.

• Import an Excel sheet with records of multiple new hires from a local PC into the application - an HR professional can choose to import all candidates or the selected rows of candidates in the Excel sheet. The application supports delta data handling to import revised data to the new UI.

• Export the candidates into an Excel sheet stored on local PC; they can also export only rows with errors for offline correction.

• Handle errors - there are aggregated error messages and detailed messages on the UI, with the latter directly navigating to the cells with errors. The error messages are exported in a separate worksheet in an Excel file, when an HR professional exports the error entries into an offline Excel file.

• Save drafts - an HR professional may leave the task by saving the current workspace as a draft, and then access the drafts from the "Tasks" lane in the landing page.

• Mass edit, mass validate, and mass submit candidates' data.

                      To edit: select rows with identical values, find and replace values in one step, or copy values from a row to other rows. 

To validate: the system checks the quality of candidate data before it is finally submitted to the database. Both synchronous and asynchronous validation processes are available and can be conducted in parallel to save time, if the function is enabled in the Design Time tool.

                  To submit: submit all candidates with qualified data into the database in one step. The candidates with unqualified data remain in the workspace for an HR professional to correct and then re-submit them.

• Automatic duplication check during importing and validations - the system can automatically identify duplicate candidates, so as to avoid repetitive and invalid records.
• Rehire detection - the potential rehires can be detected during validation. An HR professional can check and decide whether to reuse an existing personnel number for rehires, or to create a new one for new hires. You can define the rule during Customizing.
• Automatic creation of personnel numbers for all new hires after final step of data submission - after submission of the candidate data, personnel numbers are generated automatically, so that an HR professional can focus on their business tasks.

Note

To use this business function, you have to activate the Human Capital Management (EA-HR) Enterprise Extension.

Alright, it's a decent introduction from SAP. I went ahead activating this switch to avail this amazing new functionality.

2.     HCM_TIM_WDA_1 - HCM, Multiple Approvals for Leave Request in ESS and MSS

This switch didn't interest me a lot since the leave request applications are not anymore new Anyways, I might write one more blog on this topic, so not going to discuss much about this topic now.

Note: As a safety measure - To make sure that we get most up to date HCM Process and forms functionality, we have also activated any switch related to ASR framework i.e. HCM_ASR_CI_1, HCM_ASR_CI_2, HCM_ASR_CI_3, HCM_ASR_CI_4 and HCM_ASR_CI_5.

What next ?

My next thought was "What's new in SPRO ?". So went straight to the point by opening the SPRO Node - Personnel Management > Personnel & Organization. And of course, as hinted in the release notes, I see a new node called "Processes" -

Of course yes, I went ahead reading the help again to get a quick glimpse -

Define the Mass Hiring Scenario

Use

In this organizational activity, you can find the necessary information for defining the form scenario required for mass hiring.

Note

• The FPM application Main Application for Candidate Mass Processing (HRMP_LISTVIEW_MAIN), or the Mass Hiring Web application, does not support the Concurrent Employment scenario where an employee has multiple personnel assignments within one organization.
• Based on the existing HCM infotype framework, the end date for the Organizational Assignment (IT0001) record must always be set to the high date (12/31/9999) in our Mass Hiring Web application. In case of any temporary hires with dedicated end date, for example, seasonal hires or contract hires, a separate termination action needs to be created using the transaction code PA40 after successful execution of the mass hire action.

  Requirements 

• You have activated the HCM, Mass Processing for Personnel & Organization 01 (HCM_PAO_MP_1) business function.

• You have set up the Customizing for the Personnel & Organization (PA-PAO) component.

  Activities 

To define a mass hiring action, perform the following steps in Customizing for Personnel Management under Personnel & Organization -> Processes -> Design Time for Processes and Forms:

1. Define a form scenario using the "Mass Form" type to provide the basis for a list-based hiring action, for example,  seasonal mass hiring or campus mass hiring. The form scenario allows you to do the following:
2. Define the rules for duplication check and rehire detection.

• Under Fields, you determine the basic set of fields that can be filled in a hiring action.

• In the same view, you also configure the default values and input help for the form fields, and determine the basic layout of an Excel template for offline data maintenance.

• In Parallel Processing under Other Attributes, you enable asynchronous and parallel processing to accelerate the processing of a large amount of candidate information.

• Under Form, you generate a Web Dynpro component configuration for the Mass Hiring Web Application (HRMP_LISTVIEW_MAIN), an FPM List View form, for the user interface. Here, you can also check and adjust the order of the fields for the UI that you have defined under Fields.

  For more information about the mass form, see SAP Library for SAP ERP under SAP ERP Central Component -> Human Resources -> Personnel Management -> Personnel & Organization -> Processes -> International Mass Processing -> Configuration of the Mass Hiring Web application-> Design Time for Mass Hiring. 

For more information, see the following:

• Customizing for Personnel Management under Personnel & Organization -> Processes -> Mass Processing ->BAdI: Implement Duplication and Rehire Check.
• SAP Library for SAP ERP under SAP ERP Central Component -> Human Resources -> Personnel Management -> Personnel & Organization -> Processes -> International Mass Processing -> Configuration of the Mass Hiring Web Application -> Duplication Check and Rehire Detection

     3. Integrate the mass form into the Actions lane of the landing page for HR professionals.

For more information, see Customizing for Personnel & Organization under Role -> Configure Launchpad for Actions.

So far, I have covered only two topics i.e. Activating required switches and exploring SPRO. In my next blog, I would get into more details which gives us a clear idea about this new functionality.

Thanks for your time.