Key SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Features of the H1 2023 Release

⇨ The latest release of the SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite was released on June 2, 2023.

⇨ Many important features have been enhanced, including compensation, position management, and time management.

⇨ Employ Central also has important integration changes, including to third-party standard integration packages.

The first half 2023 release of SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite was released on June 2, 2023. There are a number of new features for customers, including SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. In this article, we’ll look at a number of the key features in the new release.

General Enhancements

There were a number of general enhancements that are important:

• Enhanced message handling when editing data
  • The error messages displayed in the History UI, Employee Self-Service UI, and Manager Self-Service UI when editing data have been enhanced to include additional information and clarity, such as including the severity of the issue and more clear explanations of what the issue is. This makes it easier to understand and resolve issues when editing data.
• Prevent deletion of Global Information when editing Personal Information
  • An option has been introduced to prevent Global Information from being deleted when editing the Personal Information portlet on the People Profile. This ensures data consistency when localization information is required for downstream processes, such as payroll or time management.
• Execution of business rules on Emergency Contacts import
  • When performing an import of Emergency Contacts, onChange and onSave business rules configured for the Emergency Contacts portlet will execute. This means that you get the same system behavior when importing data as you get when entering data onto the UI, which provides data consistency across the system.
• Bank ID validation
  • A hyphen has been added to the characters that are allowed as part of validation of the Bank ID in the Bank MDF object. Previously, only numbers, capital Latin characters, and underscore were allowed. This enables you to maintain Bank IDs that contain a hyphen, which is a fairly common character used in an ID.
• Document Management validations
  • Validations have been added to Document Generation to prevent an MDF object being added to a document template that is an association of a parent MDF object. This new change prevents errors occurring when generating a document from the document template.
• Configurable Concurrent Employment hiring screen
  • It is now possible to configure the hiring screen when adding a concurrent employment to an employee. This enables you to configure the hiring screen and align the hiring process exactly to your needs, thus improving the user experience of the system when adding a concurrent employment.
• Workflow Request details enhancements for the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app
  • The Request Details screen in the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app for both Android and iOS have been enhanced to create clarity, brevity, and better layout of existing data. This makes for an enhancement user experience when managing and approving workflows in the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app.
• Validations for Manage Business Configuration in the Check Tool
  • Data model validations
    • Validations of the Succession Data Model and Country/Region Specific Succession Data Model have been added to the Check Tool. Running this check after uploading either or both of the data models identifies any configuration areas that can lead to instability in the system after configuration changes have been made.
  • Validations and removal of deprecated data elements, actions, and fields
    • A new check has been added to the Check Tool for Employee Central, which identifies deprecated data elements, actions, and fields in Business Configuration and enables you to have them removed. While these deprecated items do not impact the system operation, they do show up in Manage Business Configuration. This new change enables you to remove these deprecated items to improve the user experience when configuration and maintaining the system.

Compensation

SAP have added a range of important enhancements for managing employee compensation in Employee Central in the H1 2023 release, including:

• New filters for Off Cycle Event Batch in Pay Scale Structure
  • The Off Cycle Event Batch object used for Grade Step Progression in the Pay Scale Structure now has all active date fields from Job Information and Employment Information available as filters. This provides more options for Grade Step Progression and enables more organizations to use this capability for automated Grade Step Progression.
• New Job for migration of legacy Pay Scale Picklist Values to MDF
  • A new job has been introduced to enable you to migrate from the Picklist Values for the legacy Pay Scale Area and Pay Scale Type fields on Job Information to the MDF objects used in the Pay Scale Structure. Likewise, the legacy picklists of the Job Information fields Pay Scale Type and Pay Scale Area will be deleted on May 18, 2024. Customers should look to migrate to the Pay Scale Structure before May 18, 2024.
• New Admin Alerts for Compensation data
  • The Compensation Information Issues Alert and the Non-Recurring Pay Component Issues Alert have been added to the HR Data Issues category of the Admin Alerts screen. These enable you to find issues with employee compensation data, such as empty mandatory fields, missing picklist fields, or invalid Foundation Object values. This enables you to identify and fix issues in HR data to maintain data consistency and stability.
• Enhancements to Recurring Pay Component Imports
  • When importing Recurring Pay Component records that do not have a corresponding Compensation Information record, the system now creates a new Compensation Information to match the recurring pay component record. This enhancement reduces the effort required to import Recurring Pay Component to one import file, where previously two import files were needed.

Position Management

There is one key enhancement for Position Management in the H1 2023 release:

• Position validations for Internal Hire, Concurrent Employment, and Global Assignment
  • Position Management validations are now triggered when the Job Information portlet loads during the hiring of an internal candidate, when hiring someone into a concurrent employment, or when sending an employee on a global assignment. This creates data consistency with the employee’s Job Information record and ensures they have the correct data entered into their employment record.

Localizations

There are a couple of new localization features in the H1 2023 release for multi-national customers. The key features from a localization perspective are:

• New currency for Sierra Leone. The SLE/925 currency is added to the system and will eventually replace the existing SLL currency.
• New permissions for Localized Biographical Information
  • The recently introduced Localized Biographical Information portlet could be permissioned for a user to view or edit, but there were no permissions for the fields on the portlet. Now it is possible to give view and edit permissions for each field in the Localized Biographical Information portlet. This change gives a greater level of access control to sensitive personal information.

Time Management

There are a number of useful enhancements to Time Management in the H1 2023 release:

• Information button on Time Off ESS UI
  • An Information button has been added to the Employee Self-Service Time Off screen. Information can be created in HTML format for each Time Profile that an employee can view by clicking the Information button at the top of the screen when requesting time off. This addition improves the user experience by helping employees get important information about time off when making time off requests.
• Replacement of old Time Sheet UI
  • The old Time Sheet UI is set to be removed from Employee Central on June 2, 2023. This was announced as May 19, 2023 in the H2 2022 release. Any customers that cannot use the new Time Sheet UI because of their current configuration must make the changes required so that they can switch to the new Time Sheet UI prior to June 2, 2023.
• Default entries for custom fields on the Time Sheet UI
  • It is now possible to create default entries for custom fields on the Employee Time Sheet Entry and Allowance objects that appear on the Time Sheet UI when the employee uses the Record button in the Working Times, On-Call Times, and Allowances sections. This speeds up time entry, since certain common values can be defaulted onto the Time Sheet UI.
• Initialization rules on the Time Sheet UI
  • It is now possible to define initialization rules fields on the Employee Time Sheet Entry and Allowance objects that appear on the Time Sheet UI when the employee uses the Record button in the Working Times, On-Call Times, and Allowances sections. This speeds up time entry, since rules can be used to reduce the data entry steps when recording time.
• Effective-Dated Time Profile
  • The Time Profile object is now effective-dated, meaning that future-dated changes can be made to a Time Profile record, instead of creating a new Time Profile record and creating a new Job Information record in the employee’s record. This reduces effort and lowers the risk of new changes to Time Profiles being made too late to be effective for an employee, thus adding effort to retroactively fix issues.
• Contingent Workers’ absences displayed in Team Absence Calendar
  • The absences of Contingent Workers are now displayed in the Team Absence Calendar in both the web UI and the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app. This enables a manager to see all absences in their team, irrespective of whether the team member is an employee or contingent worker, which enhances the ability to plan various activities better.
• Time Forms
  • The new Time Forms feature has been introduced to enable customers to generate a statement in PDF or Word format that contains employee absence data, such as sick leave or maternity leave. This feature enables customers to easily provide employees with these statements, based on an employee request.
• Multiple payouts on the same posting date with the same pay components
  • It is now possible to make multiple time account payouts on the same posting date with the same pay components for an employee. This enables you to payout all time accounts to an employee when they are terminated, for example.
• New Planned Working Time tab in Time Workbench
  • The Planned Working Time tab has been added to the Time Workbench. This tab displays a history of which work schedules have been assigned to a given employee over a specified period, as well as enabling temporary time information to be created, a wizard to assign temporary changes of work schedule, and display partial holidays (as per the new enhancements to Partial Holidays that have also been introduced in this release).
• Support for hours worked on public holidays
  • The Holiday Work Pattern has been introduced to configure premium pay for shift workers and regular salaried employees when they work on public holidays. This enables employees who have to work on public holidays (e.g. police officers, production workers, nurses, etc.) to have the appropriate premiums generated and sent to payroll for payment.
• Enhancements to Partial Holidays
  • Half-day holidays for clock time and duration-based recorders, as well as adding more flexibility to the ability to define the planned working time on a partial holiday, have been introduced. This enables more flexibility to how partial holidays are configured for clock-in/clock-out scenarios.
• New Short-Term Disability configuration
  • The short-term disability feature for the US has been simplified so that the configuration is done at the employee level instead of creating different time types for each absence pay policy. This creates a better user experience when assigning and managing short-term disability to US-based employees.
• New Rule Function to calculate absence based on deduction quantity
  • A new Rule Function has been introduced to calculate the total deduction quantity based on absences in a specified period with a specified time type, in either hours or days. This Rule Function can be used in accrual rules to prorate accruals based on the number of absences taken by deduction quantity or in absence valuation rules to restrict the number of absences that can be taken in a period.
• Reporting of daily absences
  • Daily absences – defined as Leave of Absence (LOA) and Undetermined End Date absence types – can now be reported on in People Analytics. This enables the ability for customers to report on these type of daily absences.
• Leave Balance available in workflow approvals in SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app
  • Time off approvals on the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app now display the employee’s leave balance. This helps managers make a better-informed decision when reviewing time off requests for approval.
• Time Management objects and data can be transported via Configuration Center
  • Configuration and non-user transactional data for Time Management MDF objects can now be transported to other instances using Configuration Center. This provides a low-risk, error-free method of managing and transporting configuration changes between SAP SuccessFactors instances.

Integrations

The H1 2023 release has a number of important changes to Employee Central integrations:

• Deprecation of third-party standard integration packages
  • Four third-party standard integration packages will be deprecated on November 17, 2023. Customers must look to move their integrations from these integration packages before deprecation. The four packages are:
    • Standard Payroll Integration Template for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
    • Standard Time Integration Template for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
    • Standard Benefits Integration Template for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
    • SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central with Third Party Benefits Vendor-Thomsons Darwin
  • Extraction of specific fields and segments from a Compound Employee API query
    • It is now possible to extract specific fields and segments from a Compound Employee API query. This enables reduced data transmission between Employee Central and other systems, as well as enables compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by reducing what data is extracted to only what is needed by the downstream system.
  • New tool to temporarily exclude records with errors from processing in SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA
    • A new tool has been introduced to enable all employee data replicated from Employee Central to SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA to be processed irrespective of whether the replication process completes or not. Previously, if the replication process was stopped – for example, an employee record had an error or the internet connection disconnected – then processing SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA would stop and a number of records would be unprocessed.
  • BAdI mapping option for data conversion when replicating from SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA to Employee Central
    • When migrating data or replicating data from SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA to Employee Central, you can now use a BAdI mapping for value conversion. Previously there was only the pre-delivered options available. This enables customers to use their own logic for converting values.
  • New Exchange Rate Object for integrating exchange rates from SAP S/4HANA to Employee Central using MDI
    • When using SAP Master Data Integration (MDI) for integrating SAP S/4HANA and Employee Central, you can now use the Exchange Rate Object to replicate the exchange rate data from SAP S/4HANA into Employee Central. This removes the need to dual enter data in Employee Central or build a custom integration.
  • Extract last change to compensation data on a specific date only

When using the OData API, you can now extract compensation data from the EmpCompensation and EmpPayCompRecurring entities for only the last effective change made on a record on a specific date or date range. Previously, you could only extract all records on a specific da