Updates from the H2 2022 SAP SuccessFactors Release

SAP released SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite on December 9, 2022. It contains significant new capabilities for customers. In particular, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central’s new features help customers better manage their HR business processes. We’ll run through a number of the key features in this article.

Hire Date Correction

The enhancements to the Hire Date Correction tool (reference ECT-184843) are some of the most important features of the H2 2022 SAP SuccessFactors release. Previously, users had to change past and present hire dates in the History UI of the Job Information portlet. The New Hire Correction tool enables users to change the hire date of a current employee, as well as that of a future employee who has been entered into the system already. Users can move the hire date to the past, present, or future. The New Hire Correction tool can also change the hire date for users with multiple concurrent employments or for new hires from onboarding that passed the Pending Hire stage in Manage Pending Hires. Because the Hire Date Correction tool is now the place to make changes to hire dates, it is no longer possible to make changes to the hire date of a user in the History UI. However, it is still possible to change a rehire date for a rehired user via their old employment record.

Localizations

There are also several localization features in the H2 2022 SAP SuccessFactors release for multinational customers. The key features from a localization perspective are:

• New country versions for Bolivia and Paraguay (taking the total number of localized country versions to 104)
• Change of currency for Croatia, effective January 1, 2023, when the euro replaced the kuna as the official currency
• New country- and region-specific Localized Biographical Information portlet

The new Localized Biographical Information portlet is used to collect country/region, region of birth, and place of birth information to replicate from Employee Central to Employee Central Payroll. This will benefit customers who require accurate maintenance and replication of critical employee data for their payroll system.

Cleanup of Manage Organization, Pay, and Job Structures UI

The MDF-based Foundation Objects were removed from the list of objects in the Manage Organization, Pay, and Job Structures UI. These objects are managed in Manage Data and having them listed there was confusing. This enhancement makes system maintenance cleaner and easier for administrators.

Support for Additional Cost Centers

Prior to the H2 2022 SAP SuccessFactors release, users could only maintain up to 12 cost centers with the Alternative Cost Distribution feature. Now, they can maintain up to 30 cost centers.

Global Benefits

There are three new features in Global Benefits that are important to customers in the United States:

• Storage of offer details of the Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC) insurance plan for employees.
  • This enables companies to report health coverage and enrollment offers to the IRS in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
• Reporting Life Events for a future date
  • This new feature enables administrators to report future-dated life events of employees using the new Report a Life Event page. This means that an administrator will not need to wait until a future life event occurs to enter it into the system.
• Deprecation of Savings Plan-related fields
  • Several Savings Plan fields were moved from the Benefit, Benefit Savings Plan Tier Configuration, and Benefit Deduction Details objects to the Savings Account USA, Savings Account Tier Configuration, and Savings Account Deduction Details objects. The existing fields will be removed from the old objects on May 26, 2023. As a result, any reports and integrations using these fields will no longer work as of May 26, 2023.

Time Management

As always, there are numerous enhancements in the Time Management space of SAP SuccessFactors. Many of the enhancements in the H2 2022 release are not particularly sexy, but they do impact the ongoing operation of time entry and time off in the Employee Central system:

• Users can now disregard account postings—such as leave bookings—that are after the termination date of an employee when the time account payout balance is calculated upon termination. This ensures that the payout balance for an employee is correct and isn’t considering future bookings that will not be taken by the employee.
• The Time Sheet Entry and Allowance objects have new permissions. These control who can view, create, correct, and delete time sheet entries and allowances on a time sheet. The new field-level permission overrides enable users to override these permissions for specific fields in time sheet entries and allowances. This gives users greater control over who can make entries and changes to time sheet entries and allowances.
• The new Time Sheet UI is now opt-out rather than opt-in. Customers who do not want to use it must proactively opt to not use it. Customers should only do this if they have processes that the new Time Sheet UI does not support.
• The old Time Sheet UI will be removed from Employee Central on May 19, 2023. Any customers that cannot use the new Time Sheet UI must make the changes required so that they can switch to the new Time Sheet UI prior to May 19, 2023.
• The Temporary Time Information object is now available for use in Stories in People Analytics. This enables you to report on temporary work schedules.
• It is now possible to replicate time management data—such as absences, time accounts and related information, time sheet, and planned working time—from Employee Central to SAP Payroll on-premise using point-to-point integration. This integration was only previously available between Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll. This enables a more streamlined integration process and removes the need to use middleware to replicate this data between Employee Central and SAP Payroll on-premise.
• It is now possible to configure grace period rounding for clock in and out times. This means that more accurate time recording can be made for employees that clock in and out for attendance.

Data Privacy and Protection

There are two new data privacy and protection features in the H2 2022 SAP SuccessFactors release:

• Deletion of email address and phone number from the People Profile header for inactive users
  • After a purge of inactive employee data, the People Profile header for the inactive employee no longer displays the email address and phone number of the inactive employee. This meets various data privacy regulations.
• New Managing General Audit tool
  • It is now possible to enable auditing for page access, data export, and proxy sessions using the new tool Manage General Audit tool. Administrators determine how long to retain auditing data is retained in order to meet SOX compliance and other data privacy regulations.

More Jobs Available in the Job Monitor

As of the H2 2022, SuccessFactors have made 14 more jobs available in the Job Monitor. These 14 jobs are:

• Index Report Search Repository
• Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Employee Master Data Changes
• Evaluate Offer for Affordable Care Act Reporting
• MDF Mass Change Run
• Position Management Daily Hierarchy Adaptation
• TGM Data Import (goal import)
• Goal notification email
• MDF Data Volume Collection
• MDF Object Definition to DB SYNC (syncs MDF object definitions to database)
• Migrate Capabilities Data to Talent Intelligence Hub
• Migrate Capabilities Portfolio to Growth Portfolio
• Migrate General Display Name
• Reset Account Passwords Job
• Regenerate Matrix Placement History

The ability to monitor more jobs helps with better administration of the SAP SuccessFactors system. SuccessFactors plan to add more jobs to the Job Monitor over time.