Integrating SuccessFactors Employee Central employee data with SAP ERP HCM on-premise employee data allows companies with existing SAP systems that are considering implementing or have already implemented SuccessFactors Employee Central to support their business processes (such as payroll) by continuing to run these processes on their existing SAP ERP HCM systems.

This process is initiated when HR master data is sent from SuccessFactors Employee Central and updates the corresponding infotypes in the SAP ERP HCM system. Since different countries have different payroll requirements and need different sets of data (e.g., infotypes) to be copied from SuccessFactors Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system, companies can configure their SAP systems based on country-specific requirements. The entire integration process requires careful analysis and planning up front, including project managers with experience integrating SuccessFactors with SAP ERP HCM.

SAP-Delivered Integration Packages

SAP delivers a preconfigured integration package for the middleware. This integration package contains the required mapping between the Employee Central data fields and the corresponding fields in the SAP ERP HCM on-premise system. Companies also have the ability to change the custom data mapping to meet their business requirements. Once these integration packages are installed and configured, the replication of master data can be run. The replication process is triggered from the middleware, either manually or at scheduled intervals. Note that SAP ERP HCM on premise must still be configured as per the minimum requirements for the replication to work.

There are two integration packages (also called iFlows) that trigger the replication of data from Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM on-premise system:

1. Employee Replication message
2. Organization Data Replication message

The Employee Replication message triggers the replication of employee data from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM (Personnel Administration—PA—data). PA infotypes are created or updated when the replication runs. You can see the complete list of supported PA infotypes in the sidebar, “Infotypes and Relationships Supported by Standard Integration.”

The Organization Data replication message triggers the replication of organization objects (Organizational Management—OM—data) and the relationships between the Org Objects to SAP ERP HCM. OM has four sub-replication processes:

• Org Unit Replication (OTYPE: O)
• Job Replication (OTYPE: C)
• Position Replication (OTYPE: S)
• Employee Org Assignment Replication (HRP1001: Relationship)

Org Unit, Job, and Position Replication are responsible for replicating the object types in the SAP ERP HCM system, while the Employee Org Assignment creates or updates the HRP1001(Relationships) infotype.

Web Service Calls

You must activate the required web services in the SAP ERP HCM system to communicate and receive data from Employee Central. The web services should be activated to complete the PA (employee master data) and OM (organizational unit, job, position, and relationship) processes in SAP ERP HCM. A list of the required web services is shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Web service names and replication scenarios

Mapping of Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM External Codes

When you start integrating Success Factors Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system, you need to identify what data needs to be mapped manually, as the naming conventions, format, and codes may be different for Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM.

For example, the external code for address type Permanent Mailing address is HOME in Employee Central. In SAP ERP HCM, the standard code is 1 (or you may have configured a custom subtype in your SAP ERP HCM system). If the external codes differ between Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM and you do not do the mapping, the replication errors out since the Employee Central code is not valid in SAP ERP HCM based on your configuration.

You also need to know the Global Data Types (GDT) name, the code list ID, and the list agency ID codes.

The GDT name determines which data types are being mapped. If you have defined custom fields or use different external codes than what were delivered in Employee Central or in SAP ERP HCM, you must use table PAOCFEC_MAP_CC for your custom mapping. You can find the entire standard code mapping from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM in table PAOCFEC_MAP. (Refer to the latest Employee Central Payroll Implementation Handbook for more details on mapping entries; log-in required.)

Figure 1 shows an example of mapping Event Reasons from Employee Central to Action Reasons in SAP ERP HCM. In this example, NEWHIRE in Employee Central maps to 01(New hire) in SAP ERP HCM.

Figure 1

Map event reason to action reason

Schedule Background Jobs in SAP ERP HCM to Complete the Replication Process

Every time a replication process is triggered from middleware to SAP ERP HCM, a staging table is used in SAP ERP HCM to maintain all the replication requests. A staging table is used for performance reasons and to minimize time delays or temporary errors caused by, for example, the employee or the object being locked in SAP ERP HCM or due to a failed replication. Once the replication request is captured in the staging table, an event is triggered based on the replication scenario.

A separate event is created for master data replication, organizational object replication, and organizational assignment replication. You have to schedule separate background reports tied to each event to complete the replication request from the staging table. Once the scheduled jobs are successfully completed, the replication of data from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM is completed.

Table 2 highlights the events and the reports associated with the events:

Table 2

Reports that need to be scheduled

Some important points to keep in mind when scheduling background jobs are:

• Employee data replication and organizational object (Org Unit, Job and Position) replication are independent of each other. This means that when a new employee or a new object is created or modified in Employee Central, there is no dependency on replication except for infotype 0001(Org Assignment) on the employee replication.
• The employee master data replication message updates fields in infotype 0001, apart from the OM fields for position, job, and organizational unit. These OM fields are updated by the organizational assignment message in OM and then synchronized by PA–PD integration. PA–PD integration is the integration between OM and PA.
• Organizational assignment replication (creating HRP1001 in SAP ERP) is dependent upon employee data replication and organizational data replication. If the employee replication or the organizational object replication has not taken place or has failed, creating HRP1001 is not possible since the employee and the objects do not yet exist. You should always schedule this job to run after employee data and organizational data replication because you need the employee and object IDs to exist in the SAP system before replication.
• It is also recommended by SAP as a best practice that you schedule a background job that picks up pending and failed requests in the staging table. If you do not schedule this job, any jobs that failed or are pending have to be manually triggered in the SAP system. If background jobs are automatically scheduled, this is taken care of.

Extensibility

Extensibility, simply put, allows you to extend the standard functionality of the integration from Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system. Standard functionality does not always meet company-specific requirements as they may have unique processes or designs. With extensibility, you can tweak the standard functionality and adapt it to meet your requirements.

In the next section, I highlight several custom requirements you can achieve for organizational data and employee data replication.

Organizational Data Extensibility

Following is a list of enhancements that you could achieve using the Organizational Data Extensibility:

• You can replicate custom fields and country-specific fields for organizational unit, job, and position from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM.
• You can change the standard mapping of the connector and map it to the custom field in Employee Central for infotype 0000 (Object).
• You can change the standard relationships and use another relationship in HRP-1001(Relationship)
• You can prevent relationships from being created.
• You can create relationships to objects that are not supported by the standard connector.
• You can ignore existing relationships in the SAP ERP HCM system.

Employee Data Extensibility

Using extensibility, you can map Employee Central custom fields to SAP ERP HCM infotypes. You can map custom fields from the Job Info, Personal Info, and Comp Info fields to infotypes 0001, 0002, 0007, and 0008, respectively, in table PAOCF_EXTMAP.

In the example shown in Figure 2, custom fields from the Job Information Portlet (in Employee Central) are mapped to the pay scale group and the pay scale level (in the SAP ERP HCM system).

Figure 2

Map Employee Central custom fields to the pay scale group and level in the SAP ERP HCM system

You can also:

• Map Employee Central standard fields to custom fields in SAP ERP HCM infotypes.
• Change the logic of how the system fills SAP ERP HCM infotypes of the standard set (infotypes 0001, 0014, and 0015).
• Fill SAP ERP HCM infotypes outside the standard set (using a generic extension with an XML attachment), and define custom mapping of Employee Central code values and identifiers to SAP ERP field values.

The Replication Process

So far I’ve looked at the different setups and configurations that need to take place before the replication process occurs. Once the replication message is triggered, infotypes related to the organizational data or the employee data are created or updated. Let’s take a quick look at the end-to-end replication process at a high level and see how it works.

After all of the employee data has been converted into Employee Central and data extraction is triggered by the middleware through a scheduled job, the full transmission start date (FTSD) must be defined in the middleware before extraction. The FTSD is usually the go-live date for Employee Central. This is the date used to determine what data needs to be fed over to SAP ERP HCM, when (e.g., any data that is prior to this date is not sent from middleware to the SAP system.)  Any records that are valid as of this date are sent to the SAP ERP HCM system.

A variety of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are used to extract the data depending on the object being replicated. For example, department replication from Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system uses FODepartment API. If position is being replicated, then Position API is used. For employee data replication, the compound employee API is used.

After the initial run, if any data is modified in Employee Central, all the historical data for that object or employee is fed over to the middleware as of the FTSD.

The Last Modified date (stored as a reference time-stamp in the middleware) is used to filter records with newer time stamps, and will replicate only these records to the SAP ERP HCM system.

Every replication scenario leverages a staging table. Once the data has been stored in the staging table, corresponding reports must be scheduled to complete the actual writing of the data in the SAP ERP HCM system.

For both organizational data and employee data replication, a key mapping table is maintained in the SAP ERP HCM system. During every replication process, it checks the table to see if the object or employee already exists. If the key mapping table does not have an entry for that object or employee being replicated, a new object or employee is created in the SAP ERP HCM system and a new entry is maintained in the table with the object or employee ID. If the key mapping table does have an entry for that object or employee, it performs the modify operation.

If replication is unsuccessful for any reason, you can track the errors both in Employee Central and the SAP ERP HCM system.

Key Functionalities

Let’s look at some of the functionalities that the standard replication process has to offer. You should leverage these whenever possible since they can help you improve the integration process.  Below are some of the key functionalities:

• Data Replication Monitor
• Automatic rescheduling of replication
• Country Filtering
• Infotype Filtering
• Exclude from Deletion

I discuss each of these functionalities in more detail in the following sections.

Data Replication Monitor

The Data Replication Monitor shows the status of the employee replication and allows you to monitor the replication activities. For any replications in Failed status, you can view the error messages and make note of any issues that need to be fixed (Figure 3). If the issue is on the Employee Central side, once you update the employee record, the employee replication process is automatically re-triggered. If the issue is on the SAP ERP HCM system side (e.g., a mapping issue or missing configuration), once it’s been fixed, select the Employee Name and click the Send button to trigger the replication process.

Figure 3

The list of errors in the Data Replication Monitor

Automatic Rescheduling of Replication

Not all replication errors are caused by bad employee data or missing configurations. Certain errors (for example, the employee’s data is locked in the SAP ERP HCM system, the payroll area is locked, or the data is in the correction phase in the SAP system) are automatically rescheduled to be re-triggered at scheduled intervals. You can also configure a business rule to set your own rescheduled timing for these errors or you can create a custom rule.

Country Filtering

You can restrict data replication from Employee Central based on country grouping if there are multiple countries in the same SAP instance. This way you can control data replication for only a specified country without impacting employees from other countries.

Infotype Filtering

If you want to replicate only certain infotypes for a given country, then you must define those infotypes and countries in configuration table PAOCFEC_IT_FILT. If you do not define any infotypes in this customizing activity, all infotypes and their subtypes are replicated from Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system.  If you are integrating multiple countries, but only defining one country in this customizing activity, the employee data will be replicated only for that country.

Exclude From Deletion

By default, if an infotype is included in the replication process but a given subtype entry is not maintained in Employee Central, the replication process assumes that the given subtype entry was deleted in Employee Central. As a result, it attempts to delete the corresponding record in the SAP ERP HCM system that does not exist in Employee Central. You can implement the BAdI (EX_PAOCF_EC_EXCLUDE_FROM_DELET) for this and create a custom table where you can maintain a list of infotypes and subtypes that should not be deleted.

Some Key Points to Remember

Employee Central becomes the system of record for the master data. Once the data is replicated, records cannot be modified directly in the SAP ERP HCM system—or, more precisely, they can be modified in SAP ERP HCM, but they should not be because they will be overwritten by the Employee Central records the next time the replication runs.

A common question is, how often should the replication process run? This depends on how often or how quickly you need the master data to be in sync between Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM. This is a case-by-case decision that needs to be made, and varies depending on the number of transactions.

It’s important to remember that employee data replication and organizational data replication are independent of each other. As a result, you don’t have to implement both Integration Packs if you are only interested in, say, Employee Data replication.

Organizational assignment replication (HRP1001) is dependent on employee data replication and organizational data replication. As a result, you should schedule this job to run only after employee data replication and organizational data replication have taken place.

Infotypes that are updated or filled with dynamic actions are not supported. You have to use the BAdI extensibility to update all the infotypes that would have otherwise been updated. Using BAdIs EX_PAOCF_EC_PROCESS_EMPLOYEE and EX_PAOCF_EC_PROCESS_EMPLOYMENT you can change infotype data outside of the standard set of infotypes.

The additional actions infotype (0302) is not supported currently (June 2015). In SAP ERP HCM, you can take multiple actions on the employee record on the same day, but this functionality is not available in Employee Central. This is expected to be supported in the future release.

The SAP ERP Head concept of leading or chief positions is not supported. This means that the S A012 O relationship (the organization unit is managed by positon) is not possible. Instead, a direct relationship between the position of the employee and the position of the manager (S A002 S) is created.

Any infotypes that are not supported by standard functionality (as discussed earlier) can be replicated by implementing the provided BAdIs (extensibilities).

Not all fields within the standard infotypes are supported. You can either have the standard fields map to these fields using BAdI extensibility or have custom fields map to these fields using the extensibility table.

For example, infotype 0002 (Personal Data) is supported, but the Married Since field within infotype 0002 is not.

Priynk Gautam

Priynk Gautam has been working with SAP ERP HCM for five years, specializing in the SAP ERP HCM Personnel Administration and Organizational Management modules, as well as SuccessFactors Employee Central. His recent experience includes integration between Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM on-premise systems using Boomi Middleware. Prior to that, Priynk worked with SAP Talent Visualization Solution by Nakisa.

You may contact the author at Priynkg@gmail.com.

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