Standard email response templates are a fast and convenient tool that allows shared service centers to set up consistent and reusable templates. This results in employee communications that are fast, accurate, and reliable, and leads to the overall success of the shared services organization.

A standard email response template is predefined text that is made available to an Employee Interaction Center (EIC) agent for use in email correspondence with employees or other parties. The templates are made available to agents on the email section of the EIC navigation bar. The EIC agent can select the appropriate template and use the Transfer option to copy the template contents into the current email.

Configure the Standard Response Templates

To configure standard email templates, use transaction SPRO and follow menu path Personnel Management > Employee Interaction Center (EIC) > Interaction Center Web-Client > Application Functions > Basic Settings > Define Standard Responses for Email. Click the New Entries button to create a new email template. In the screen that appears, enter the attributes of the standard email response template you are creating (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Attributes of a standard email response template

Enter a name for the new template in the Standard Reply field. For our example, we are going to create a template called ZZRESP_01. A description for the template is required. Enter a meaningful description that best describes the email template to the EIC agents. For our example, we entered EIC Email Response Example 01.

In the Text Name field, enter the name of a standard text that includes the contents of the email template. The standard text object is stored within the SAP system under the objects TEXT and ID ST. You can maintain these texts directly using SAP text maintenance transaction SO10. You can also edit the text directly from the standard email response templates maintenance screen within configuration by clicking the Edit Text button shown in Figure 1.

This brings up the screen shown in Figure 2. You can enter the standard text for the standard email response template. You can format the text using paragraphs and line breaks (Figure 2). Once you enter the text, click the save icon and your new template is saved and available for use within EIC.

Figure 2

Enter the text for the standard email response template

One important feature of the email template is the ability to embed information about the EIC activity within the templates. For example, you may want to include the EIC activity number and the EIC activity title within the email response template to allow the employee receiving the email to have this information in case they call back to the EIC shared services center.

This is done using placeholders or variable fields within the email template text. The EIC application fills these fields at runtime when the EIC agent selects the template to use within an email sent from the EIC application. You denote the fields from the EIC activity using the format &ACTIVITY_ATTR-fieldname& (Figure 2). The placeholder fields that are available for use within the email templates are derived from the SAP structure HREIC_S_EXTENDED_ACTIVITY_ATTR, which contains a majority of the attributes from the EIC activity.

Use the Standard Email Response Templates in EIC

Once you have created the standard email response templates, they become available to EIC agents to use within the EIC application. On the outbound email screen of EIC, the agents can choose the standard reply template from the drop-down menu (Figure 3) and click the Transfer button.

Figure 3

Choose the email template in outgoing emails from EIC

Once the agent chooses the template and clicks the Transfer button, the contents of the template transfer into the email body within the EIC application. At the same time, all the placeholder fields are replaced with the actual values from the current EIC activity (Figure 4). In our example template, the EIC activity number, the activity short description, and the agent name fields were replaced at runtime when the agent transferred the template.

Figure 4

The results of using the standard email template

Chandan Gopalani

Chandan Gopalani is a senior SAP HCM technical consultant with over 18 years of experience working on SAP projects across various industries and clients since 1995. He is co-founder of EIC Experts and specializes in Organization Management, Employee Interaction Center (EIC), US Payroll, Enterprise Compensation Management, ESS/MSS, Personnel Administration, Benefits, CATS, Finance, and Sales & Distribution. He is ABAP certified and ASAP certified, as well the author of several HR Expert article. He is currently working as an ECM consultant for a Fortune 50 client.

You may contact the author at cgopalani@eicexperts.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.

Jarret Pazahanick

Jarret Pazahanick is an SAP Mentor, Human Capital Management (HCM) Certified Consultant, and Managing Partner of EIC Experts who has specialized in SAP HCM since 1998. He is a subject matter expert in US Payroll, Employee Interaction Center (EIC), and Enterprise Compensation Management (ECM). Over the past 14 years, Jarret has completed 20 high profile, full life cycle SAP HCM implementations for global Fortune 1000 companies. He is SAP HCM certified and ASAP certified; author for HR Expert, CloudAve, and ASUG News; and a moderator, blogger, and gold-level contributor on the SAP Community Network.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.