Recap Guide to the SAP SuccessFactors 2H Release

With the 2H SAP SuccessFactors release soon in production, now is the time to review the updates that will impact your system. In this guide, we’ll share the most impactful release items from what has been called the most comprehensive SAP SuccessFactors release to date. Happy reading!

Platform (Foundation)

1. Business Rule Migration

In the last few releases, SAP has provided a lot of new application-specific rule scenarios. This is done in order to:

Ease the work of creating business rules

Ensure your business rules follow the configuration principles of SAP SuccessFactors

Utilize the new features such as the “Assignment” tab in the Business Rules Admin Overview

As part of the 2H 2022 release, SAP has run an automatic business rule job to move all ‘basic’ rules into application-specific rule scenarios. The change is due to the upcoming deprecation of business rules on the ‘Basic Scenario’ as it’s a legacy scenario of the Business Rule engine.

2. Enhancements to Check Tool

The Check Tool's entire user interface (UI) has been updated. System health checks, validation checks, and migration checks are now included in the tool. We advise you to review this feature at least once per month to look for any discrepancies or issues with your instance.

3. General Display Name

You can now configure employee names that will be displayed consistently across your SuccessFactors solution (where a legal name is not required). Administrators and HRBPs can still access a person’s legal name. The General Display Name field may also be configured for each legal entity. This means, as an administrator, you can configure name formats that meet the business needs and adhere to the best practices of each legal entity. This new capability provides both consistency and flexibility in managing display names.

Employee Central

1. Enhancements to the Hire Date Correction Tool​

The Hire Date Correction tool has received several new enhancements.​ Previously, it was necessary to change past and present hire dates in the job information history UI. The enhanced Hire Date Correction feature is a much simpler solution, providing one place for users to change the hire date for all related entities.

2. Manage Jobs in Scheduled Job Manager​

You can manage scheduled jobs on the Job Scheduler tab in the Scheduled Job Manager tool (previously called Scheduled Job Requests).​ This change puts more power and knowledge in the hands of admins without the need to grant provisioning access.

3. Enhancements to Alerts for HR Data Issues

SAP has updated the Job Information Issues Alert to check for further potential issues with associations, field criteria, picklist entries, and mandatory field changes. Fewer data inconsistencies help solve potential problems before they become bigger issues.

Time Management

1. Daily Absence Reporting Based on the Employee Time Calendar

The Employee Time Calendar object is now available to use in stories in People Analytics to report daily absences. ​This is a very useful change from a reporting perspective. The Employee Time Calendar can be used in stories, and clients can report absences day by day including across the month.

2. Generation of Employee Time Calendar Entries for Daily Absence Reporting

For absence types with a Leave of Absence (LOA) and an undetermined end date, Employee Time Calendar entries are now generated automatically. Before, calendar records were not generated automatically on the creation of a leave of absence (or absences) with an undetermined end date. Records can be filtered on a day-to-day basis so report users can only report for a certain time frame, even if an absence request crosses a reporting period—for example, a month

3. Grace Period Rounding

Grace periods are typically defined near the start and end of a period of scheduled working time. The time recorded in these grace periods is rounded to the start or end time. For example, if the start time of a working period is 8 AM, the grace period is 5 minutes before and after 8 AM. If an employee clocks in at 8.03 AM, the start time is rounded to 8 AM. This feature prevents needless overtime or time violations when the recorded times only slightly differ from the scheduled start and end times.

4. New TimeSheet UI as Opt-Out (To Be Obligatory From 1H 2023)

The new timesheet UI will be enabled by default, but it can be disabled for one more release before becoming mandatory. Clients should plan to transition to the new timesheet UI due to its high impact and the significant action required.

Recruiting Management

Redesigned Applicant Workbench

The Applicant Workbench has been entirely redesigned by SAP with better filter options, a keyword search feature for CVs and cover letters, and the Early Adopter Care (EAC) Program for Recruiting. We recommend refraining from immediately activating this feature upon its release. Instead, try the redesigned workbench with a small group and focus on change management as a part of this process. If change management support is needed, please reach out to your Effective People team.

Onboarding

1. Enhancements to the Hire Date Correction Tool

This release includes some useful enhancements to the Hire Date Correction tool. Once they’ve passed the pending hire stage in the Manage Pending Hires tool, you can amend the hire date for onboarding new employees by using the Hire Date Correction tool. Here, you can alter the hire dates in the past, present, or future. Target population permissions can be applied to restrict the creation of hire date corrections for users within this target population.

2. Custom Tokens in Email Notification

You can now use custom tokens such as Legal Entity or Position in the email notification template. To add the custom tokens to the email notification, you must:

Create the custom token template content using Document Generation: Manage Document Template

Map the custom tokens using Document Generation: Manage Document Template Mapping

Insert the custom tokens in the email template in Email Services

Performance and Goals

1. Work With the Latest Team Goals

In addition to personal goals, users can now create, manage, and be assigned team goals in the latest goal management update. Meanwhile, group goals are no longer supported. Users in different roles with proper permissions in your organization can:

Create, edit, or delete team goals

Access team goals from their own goal plan

Assign team goals to people from their team or people found via search

Unassign a team goal from certain people

Share ownership of a team goal with others so they become co-owners of the goal

Withdraw shared ownership of a team goal from certain people

2. Leave Comments on Goals

In the most recent version of Goal Management, users can now add, edit, or delete comments on their own goals or those of their direct reports. Using comments, users in your organization can:

Provide feedback, make an inquiry, and share ideas on how to achieve a goal

Keep a trackable record of status changes to a goal

When using the latest Goal Management, we recommend that you enable this feature.

3. New Confirmation Experience for Sending Forms

SAP SuccessFactors now provides a new confirmation experience for sending Performance Management forms to the next or previous step. The new experience, if enabled, applies to the following actions:

Send forms to the next or previous step

Send forms in an iterative or collaboration step

Sign and reject forms

Send a copy of the completed forms

Succession and Development

1. Career Explorer

Career Explorer recommends career opportunities to employees based on the career paths of similar people in their organization. It provides employees with a more holistic view of their opportunities within their company. Career Explorer is also a data source for job role recommendations in SAP Opportunity Marketplace. SAP built this feature so employees can easily discover more relevant opportunities in their organization. We recommend that you explore the possibilities available with this enhancement if you have career paths defined.

2. More Gender Values in Talent Search and Matrix Grid Reports

You can now select from three more gender values, Undeclared, Unknown, and Others, in addition to the existing Male and Female, as a criterion in Talent Search. If you upgrade to include additional gender values, your previous gender icon configuration for matrix grid reports will be deleted. As such, you'll need to reconfigure your gender icons.

1. Additional Fields in Succession Org Chart Nodes and Position Tiles

You can now add employees’ job titles, job levels, and departments to the headers of Succession organizational chart nodes and customize the order in which the fields are displayed. This feature makes it easier to distinguish between different positions if they have the same title.

Learning

1. Deprecation of Original Course Home Experience

The original Course Home Experience reached the end of maintenance on May 20, 2022, and will be deleted on December 9th, 2022. We recommend that the new Enhanced Experience is enabled and tested thoroughly as it will be enforced in December 2022.

2. Enhanced Course Home

There has been additional support for the “Other” item classification in the new Course Home experience. Also, new features have been added to close the parity gap and enhanced behavior for previously released item classifications.

Note that the following features are still outstanding:

Governmental reporting

Users with an external shopping cart

Associated Competencies

Manager View

Approval comments when registering for a class

3. Auto-Enablement of Learning Jobs After Instance Refresh

You can now auto-enable learning jobs after an instance refresh to previously submitted learning background jobs. Note that this option only appears after a refresh and has a 14-day ‘grace’ period. We recommend this feature since it will save time after a system refresh.

Compensation & Variable Pay

1. Prevent Concurrent Mass Update Jobs for Compensation

This release will prevent the concurrent initiating of jobs for mass updates to Compensation, Variable Pay, and Total Compensation templates. To enable this release item, update the Compensation Forms for Template and apply Eligibility Rules in “Compensation Home”.

2. Reward Statement Generation Report

Administrators can now generate reconciliation reports into a downloadable CSV file, allowing them to identify employees who have reward statements generated and those who do not.

3. Share Option for Advanced Executive Review Filters

In H1 2021, Advanced Executive Review Filters were released for the Compensation, Variable Pay, and Total Compensation Plan templates. We recommend using Advanced Executive Review filters to provide further flexibility when using the report, as legacy filters will be retired in 2023.

Analytics and Reporting

1. Granular Proxy Rights for Reporting

With granular proxy rights for reporting, you can choose the Report Center reports that a proxy user can access and the tasks that a proxy user can perform on behalf of the account holder. Instead of all-or-nothing proxy rights, you will be able to decide—on an individual basis—what reports a user can access and what reporting actions a user can perform as a proxy. This new feature is not available for reports created before the H2 2022 release.

2. Story Reports Support the Change Author Functionality

The "Change Author" option on the Action menu is now supported for story reports. This improvement makes it easier for you to reassign authors to orphaned stories (owned by users who have left the company) and guarantees that all reports kept by the company are owned by a "technical user account".

3. Manage Favorite Reports From the Report Center Page

You can now use the Report Center to add or remove favorite reports available on the home page. The reports that you mark as favorites in the Report Center will now appear in the new quick card, Favorite Reports, situated on the home page. This move will bring parity with the old home page. We recommend enabling this functionality as it allows for quick access to reports from the home page.

Release Management

This guide contains a selection of some of the key enhancements from the 2H 2022 release. If you’re interested in diving deeper into the new release, we highly recommend that you check out the SAP What’s New Viewer for details on each release item. We also offer release management services including workshops that are specifically designed for your company’s setup and roadmap. By joining our workshops, you’ll:

Learn what’s new in the latest release and what you should prioritize

Gauge the impact of the latest release items both in terms of specific modules and cross-module processes & dependencies​

Gain awareness of any effects on existing functionalities that will affect your setup

Benefits of a Release Review:

Establish a strong understanding of the upcoming release, its impact, and its relevance to your organization​

Receive input for updating your configuration—now or in the future

Enjoy the benefits of an updated release item tracker, including impact assessment and prioritization

Contact your Effective People team to book a release workshop.