The third SAP® SuccessFactors® release of 2019 goes into preview on August 9. We have already provided an overview of major highlights for Employee Central Time and Attendance in the update, as well as a look at how upcoming updates integrate SAP SuccessFactors with the Intelligent Enterprise. Now we are going to take some time to examine more detailed information on updates in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Core HR.
Previous Update Analysis: Q2 2019 Updates for SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting and Onboarding | Performance and Goals and Compensation | Calibration and Succession
The preview release allows customers the chance to test out new features before they officially go live in the system on the production date. Each preview of SAP SuccessFactors quarterly updates comes about one month before the production, which is September 6 for this quarter.
Let’s look at the enhancements in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Core HR functionality.
Employee Central Core and Payments
Change Log-on behavior in case of Global Assignment: If a user has an active Global Assignment, it is standard for every login of the user to be automatically redirected to the host assignment by default.
For the Q3 release, you can now change that log-on behavior to whichever you have designated as the user’s ‘Home-Assignment’ if the standard host assignment does not work for you.
This eliminates a potentially cumbersome activity of changing to the Home Assignment after each log-in. This update of course is only relevant to your organization if it uses Global Assignment.
How to turn it on: Admin Opt-In, via ‘Manage Date’, select the configuration object ‘Global Assignment’ and select yes for the option ‘Disable redirection from home users to global assignment users when logging in.’
Rules scenario for Event Reason Derivation: This new rules scenario will make the creation of Event Reason Derivation rules easier by restricting the selectable basic objects, actions, and the changeable field.
This is intended to reduce complexity and potential errors. This feature is only relevant to customers who use event reason derivation by rules.
How to turn it on: This is a universal update.
Off Cycle Event Batch – Sub Jobs in Monitor Jobs (and Provisioning): Instead of a single “BizXDailyRuleProcessingBatch Job” to be executed for provisioning processors in Off Cycle event Objects, jobs will be sub-divided into multiple jobs based on processor type (EC, RCM, Onboarding, Position, and others). The new job requests will now add the request ID of the batch job and the processor name on the end.
This is intended to avoid performance issues caused by sub jobs being blocked by parent jobs. The update is relevant for customers using Off Cycle Batch Batch Feature.
How to turn it on: This is a universal update.
Workflow
Changes to filters on My Workflow Requests: This user experience efficiency enhancement disables select filter fields (Business Unit, Division, and Department) not relevant for changes to generic objects in the Professional Edition of My Workflow Requests page.
How to turn it on: This is a universal update.
Employee Central Suite Integration
Adaption of Enhanced Manage Pending Hires in Recruiting: When RBP is set to allow access to Manage Pending Hires, you can now use Enhanced Manage Pending Hires with Employee Central Integration in the Recruiting screen to sort, filter, and recognize records that are already in the Draft folder and in the Workflow approval process. The Enhanced Manage Pending Hires comes with configurable columns and configurable columns names.
This is another user experience-focused enhancement designed to improve efficiency of your users that are conducting hires.
How to turn it on: Admin Center opt-in.
Visa and Permits Management
Estimated Completion Date: In order to allow requesters to better plan for documents being processed in advance by knowing estimated completion dates, this new feature allows both requester and processor to know the estimated completion date of each milestone, as part of the overall process execution estimated completion date.
How to turn it on: Admin Center opt-in.
Custom Fields Reporting and Upload: Admins will now be able to see custom fields defined by level of Business Entity, Quota, Block, and Document available in the Dashboard and Bulk Upload Apps.
This is intended to help admins make inquiries and filter based on custom fields defined on the previously mentioned levels, and also upload historical data into those custom fields.
How to turn it on: Admin Center opt-in.
Employee Central Service Center
Hiding Priority Field in Ask HR Screen (Employee Workspace): This feature was heavily requested by SuccessFactors customers. Previously, Employee Central Service Center displayed the Priority Field on the Create Ticket and the Tickets Overview page. Now, you can choose to hide the Priority field, so that employees may not set the priority fo the tickets they create. The default priority becomes medium.
This helps avoid misuse of the “high priority” status. Configuration is done in your SAP Cloud Platform account.
How to turn it on: Admin Center opt-in.
Optimizing of Filter capabilities and hiding closed tickets on AskHR: Two more minor updates are coming to AskHR. One involves the combining of the filter tickets and group tickets into a single button, enabling employees to find information and complete tasks faster.
The other AskHR enhancement has removed closed tickets from the screen when ASKHR loads. To view these, users will now need to include the closed status in the filter. This is to ensure employees focus on pending tickets.
How to turn it on: Both of these updates are universal.
SAP Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
SAP Best Practices sample data: A global set of demo data and additional country specific demo data will be made available for test purposes. This content is only visible after enabling the corresponding switch in provisioning.
How to turn it on: Provisioning opt-in.
Four-Eye Principal: This is added to SAP Best Practices as a way to prohibit initiators from approving their own workflows. Instead, another approver is enforced. This feature is enabled with the deployment of “Best Practices Employee Central Core Content” configuration block via Upgrade Center.
How to turn it on: Provisioning opt-in.
More to Come in 2019
This is the third of four releases in 2019. Follow Rizing HCM on LinkedIn for more analysis on the Q3 update, as well as future updates. Be sure to check out the quarterly release schedule, and head to the SAP SuccessFactors Community page for webcasts on Q3 enhancements.