The first SAP® SuccessFactors® quarterly release of 2019 will be available to customers via preview on March 8. With less than a month to go, SAP has released material on enhancements that customers can expect to see in the system.

Information on all SAP SuccessFactors previews and production releases can be found on the SAP Help SAP SuccessFactors Release Information page. We’ll look at a couple highlights of the Q1 2019 release, beginning with some changes in the core HR solution of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite, Employee Central.

Contingent Workers in Employee Central

There are a pair of changes that allow Employee Central admins to better manage contingent workers. The first enhancement allows a contingent worker to now be assigned multiple work orders in Employee Central, where previously a worker could only be assigned a single work order at a time. This feature is opt-in for admins and allows each work order to represent a specific employment.

This should help organizations which use contingent workers for multiple jobs to better capture and track that information in their HCM system.

Additionally, if you do not want to include contingent workers when exporting files to other SAP SuccessFactors systems such as Learning (LMS) or SAP Jam, you will have the option of excluding them from export files. If contingent workers are included on the files, that will be flagged to clearly differentiate them from internal employees.

This will help your team more accurately manage training requirements and resources for both internal and external employees. Expect functionality in this area to continue to grow as SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass® are further integrated.

Continuous Performance Management Updates

Continuous Performance Management (CPM) is an ongoing performance tool that has seen rapid adoption among SAP SuccessFactors customers since its release. For Q1 2019, SAP added some functionality around managing feedback requests that will make life easier for managers and employees.

Nobody likes notifications that won’t go away. Previously, managers had to provide feedback on any feedback request or else they would remain in their “To Do” list. Sometimes there is no need to provide feedback, and now managers can decline the request and it will be removed from the “To Do” list when the page is refreshed. On the other end, the requester will see that the feedback request has been declined.

For receivers of feedback, they can now manage any comments they receive from someone that isn’t their manager. That feedback can be deleted if it is no longer needed. Additionally, SAP has enhanced the API to ensure that admin users do not have access to the feedback of others, except for their own direct reports.

Consistent Recruiting Experiences

In this release, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing and Recruiting Management will see a new look and feel for SAP Internal Career Site. This is intended to bring consistency to branding with SAP External Career Site and is powered by Career Site Builder.

This means that internal employees applying for positions will have the same experience as those outside the organization looking for a career in your company. It will require less work in maintaining two different career sites, as external and internal will be aligned. This is something that can be accessed via provisioning opt-in.

More to Come in 2019

This is the first of four releases in 2019. Follow Rizing HCM on Linkedin for more on this 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 Q1 enhancements.