The fourth and final update of 2018 to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is now in preview, with production scheduled for Dec. 1. That gives customers a little less than a month to try out the latest features before going live.
We’ve dug through the extensive release notes for Employee Central to find the updates that will be most important to customers. They range from technical to more end-user facing. All are designed to make an HR employee’s life run smoother, and for the use of SuccessFactors and the data it generates to be little easier.
Below, I’ve listed the top customer-friendly Employee Central updates for 2018 and why they should matter to customers.
HRIS Propagation Configuration XML for customers who have been on EC for a while will be moved into business rules.
Why it Matters: This is important for customers to test and make sure the rules that were previously in place to default information from Foundation and MDF objects to employment data work as they did before.
Termination Screen Enhancement: A new drop-down list where you can select the individual transfer. In addition, you can also select an option to terminate all job relations or move the employee to another manager with one click.
Why it Matters: In the past the option for job relationships would show the individual transfer for the matrix relations, which was cumbersome to do if there were a lot of relationships assigned for the terminated user. With the new release this shows in a drop-down list, where you can select the individual transfer. In addition, you can also select an option to terminate all job relations or move the employee to another manager with one click.
New validation to prevent employees from adding invalid characters into the telephone number field.
Why it Matters: Parentheses, dash, and slash are invalid characters, which will result in an error message that asks the user to correct the number before the system can save. In the past, some customers may have instructed employees to use the dash when entering the number, now this will result in an error message.
Assign to Me workflow feature
Why it Matters: This allows users in a dynamic group to assign the workflow to themselves, to see who in the dynamic group has assigned workflows, and remove assignments from themselves or other group members. This is important for areas such as HR to avoid having multiple users processing the same workflow in parallel. More on the Assign to Me feature can be found in our general Q4 release update report.
Mask User ID in Employee Profile URL
Why it Matters: Important for customers if they wish to prevent the display of personal identifiers of their employees when using employee profile.
Date Replication Monitor updates
Why it Matters: Introduction of optimistic locking for confirmation upsert in and change to the middleware integration process for confirmation messages being sent back from SAP system to EC when replication was successful or has failed—required because of the change with optimistic locking. Highly recommended from SAP to test in a preview instance.
Delete operation now available in compensation information import template
Why it Matters: This is important for customers who need to delete compensation information records in bulk through incremental mode. It will prevent users from having to use the UI and delete the records manually for data corrections. Allows for better data management.
Suppression of identical records in job information, employment information, and personal information during import
Why it Matters: With this feature enabled it is now possible to suppress duplicate inserts and unchanged updates via admin import. The system will now validate the data you are importing with the last record that exists in the system as of the effective date and existing data will not be overwritten with the new records. Allows for better data management.
For a complete list of the latest updates to Employee Central and the rest of the SAP SuccessFactors suite, customers can log-in to view the release information and sign up for release update webcasts on the SuccessFactors Community Product Updates page.
Finally, our Rizing HCM team is dedicated to helping customers maximize their SuccessFactors software by utilizing the latest updates. Contact us to optimize your release management and sustainment process.