Recap Guide to the 1H 2024 SAP SuccessFactors Release

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The 1H SAP SuccessFactors release is soon in production, and now is the time to review the updates that will affect your system. This guide presents the most impactful release items across the entire SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite.

SAP SuccessFactors Platform (Foundation)

New Experience for People Profile: Preview and Spotlight

The latest People Profile features a brand-new public view of your profile, consisting of Profile Preview and Spotlight, along with more intuitive user interactions.

The New People Profile in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

The level of impact of this release is high. Effective People recommends that you review this new feature to ease the migration to the latest People Profile. You can consider turning it off until the next release as the content available in Spotlight is limited and not configurable.

New Org Chart

The New Org Chart is a Twin Feature with the latest People Profile. The goal is to offer an aligned experience across web and platform with the Horizon theme. The New Org Chart provides more employee information without leaving the Org Chart functionality and offers flexible export options. You can also enable a focused mode to view one team at a time.

SAP Business AI

An important topic for this release is SAP Business AI. There is an increase in the functionalities that are supported by generative AI. This includes:

• Permission for AI Services Administrators.

• Assisted Goals Generation.

• Assisted Person Insights – Compensation Discussions.

• AI-assisted Writing in selected areas: Goals, Performance Forms, 360 Degree Reviews, OMP Assignments, Give Feedback.

• AI-Assisted Skills Validation for Applicants & AI-Assisted Skills Matching for Applicant Screening.

Prerequisite: You have purchased the SAP AI Units license.

The level of impact is high. Effective People recommends reviewing this as part of your strategy to adopt generative AI. Click here to watch the full 1H release briefing on SAP SuccessFactors Platform.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

Automatically Hire Applicants from Recruiting and Onboarding to Employee Central

You can now set up your system so applicants from SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting or Onboarding are automatically hired into Employee Central without manual intervention in the Manage Pending Hires tool.

Automatic Hire supports the following processes:

• SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting:

• Regular Hire

• Concurrent Employment (CE)

• Global Assignment (GA)

• SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding

• Regular Hire

• Rehire

• Rehire with New Employment

The level of impact is medium. Effective People recommends that you review this new feature to ease the employees’ hiring process.

Enhancements to Manage Pending Hires Tool

With the 1H release, SAP SuccessFactors has made several improvements to the Manage Pending Hires tool including adding and changing icons and adding error messages. The screenshot below shows Manage Pending Hires in the current version with the new and changed icons beside the applicant names:

Improvements to the Manage Pending Hires tool

The level of impact is high. Effective People recommends that you review this new feature to ease the employees’ hiring process.

Employee Central Quick Actions for Positions

You can now define Employee Central Quick Actions for positions using templates for commonly used actions on positions, such as creating and editing. You can tailor the use cases for your company and business requirements using the templates.

The Employee Central Quick Actions are available in the Actions menu on each tile on the My Team Positions page. You can create up to 5 active templates for each pre-delivered use case. Each Employee Central Quick Action allows a definition of 8 fields in total.

The level of impact is high. Effective People recommends that you review this new feature to simplify the manager’s experience.

Want to know more? Follow the link to watch the full release briefing for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

SAP SuccessFactors Time Management

Time Sheet Approval Center

The Time Sheet Approval Center in SAP SuccessFactors Time Management provides a single comprehensive overview for managers to view important contextual information and perform mass approval of their employees’ time sheet requests easily and efficiently. Using the Time Sheet Approval Center page, a manager or an approver can perform the following actions:

• Select multiple time sheets and send them for approval with a single operation.

• Approve all the time sheets their employees submit with a single operation using the Approve All button.

• Decide to approve or decline a single time sheet.

• When an employee is blocked from submitting the time sheet due to a pending single attendance record approval request, action can be taken directly from this page to approve the request and unblock the employee.

• Navigate to the Time Sheet user interface or Time Workbench of the employee to get further information.

• Review alerts or amendments that are associated with time sheets. Take the necessary action by navigating to either the Time Sheet or the Time Admin Workbench.

• To use this function, additional Permissions and Key Fact Configuration is needed.

The level of impact is high.

Monthly Time Sheets

It is now possible to create Time sheets with a Monthly approval period. The default view for such monthly time sheets is the new calendar view. However, you can switch between the calendar and the list view. Access the full release briefing recording for Time Management here.

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting

Enhanced Candidate Experience

One of the most important release updates for SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting includes enhancements to the candidate experience. Candidates can now view private job postings, scheduled interviews, and received offers through a more responsive Recruiting Marketing user interface. This update improves the candidate experience throughout the recruitment process.

Enhancements to Applicant Management

With the 1H release from SAP SuccessFactors, further enhancements have been made to the recently released, re-designed Candidate Workbench. Benefits of these enhancements include:

• Sorting applications in the list view.

• Forward-as-Applicant action is now supported.

• Assessment and Background Check Integrations supported.

• Interview results portlet.

• Pre-action and post-action summaries.

• A new applicant type for referred candidates.

The level of impact is medium. Several new features are now available in the redesigned Applicant Management tool in Recruiting.

Google Job Map Integration for Career Site Search Results

Candidates can now visually search for jobs by location with the search integrated map. Job location geocoding now supports street addresses, allowing the map to show the exact hiring location. Benefits of this update include:

• Enhanced experience in finding jobs.

• Advanced styling options for the look of the map.

• Ability to switch between list and map views.

The level of impact is medium. SAP wants to improve the candidate experience to make it easier for candidates to see job locations. Watch the on-demand release briefing for an in-depth walk-through of the 1H 2024 release for Recruiting here.

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding

The New Hire Onboarding Checklist Page

One of the release highlights is the new hire Onboarding checklist page, providing a holistic view of the onboarding journey for new hires. Benefits include:

• Display the Onboarding process on a single page.

• Reduce clicks and navigation between the home page.

• The ability to track the progression throughout the onboarding process.

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding: Your Onboarding Checklist Page

Onboarding Support for Global Assignments

You can now initiate Onboarding and send an employee on a global assignment to another company or country. This enhancement allows employees to complete necessary Onboarding tasks before the start of their host assignment. It also provides flexibility via rule configuration to initiate Onboarding for users based on country or company. Watch the full on-demand 1H release briefing for Onboarding via this link.

SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals

The Latest Goal Management is now Opt-Out

If you are using the legacy version of Goal Management, you will be upgraded to the latest version by default. You can check upgrade details in Upgrade Center -> Completed Upgrades -> Latest Goal Management.

If you are not ready for the upgrade, you can revert to the legacy version within 30 days after the Preview release and again within 30 days after the Production release. The revert option will be removed 30 days after the Production release.

The level of impact is high.

Create Personal Goals Using Generative AI in Goal Management

In the latest Goal Management, users can now create personal goals, including both performance and development goals, using generative AI capabilities.

Users are offered a text box where they can write a brief description of what they want to achieve. When users click on Generate, the generative AI creates content based on their input. Upon content review, if users update their input and regenerate content, they can compare the original content with AI-generated content and choose to accept or discard the generated content.

The level of impact is high. For a comprehensive walk-through of 1H updates for SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals, watch our on-demand release briefing here.

SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Career Development

New Role Available for Managing Development Goals

Talent administrators or similar roles in your organization can now manage an employee’s development goals directly in the employee’s development goals plan.

After development goal plan templates have been configured, talent administrators with proper role-based permissions can use People Selector to search for a particular employee within their target population.

The level of impact is high. 

Career Development Plan in SAP SuccessFactors

New Experience for Career Worksheet

The latest version of Career Worksheet is a powerful platform integrating with multiple SAP SuccessFactors products and modules, such as Growth Portfolio, Opportunity Marketplace, Performance & Goals, and People Profile.

The latest version of Career Worksheet in SAP SuccessFactors

To use the latest Career Worksheet, you must have enabled the following products and features:

• Career Worksheet V12

• Talent Intelligence Hub, including Growth Portfolio

• SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace

The level of impact is medium. It is a major enhancement from SAP, but it can only be used if the specific criteria above are met. Get a full overview of 1H release highlights for Succession & Career Development with our on-demand recording via this link.

SAP SuccessFactors Learning Management

Updated Integrated Learning eXperience (ILX)

The Integrated Learning eXperience has been updated with more than 6 new features as well as several small ones that have come as patches since the last update. We have listed the updates below:

Banners are displayed in a rotating carousel at the top of the new Learning Home Page. Each user can create up to 49 custom banners and view up to five banners in the carousel. A banner contains an image, a tagline, a title, and text content.

You can add a button with custom text to launch internal or external URLs, launch inline, open a new window, or draft an email.

Banner on the new Homepage

1. Banners on the new Learning Home Page

2. Custom Cards

1. You can now create custom cards that display in their own section on the new Learning home page. It is possible to add up to 100 custom cards and users can see up to 8 cards at the same time. By default, custom cards are displayed in the Custom Cards section below the Requests for Me section. This feature is hidden when no cards are available.

3. Admin Suggestions

1. With this release, admin suggestions (or recommendations) are now available in the “Suggested for Me"-section. This feature was named “Suggested by Peers” in the 2H 2023 release from SAP SuccessFactors.

2. Please note: External links are not yet supported and only peer suggestions are shown in the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile App. Users can mark suggestions as “not interested” or bookmark them for later. Users can also recommend a suggestion to peers using the recommended option on the Course details.

4. Hide ILX Switch

1. You can now hide the ILX switch from users if you want to have them stay in the New Learning Experience. The New Learning Experience label and the associated info button still display to users.

5. Hide the Required Learning Section

1. As an administrator, you can choose to hide the Required Learning section on the new Learning home page if learners don't have any required training items assigned to them.

6. Non-Required Assignments by Admin or Manager in Important Learning Section

1. On the new Learning home page, learners can view their learning assignments assigned as non-required items by administrators and managers in the Important Learning section. The level of impact is high.

Bulk Merge of Users

You can now merge learning records in bulk from the secondary user ID (merge from) to the primary user ID (merge into) for multiple users through import. The manual way to merge one by one is still available in the UI.

The level of impact is low.

Bulk Merge of Users in SAP SuccessFactors Learning Management

SAP SuccessFactors Compensation & Variable Pay

The Latest Version of the My Forms Page is now Available for Compensation Worksheets

One of the most requested items coming with the 1H release from SAP SuccessFactors is that the latest version of the My Forms page is now available for Compensation worksheets. This version brings an intuitive page layout, improved search functionality, simplified flows to organize and file worksheets, and other user experience improvements.

The latest version of the My Forms page for Compensation has the following changes to the Page Layout:

• The filter criteria are displayed in a compact way.

• Column display options allow you to select fields that you want to show or hide.

• Due to the changed filter criteria layout, there's more space for the list of forms.

• The Search button from the previous version is replaced by the Go button.

• Icons have been added to make it visually easier to identify the folders.

• The page is now responsive to your screen size.

• You can now scroll down to load additional forms. The pagination bars in the previous version are removed.

The level of impact is high.

Enhancements in Compensation Statements

Improvements have been made to the compensation statement editor and the way statements appear to users. The following changes have been made:

• Multiple language support for statements: You can now create a single statement template for all locales in your company.

• An “Add Language link” can be used to add the languages you wish to use when generating statements, enabling you to:

• Add language-specific text in the text fields on the template

• Add any fields from the compensation templates. The labels for languages are populated from the labels configured in the compensation plan.

To get a full overview of the enhancements for SAP SuccessFactors Compensation & Variable Pay, watch our on-demand release briefing here.

SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics & Reporting

New Schema for Reporting Usage Data Available in Report Stories

A new schema Reporting Usage Data is available in SAP SuccessFactors Report Stories for the usage of reports in the Report Center. This schema allows customers to identify the most used reports, helping them focus their efforts on maintaining these reports, determine the total number of reports in the instance, and determine which report is shared with whom. Usage data is available for Table and Tiles & dashboard as of now and the available data is for the past 12 months.

The level of impact is medium.

Invalidation of Stories Due to Changes in the Schema

Stories with broken queries will be marked as invalid and cannot be executed by end users. This change helps to inform the report designers that a backend change has impacted certain stories. Additionally, you avoid error situations for end users by blocking the execution of broken stories.

Note: The story will remain invalid, even if the backend changes are reverted.

The level of impact is medium. Watch the full SAP SuccessFactors 1H release briefing for Workforce Analytics and Reporting via this link.

Ensure Efficient Release Management with Effective People

This guide contains a selection of some of the key enhancements from the 1H 2024 release. If you’re interested in diving deeper into the new release, we highly recommend that you check out our module-specific on-demand release briefings via our Release Hub and 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.