HR Renewal 1.0 Feature Pack 3 – Mass Processing Tool…continued

In my last blog, I gave a quick introduction about the new tool –  “Mass Processing” . In that blog, I didn’t go much detail into the actual solution. I am sure, after reading that blog everyone must have got a “good” idea on how this new functionality is going to be(which has SAP’s documentation too 🙂 ). In this blog, I shall get into more details of “What’s new in HCM Processes and Forms framework to accommodate this new solution”.

Being from strong Technical background, I am not the only one who hates to read “Documentation” before exploring any new functionality; but I mended myself recently after wearing “Functional” hat to read and understand(at least try) the documentation first before diving into any new functionality. Though I still feel exploring new things by technical way(by debugging if something is not working, looking into SLG1 and ST22 traces, hunting for new components, searching for OSS Notes) is far interesting than reading the boring documentation 🙂

Controlling my excitement, I opened the super duper HRASR_DT transaction to see that a new form type – “Mass Form” –

Before I start exploring this functionality in detail, I tried hunting for SAP delivered “Mass Form” Form Scenarios and realized that we don’t have anything provided by SAP. I might be wrong, since I didn’t do the Forms Reconciliation after the FP3 upgrade.

I went ahead creating this test form scenario and realized that after a lot of exercise, HRASR_DT has put down some weight by reducing lots of navigation nodes 🙂 This actually hints me that this new functionality is not as something that is similar to existing HCM Process and Forms type functionality.

At the fields node, I found a new button – “Download Template”  that allows me to download the fields  in a excel file –

“Instructions” column in the fields table gets exported to excel as a “Remark” i.e. the value maintained in this column gets exported to the excel template as a “Remark”-

“Fixed field” column in the fields table fixes the columns in excel template –

“Help Value in Excel” column allows us to provide drop down values(as configured in Input Help) in excel

“Field Sequence” column allows defining the sequence of columns in the “Forms Application”. A new form type got added which looks very similar to “List form” of FPM Forms (with minor differences) –

One more interesting thing that was found during my research was – In “Traditional HCM Process and forms”, we used to create “Process” after creating the “Form Scenario”. But coming to “Mass Process” configuration, we don’t have to create a Process at all. The “Form Scenario” integrates directly with the new “Mass Processing Start Application”.

A new web dynpro component is delivered as a part for this “Mass Processing Start Application” –

Here is the final look and feel of our new application –

Conclusion :

This new functionality from my perspective is really good. Now, I can add any number of infotypes in my Hire configuration without any development and do the mass processing in ease. Also, the functionality to export to excel and import from excel is also very good. I was under assumption that this tool would work for any “Action”(not only for Hiring / Rehiring), but my assumption had been wrong. Using a simple prototype, I tried updating Communications infotype alone without with any performing “Actions” for two persons(passing in Personnel Numbers), it didn’t allow me to do so. This tool would be absolutely powerful if this framework works for any infotype with and without actions(I might be wrong too since I didn’t invest good amount of time exploring this tool 🙁 and I strongly believe SAP could have provided an option to use this tool for any action or infotype update ).

During my research I came across a cool SAP Note#1835253 – Mass Hiring Cookbook which might help you also !