Integrating SuccessFactors with Microsoft SharePoint

A few days back a customer reached out to me and asked if SuccessFactors is integrated with Microsoft SharePoint. That is a very open question because there are multiple modules in the SuccessFactors HCM suite and it might mean different things for different modules. We had a call with the customer to find out what they need. After the call, I thought I should write this down so that colleagues and partners responding to RFPs and customers who are searching for answers can find the details without spending an hour to find this out.

Scenario 1 : SharePoint as the corporate portal
The customer we spoke to is using SharePoint as the company portal and wanted to enable their users to launch SuccessFactors Talent Management solutions and SAP ERP HCM applications from that portal. This is possible and we provide a cook book that explains how single-sign-on might work not only for SharePoint but also for any portal, irrespective of the portal technology used. You can find this cook book in service market place. Bruce Mitchell has written a good article on this topic on SCN.

Scenario 2 :SharePoint as the formal learning content repository for static content

A second scenario is when customer who use SuccessFactors Learning keep static learning content such as PDF documents in SharePoint and launch that content from SuccessFactors Learning. This is also pretty common and has been done many times before. Some restrictions may apply depending on the security architecture of the customers SharePoint implementation. My colleagues and partners who implement SuccessFactors Learning have done this many times before and can provide more implementation details.

Scenario 3 :SharePoint integration with SAP Jam

SharePoint documents can be listed in SAP Jam via Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS). A user in SharePoint can search Jam without leaving the SharePoint interface. SAP Jam feeds can be displayed in SharePoint Web Parts. You can read more about this integration in this brochure.

Usually when customers ask about SharePoint integration, they mean Scenario 1.

If you are an expert who has done these or other implementations before, please share your thoughts. If you have done some other custom implementation, please let us know via a comment too.