For this 1505 release, we are making SuccessFactors administrators the stars of the show. We have focused on developing back-end capabilities that will make their life much easier when managing their SuccessFactors Mobile deployment, helping them grow user adoption of the app, and increase their control over mobile security. Let’s dive right in.
Prevent unmanaged BYOD devices from running SuccessFactors Mobile
There is no such thing as having too much security when running enterprise mobile apps. SuccessFactors Mobile already offers a myriad of security features that gives our customers the confidence to put mobile HR in the palms of their employees. Among others, we provide high-security data encryption, remote connections using SSL/TLS, the option to disable caching on the device, and prevention from activating SuccessFactors Mobile on a device that has ‘fallen out of compliance’ (i.e. jailbroken).
With this release, we are adding another major security feature to the pack: the ability to only allow company-managed devices to run SuccessFactors Mobile. These managed devices can either be company-provided or employee-owned as long as mobile device management software has been installed in it so IT can manage them remotely.
This is a useful feature for SuccessFactors administrators who want a tighter control on the devices that SuccessFactors Mobile runs on and want to increase even further the security of their HR data.
The way it works is quite straightforward. When an employee using an unmanaged personal device opens the SuccessFactors Mobile app, the app itself will check for a ‘key-value pair’. In a managed scenario, this unique identifier would have been stored on the mobile OS by IT through the Mobile Device Management (MDM) software running on the device. If such key is not present, it will indicate that the device is unmanaged by IT, and the app will not open — preventing the employee to access SuccessFactors from the mobile app.
This feature will work with any MDM solution. Since MDM is a rapidly growing software category with multiple offerings fiercely competing for market share, we wanted to make sure this feature would work for all of our customers regardless of which MDM solution they choose to run. The way we do this is by checking for the aforementioned key/value pair stored on the device OS rather than looking for a specific MDM software on the device.
This feature is now available on SuccessFactors Mobile for iPhone and iPad and later this year will become available for SuccessFactors Mobile for Android.
Simplify activation on managed devices
On top of using your MDM solution to control who can access SuccessFactors Mobile, you now can also simplify the way employees activate their app from managed devices. No more getting an activation code on the mobile app and entering it on the web app.
Employees using a managed device can skip the web activation process altogether and use their SuccessFactors credentials (i.e. their regular username and password) to activate their SuccessFactors Mobile application.
This will make it easier for employees with no computers assigned to them to activate the app (quite common among our retail and hospitality customers) and HR organizations will see higher adoption of HR services thanks to the increased reach of SuccessFactors.
To deploy any of these two MDM features we encourage SuccessFactors administrators to team up with their mobile IT team that is in charge of MDM. For more details on how to set up your MDM solution to take advantage of these MDM features and more, please check the Mobile Deployment Playbook available in the SuccessFactors Mobile community.
Make it easy for employees to take immediate action on HR processes
If you are a productivity nerd you will be familiar with this rule: if it takes less than two minutes to complete a task, do it right now!. The reason behind it is that tasks that are not completed when they come up are usually tackled much later, sometimes not even done at all.
Think about what this means for HR processes. Approving a job requisition right away versus a day or two later could make a difference between hiring and losing a top talent candidate that is in high demand. Add to this the loss of productivity because the vacant position has been open for too many days, plus the increase in hiring costs — due to the extra time the recruiting and the hiring manager dedicate to fill the position — and you have a serious business case to accelerate these approvals as much as you can.
Mobile technology has shown tremendous power when it comes to making HR software more accessible to time-strapped employees and managers. Unfortunately, having HR just one tap away is still not enough to act on HR processes immediately. Often what they need is just an even more straightforward way to get in, get the job done, and get out.
Deep linking for SuccessFactors Mobile is a collection of pre-defined links that direct users straight to specific screens inside the SuccessFactors Mobile app. SuccessFactors administrators can use them to easily direct employees straight into the SuccessFactors Mobile app so they can take immediate action on business-critical HR processes. For this initial release we are providing deep links to Approvals, Analytics, Goals, Learning and SAP Jam.
These links can be leveraged by HR when creating employee-marketing emails that refer to specific HR processes (e.g. “update your goals!”) so employees can click on them from their mobile mail client and get directed to a specific screen inside the SuccessFactors Mobile app.
Deep links can also be used by IT when creating custom enterprise mobile apps. For example, many organizations have built mobile enterprise portal apps so employees can have a unified access point to all enterprise information and tools. By placing deep links to SuccessFactors Mobile inside their mobile portal, IT can increase the chances people will find the HR features they are looking for and the transition from the mobile portal to the mobile app will create a more seamless experience for users across enterprise tools.
We believe deep linking can have a major impact in HR effectiveness. By directing people to the exact place where they need to take action, organizations can decrease process completion time, increase overall productivity, and improve employees’ mobile HR experience.
Also part of the Q2 2015 SuccessFactors Mobile Release
In addition to all these features for SuccessFactors administrators, we also have new stuff for the actual people who use the SuccessFactors Mobile app. Employees can now customize the menu bar based on the features that they use the most. Analytics are easier to discover and take action on thanks to improved navigation. And learning users can natively search the learning catalog, look at their learning history, and download their learning certificates right from their mobile device.
As a final note we would like to remind our customers that SuccessFactors releases updates of its mobile apps on a monthly basis. This blog post doesn’t refer to any release in particular but highlights the most relevant mobile features that have been launched in the past three months. For more detailed information on the exact new functionality that has been launched on every release, please refer to the Release Notes documents that are posted every month in the SuccessFactors Mobile customer community
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