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Author's profile photo Volker Ruof

New Time Management Features in EC Time 1602

Hello,

as each 3 months, a new SF release has been released into the world. Let me briefly spread out the news on the new features that we bring within our EC Time Management component.

We worked on 3 Main topics:

1) Time off in lieu

2) Absences with undefined end date

3) upload service for time sheet

and some misceallanous minor new features.

So, lets have a more closer look onto the major features:

1) Time off in lieu

When you have already informed yourself with my previous blocks EC Time Sheet can calculate overtime in a very flexible way. You know then that the time sheet can calculate daily or weekly overtime based on the planned working time or a fix value threshold. You even know that an advanced threshold can be set up in a way that for first two overtime hours per day a pay type of OT 1.0 is generated and for each hour beyond a paytype like OT 1.5. Daily and weekly advanced threshold can even be combined in a way that each daily overtime (be it OT 1.0 or 1.5) can be summed up in the week and when more than for example 6 hours of overtime a premium of OT 1.5 or any other can be generated. Let alone the possibility to generate specific pay types for Sunday / Holiday work or even shift differentials.

All of this generated overtime pay types (or premiums) could till now only be transferred to Payroll for payout reason. Up to now. With the 1602 release we bring the Time off in Liue feature. With this it is possible to bank the overtime performed into a time account for additional leave entitlement. This allows employers to save the money they would need to pay for overtime and employees benefit in a way that they can get additional days off and not having a huge tax burden on the overtime pay-outs.

So, how does this work?

Employees record their working time in the EC Time Sheet. The time valuation engine calculates overtime real time, directly upon time recording. No batch job needed to do this ;-). The overtime hours get posted with a multiplying factor into a time off account and the employee can then request a partial or full day leave in order to stay a full day at home or leave office earlier. The recorded time off in lieu absence hours deduct the time off account accordingly.

Of course you can assign all usual rules that you are used to use in the time off application to the time in lieu off account like for example period end processing rules that cap the time account at a certain value or that transfer the balance to the next months / year time off in lieu account.

What do you need to make all this work? You need to adapt the configuration a bit and define on employee level what kind of overtime compensation method shall be applicable.

First of all you need to assign in the employee file a new introduced “Default overtime compensation variant”. You can choose between: payout, time off or payout and time off:

Payout: All overtime calculated is stored as pay types relevant for payroll pay out.

Time off: Banks the calculated overtime into a time account. The posting of the hours is done with an internal posting factor. When for example the system calculates for a week 3 hours of OT1.5 an 4 hours OT 2.0 then for the posting factor (called valuation result factor) for the OT 1.5 is 1.5,  for OT 2.0 it is 2.0. Hence for the 3 calculated OT1.5 hours the posting to the time account is 4.5 hours plus 8 hours that are derived from the 4 hours OT 2.0. All in all 12.5 hours are posted to a time account in this week.

The employee can than apply for a leave – either partial day or full day- in order to reduce his time off in lieu account.

Payout and time off: This is a mixed variation: only the overtime premium portion gets transferred to the time account, but the base hours are paid out. An 4 hours overtime with OT 1.5 would lead to payout of 4 hours and a time account posting of 2 hours (4 hours with 0.5 valuation result factor = 2 hours).

When you want to use the time off in lieu functionaltiy you need to assign a default time off in lieu account in the Employees Time Profile and an absence time type that deducts from this time account.

Furthermore Time Evaluation rules must be set up in a way that the calculated overtime is splitted in time type groups that represent the base pay and the premium pay. You need to define the new time type group field valuation result category accordingly for the time type groups. The valuation result factor needs to be defined in the time type group and this basically is it.

For more details read the excellent step-by-step explanation in the time sheet documentation.

The result of this is that when you have set up the system accordingly and choosen for example the default overtime compensation method “Time Off” in the employees job info and an employee records time which results in overtime, the summary pop-up upon submitting the time sheet indicates exactly how many overtime hours has been calculated and how many hours are transferred into the time off in lieu account:

Bild1.png

2) Absences with undefined end date

The absence management application in EC Time, called Time off, brings more and more country specific legally necessary features. Like for example illnesses with unknown end date which is needed in UK and Netherlands to name only some. What is this? Well, an employee gets ill and needs to hand to the employer an illness certification by a doctor. In Germany the doctors certificate has got a fix end date on it. When the illness is not cured before this date the employee needs to visit the doctor again and the doctor writes a new certificate.

But in UK and Netherland the process is a little different. There are illnesses where the doctor does not state an end date on the illness certificate. It is open ended. And the end of the illness gets confirmed later by the doctor again. Hence the illness record that is recorded in EC Time must reflect the open end date. Sure, this could be done with an 31.12.9999 end date, but this is not very nice – and it does not really reflect the statement that the end date is unknown. This is now possible in Employee Central with the new flag “Undetermined end date allowed” in the absence time type. If a time type is configured with this flag set to yes, than there is no end date recording necessary.

This looks in the leave request like this:

Bild2.png

The team absence calendar reflects this unknown end date accordingly. All days in the future are set to absent:

Bild3.png

When the employee hands in a new illness certificate with the end date confirmed on it or he informs in another way HR on the end date of his illness, the flag “Unknown end date” in the illness absence record needs to beremoved and the certified end date choosen. Then it is a “normal” absence record with start / end date.

3) Upload service for Time Sheet

This new service for the time sheet allows to upload working time from an external system into the time sheet for further calculation purpose, like overtime or other pay type generation processes.

This service can be used when a customer has got for example time recording terminals or still uses excel or other kind of easy time recording tools.

A constraint for this service in 1602 release is however that it can handle only duration based imports. So, it is not a means to support time recording terminals in a sense that the pair formation of single clock in / out punches is done in EC Time Sheet. This might come later. The service is first step into this direction. Rom wasn´t invented neither in one day ;-).

So, how can this service be used in conjunction with terminals or any other kind of external time recording systems? Simple: Fill a CSV file with the necessary information (or call the respective OData Apis directly).

To post the records into the time sheet the upload needs: User ID / Day / Hours. This is it.

You can upload multiple records per day and employee and of course records for multiple days / employees. There are initial checks upon uploading (like does the user ID exist…). The data is kept in a staging area where additional checks are performed like for example collisions checks (you want to upload working time on a day where an employee has already a full day absence recorded).

See here an example how this looks like:

Bild4.png

But this is not yet all. You can set up the system in a way that an employee is not allowed to edit the imported times. He will then get this only in a display only mode. Cause when there are external terminals or whatever that keep the truth of the employees working time, why allowing the employee to overwrite this in the EC Time Sheet?

But again, this is a simple configuration flag that needs to be set in the time type that gets uploaded if the employee is allowed to edit it or not. If not, a time administrator will always have the possibility to edit the uploaded records in the employees Time Sheet.

Bild5.png

Furthermore there where some minor features in 1602 like enhancements in the time recording collision checks, negative time recording scenario and a new time account stop accrual function when an employee is on sick leave.

Hope you like what we build, and as always: more features to come in 3 months.

Please have a look on my previous posts regarding features in EC Time Sheet / EC Time:

Successfactors EC Time Sheet and Time Off – new features

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      62 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Sven Ringling
      Sven Ringling

      Excellent stuff!

      I daresay the open end date handling is better than on-prem now, whete it's always created some nuissance or other.

      Well done 🙂

      Author's profile photo Ram Dodda
      Ram Dodda

      Great stuff Volker and thanks for sharing.. 

      Thought of asking if below Time Off functionality is planned for any release.

      1)Currently if we need to run time calendars  instantly , we have to open each calendar record  and run it.  In case of daily accruals if we need to run for few weeks(Back dated )  it is hard to run all calender's one by one.  It makes so easy  if we have an option to select multiple calender's and run  in one shot. 

      2) Same applies to Re calculation, for some reason if we want to force retro  we need to open each calendar to mark "With Recalculation" flag as active.    Here also it makes super easy to have multiple select option to choose calender's  for recalculation.

      Thanks

      Ram

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ram,

      thanks for the feedback. Valid point, for daily accruals this is indeed not really good. I´ll bring the multi-selection as an enhancement feature into our dev planning.

      And you always can bring ideas like this into the EC community Ideas forum:

      http://community.successfactors.com/t5/Employee-Central-Ideas/idb-p/Employeecentralideas

      Thanks

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Ram Dodda
      Ram Dodda

      That's awesome Volker and thanks for considering this.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks Volker - this is really good!

      John.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      The information is very useful, I have query with the data loaded from staging area into Time sheet.

      The record loaded from external system will have status To be submitted. We cannot see these records in the related objects Employee Time sheet, employee time and employee time sheet entry.

      If I have to report how many records are still pending to be submitted or send notification to employees that they need to submit their time sheet, where can I find these 'To be submitted ' records?

      Thanks,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shilpa,

      this is not how it works. Employees don´t need to submit time sheets with imported data. They are autosubmitted.

      The records that are loaded into the staging area have got the status "New". A job TLM_Trigger_Tasks (that you need to plan daily) picks the "new" records and load it into the time sheet. At the end of the time sheet week an autosubmit happens with the TLMTriggerTask job

      The scenario looks different when you upload data for example for 1 day in the previous time sheet period which has already been approved. The original time sheet gets withdrawn and replaced by the new, amended time sheet with the new data (and probably the "old" data on days that have not been uploaded again). The autosubmit for previous time sheet periods happens immediatly and a new workflow is generated (when a workflow is assigned to the time sheet).

      Hope this makes it clearer

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you Volker, that was very much helpful. Good to know that we have a auto submit job for both negative and positive time recording 🙂 .

      With this I have another query on, when there is any changes to the imported data in time sheet, like employee enters some allowances or on call attendances, then employee has to manually submit the timesheet.

      It is very much possible that employee will update the time sheet in the beginning of the week, but the time sheet needs to be submitted only end of week. So if I have to send a reminder notification to employees, how will we know which time sheets needs to be manually submitted or where can we check, which time sheets need the manual submission.

      Thanks,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shilpa,

      in the Q2 release there is an enhancement: When there is 1 or more imported time than there is no employee submit necessary at all. The time sheet gets autosubmitted. Even when the employee has recorded additional data.

      Best regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Volker,

      Good to hear that. Thanks a lot for all the support. My client wants to implement positive, duration based time recording with upload of data from external time recording system.

      They need the external data record upload daily but the auto submit should happen only once in a month. From implementation guide, I see that both the tasks are done with TLMTriggerTasks job, which is set daily by default.

      If I had to change the auto submission to monthly, which is the job I can change?

      Thanks,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shilpa,

      when you use the upload service you can either upload via file or via direct Odata API calls (which is more convenient). You can send data for one / multiple employees for one day, for one week or for one month or for whatever period you want. Even multiple records per day / employee.

      But for the auto-submit the longest period is currently the week. Once per month an autosubmit is not possible, only once per week.

      Other periods like month, bi-weekly etc. might come in the future, but currently it is only the week possible.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks a lot Volker, that was very useful. Is it possible to switch off the auto submission?

      then as a process we can ask employee to submit only once in month.

      Regards,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shilpa,

      what is the rational behind? Employee would need to navigate once in a month 4-weeks back and click 4-times submit for the respective time sheet week.

      The time sheet needs to be submitted per week. If this is done once per month, or twice per month does not matter for the time sheet - but what is the business reason having an employee once per month click 4x times onto "submit" for each of the last 4 time sheet weeks?

      Is it regarding too many approvals? You can set up rules in the workflow that auto-approve times under circum conditions. Or put it the other way: you can always auto-approve times unless a specific time type or allowance is recorded in the time sheet. Like overtime or whatever.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Volker,

      Thank you for the valuable feedback. Yes as you rightly guessed, it is about too many approval mails to managers. So I can disable the TLMTriggerTasks . I will surely try with the option of configuring through the business rules 🙂

      Thanks a lot again,

      Regards,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Bryan Lee-Hock-Meng
      Bryan Lee-Hock-Meng

      Hi Shilpa,

       

      Do you manage to disable the TLMTriggerTasks? What our client want is similar where the auto time sheet submitting is not so helpful They want the employee to check the attendance before summition.

       

      Thanks.

      Regards,

      Bryan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      We have a scenario to implement timesheet for a customer for salaried employees who do not have to record the working times but still would need the working hours to be passed to payroll.

      We would need the time sheet to be auto generated for the working hours and the deviations would be recorded by the employee. I understand that the Negative time recording feature would be the one to consider. But we have a requirement that the timesheet for the entire month should be approved in advance like on the 15th of the month. With the Negative time scenario, the 2 jobs would generate the timesheet only upto the current day -1. Is there any way we can generate the time entries for the future ?

      Best Regards,

      Joseph

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Negativ scenario is indeed different than the scenario Shilpa mentioned (which is the positive time scenario with upload).

      Employees who have got the time recording method "Negative Time Recording" the employees don´t have got a "Submit" button at all in the time sheet. Cause normally negative don´t record many data and for some weeks nothing at all, cause there are no deviations, and it would not make sense to force those employees to submit the time sheet each week.

      And even when the employee records deviations, he does not need to submit it. It gets auto-submitted.

      Hence: Negative time recorders do not need to submit the time sheet at all.

      In the negative scenario the planned times from the workschedule of the employee get converted daily into "working time". You can then generate a pay type for it that is stored for Payroll.

      However: this job that transfers the planned times into working times runs daily but converts it only till yesterday. Cause this is the normal scenario, you don´t have the guarantee that a negative time recorder works tomorrow or gets unpaid ill, and this is why the times are only generated for one day back.

      When the employee records deviations than it depends if the employees record with start / end times or only duration.

      If start / end time is used and a different time type gets recorded that overlaps with its clocktimes with the converted time the time type "overwrites" the converted time. Those times that are recorded outside the time frame of the planned time are "on top".

      When the time recordign method is duration based only there are no start / end times to decide whether it is inside the planned times or outside. Hence you must in the time valuation rules assign time types to the category "recorded overtime" than it gets regarded as outside the planned times and on-top of the normal working hours.

      So all in all: it is not possible to auto-generate the working hours for a negative employee into the future.

      Best regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks Volker. Do you know if there is a latest version of the Timesheet Workbook that has been released ? I am able to find only version 1502 in the partner portal.

      Best Regards,

      Joseph

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker, Just discovered your interesting question (very latest workbook). Did you got any advice where to find? Cheers, Andreas

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      just realized that there is still an old version. I try to connect to those who are responsible for the workbooks.

      Normally the workbooks are on the Patner Portal page

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Updated workbooks on 1605 Basis are available now in the EC Partner Portal.

      Author's profile photo Guillaume Scarpati
      Guillaume Scarpati

      Hi Volker !

      We face an issue when trying to import via csv file the value for "Default overtime compensation variant" in job information.

      There is no picklist, nor MDF picklist of Generic object, referenced in the data model and the description "Time Off" (for instance) is rejected.

      Which value can we set in the import file ?

      Thanks in advance for your answer !

      Guillaume Scarpati

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Guillaume,

      please use the EC Jam Groups to post implementation questions. There is either the EC Enablement Jam Group for Implementation Partner or the EC Community Site where customers exchange Ideas / Discussions. Both are monitored and watched by the Product Management team.

      Did you enable the field "default overtime compensation variant" in the Job Information object?

      Permissions correct?

      The values are:

      Payout

      Payout and Time off

      Time off

      Best regards

      Volker29-04-2016 09-30-54.jpg

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Really, very informative post.

      I have a small query, in external upload of timesheet (csv file) can we include start and end time which further reflects in employees' timesheet.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      No, the upload is currently only with duration.

      But this is on the roadmap.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      I am able to add start time and end time in my excel and it is getting captured in Time segment, is there any possibility where I can write a rule to populate the start time to employee time sheet entry.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Poonam,

      respect for your creativity. But unfortunately even when you can use these information in the the time segments, I don´t see any rule whith which you can bring these custom fields into the time sheet entry object.

      And even if, the upload service generally works currently only for employees with time recording method "duration". So, you won´t be able to use these fields in the time evaluation cause the whole evaluation for those employees is with duration only.

      If it would be that easy we would have enabled start / end times for the service already in the 1602 as we released it. We got the enhancement of the service with start / end times on the roadmap mid-term. Afterwards we got a real clock in/out terminal integration on the roadmap. Until then I fear there is nothing that can be done.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Volker,

      While implementing Time sheet, we have come across another Challenge. When we write any validation rules for Time Type values, the rule always checks the first entry in Time sheet. Once the first entry is rectified and the later entries fail the validation, no errors will be displayed.

      I checked the Business rule execution log and found that the Employee Timesheet.EmployeeSheetEntry is always referring to first entry.

      Is it a known issue, or is there any better way to refer the daily entries on Time sheet?

      Thanks a lot for your support.

      Thanks & Regards,

      Shilpa

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Shilpa,

      what exactly do you want to check in the time sheet?

      Checks on the time sheet object requires a rule function that reads a list of time sheet entries. This is not yet possible.

      But try to assign the save rule to the "employee times" object and NOT to the time sheet object. This should give you per check the single employee time. Basic checks can be done with this.

      Rules are not yet really good supported in time sheet. We plan for the 1702 release something similar like "take rules" in time off. More clever input validations like a time type only up to a specific duration per day, allowances only when a specific absence or attendance time exist on that day and so on. In a later release we will even enhance this checks so that time valuation results can be checked as well.

      But maybe you can cover your use case already with the check on the employee times object.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you Volker for such a quick response. 🙂

      I have two requirement. One where we need to check the individual time type, I did try having check rules in Employee Time but it gave error. Now I am able to do this by validate rules in Employee Time Sheet Entry.

      Another requirement is I need to display an error message based on Total no. of Hours entered. This I tried to do with daily Time Valuation. But this is working only for first entry. I cannot put this under Time Sheet Entry as Time valuation results is a association of Employee Time Sheet object.

      Thanks & Regards,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Shilpa,

      the check on total no. of hours won´t work at the time being. This is something where we need to deliver a business rule function and even some more functions.

      Because: the check would need to check not the entered gross times per single time type, but all recorded time types per day and subtract the breaks that overlap (so called net-times). Don´t know if your customer uses breaks or not, but we need to provide this for those customers that use breaks as well.

      So:
      1) a loop is currently not possible

      2) when a customer uses breaks, this can be only subtracted by time evaluation and hence time valuation needs to deliver a value for the sum of net times per day. This is currently not possible to read with the business rules.

      As I mentioned: the business rules were developed for time off at a time where the time sheet did not even exist. Time off and time sheet use the same time objects, employee times, and this is why you can use the existing rules, but the checks in time sheet usually are more complex than in time off. This is why the rules that are applicable for time off do not suit the time sheet use cases.

      We gonna provide a solution for your requirements. This is on our roadmap and we must deliver it for other big customers as well.

      Until then I fear that besides the basic checks on a single time type (for example a single time type is not allowed to be recorded more than 10 hours) there is not much you can do right now. A check on the overall net times per day of all recorded time types is currently not possible.

      Stay tuned in my blogs and you will learn when we bring this features. Won´t be very long, but not in the next release.

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks a lot Volker for detailed explanation. Exactly this is the requirement we have the Break time needs to checked based on the total no. of hours. But sad 🙁 that we do not have a solution now. Never the less I will await for this solution. Also in one of the blogs I had read that the Time sheet UI will be changed to a better flexible UI. Please if you can let me know when this is planned then that would be very helpful.

      Thanks & Regards,

      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Volker,

      I see in the SAP Roadmap document, it is mentioned that Break deductions based on attendance time is in road map. We need exactly this solution. We will wait for this. Mean while as an alternative, we wanted to show an information message to employees about the break deductions. But in Employee Time Sheet, none of the Information message nor Warning messages are shown in Employee Time Sheet.  Any suggestions please.

      Thanks & Regards,

      Shilpa

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Shilpa,

      I fear that it is currently not possible to have info message populated for an employee.

      This will be possible when we implement our time sheets input checks. This is planned for Feb release as can be seen on our roadmap.

      But it is always good when you have got requirements that are not yet in the product to use our ideas forum to put more "pressure". Customer can add ideas to it. Other customers can kudo it. Customer will get a status message once the idea is implemented.

      Link here:

      POST data

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Steven Schenkels
      Steven Schenkels

      Dear Volker,

       

      In the validation rules of the time recording profile i always get the message "You can only assign 1 time sheet validation rule(s)." I sit normal behaviour that you cab only assign 1 validation rule into a time recording profile?

       

      Thanks,

      Steven

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Yes, this limitation is done to not create negative effects on the performance. The rules are very inperformant. Upon each click in the time sheet the rules are fired. And this costs time. Lots of rules means you click and the system takes 1 second to trigger the rules before it comes back. This is why we restricted the input validation rules to 1. Sure, you can cover most of the checks you spread in 5 rules in 1 and this has then the same effect as having 5 rules, but at least there are no massive amounts of rules and consultants / customers do think reasonably on what they want to have checked.

      Try using the time sheet validation rules - these are much more faster and there is no limitation. However, you can´t check the complete identical things with the input validations and time sheet validations. Things like: not more than 10 hours / 50 hours recorded on a day / week are better checked in the time valuation.

      Maybe you give an example on what you want to check?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks a lot for your earlier response.

      In timesheet, can we have auto-approval ? Once, excel is uploaded can we have auto-approved timesheet?

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Poonam,

      yes. There is an auto-approval and an auto-submit. Both is different ;-). Auto approval is workflow configuration, auto-submit is hard coded and is in dependency of the time recording method

      Auto-Submit:

      For time recording method "Negativ time" there is always an auto-submit, unless the user records times in the time sheet. When a negativ time recorder records times, the times get mingled with the workschedule times and he needs to submit the time sheet.

      For time recording method "Positiv" there is an auto-submit currently only when the time sheet consist of records that have been uploaded via our import service. When the employee records times in addition to the uploaded ones, he needs to submit manually.

      Auto-Approval:

      When you leave the workflow configuration empty then there is always an autoapprove. In addition, you can use the workflow rules to do more enhanced things, like for example: auto approve but not when a specific time type is recorded. Or auto-approve when a time account balance is beneath 20h, when above then approval is necessary. And much more things.

      Hope this helps.

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks a lot Volker !

      Let me explain you my requirement. We are using "positive" recording method, and we have workflow configured currently, manager as approver.

      Requirement is, when we upload file with time type and duration, the timesheet should get auto-approved, and there should not be any 'Submit' button on timesheet.

      I tried by keeping workflow empty, but still we get 'Submit' option and status shows as 'to be submitted' or 'to be approved'. The only thing is it does not go to manager.

      Can you please help us, with an example of rule, where we can set 'auto-approve'.

      Please let me know if more information is required on the requirement.

      Thanks

      Poonam

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Poonam,

      there is no specific configuration needed. You need to schedule the TLM Trigger task job - but I assume this is already done in your system.

      The submit action can be done manually or the system performs an auto-submit at the end of the time valuation period (as defined in the new object "valuation period").

      The TLM trigger task job checks if there are time sheets where an auto-submit needs to be done at the end of the week. The system knows if there are uploaded times in time sheets that have not yet been submitted, and performs an auto-submit. Even when 4 days have uploaded times and 1 day manual recorded times.

      The auto submit works even for time sheets that have been manually submitted in the middle of the week (due to a payroll run for example) and even be approved. When then times get uploaded for the rest of the week the system makes internally a "withdraw" of the already approved time sheet at the end of the period, copies the already existing records, adds the new uploaded times and performs an auto-submit and triggers a new approval task. So the behaviour is the same as if the employee would withdraw an already approved time sheet, but all automatically.

      The submit button is always visible. You cannot hide it. Cause it might be that there are other times the employee (or time admin) needs to record or he needs to submit the time sheet in the middle of the week due to a payroll run.

      Best regards

      Volker

      Need to add one point: you are using our upload service as described above, right? Cause it won´t work with a simple MDF import.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation. I need more clarification on below note:

      "Need to add one point: you are using our upload service as described above, right? Cause it won´t work with a simple MDF import."

      We are using import template 'external-time segment' to upload employee's timesheet. Are we doing it correctly? or is there any other system defined upload service which you have mentioned.

      Please let me know if there is any system defined upload service.

      Best Regards

      Poonam Kumari

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Yes, thats the one.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      From the timesheet guide, i understand that we can add a custom comment field for timesheet entry. Is it possible to add a custom comment field for allowances also ?

      Best Regards,

      Joseph

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Not yet. Is however on the backlog.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks for confirming that.

      For Negative time recorders, currently there is no comment box for the them to enter a comment for the current week(Save) if they enter deviations but it is available when we amend the previous weeks' timesheet(ans also available for a Positive time recorder when they submit). Is there anything we can do to enable that or something on the radar on that ?

      Best Regards,

      Joseph

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Yes correct. Reason for the missing comment functionality is: the comment function is bound to the submit action. A negative time recorder should not mandatory need to submit his time sheet, it is autosubmitted. Hence there is no comment function. But for amendments it is implemented for the submit cause we want to provide a possibility to enter a comment once an approved time sheet gets amended.

      However, we re-think the process on negative time and submittting a time sheet. Provide for example in addition to the automated submit a manuell submit possibility (for example to provide data for a payroll that runs on wednesday).

      Then a comment could entered for all scenarios even for negative time. And when he does record some deviations and does not explicitly submit than do nevertheless an autosubmit at the end of the week. Or when he submits in the middle of the week nevertheless perform an autosubmit at the end of the week for the remaining week.

      We got some round offs and adaptations for the submit in negative time on the radar for the next release. Let´s see what we can deliver with this. I gonna put the requirement to enter a comment for negative time into the backlog in any case.

      Regards

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks for your previous explanation.

      Can we set an alert for employees whose timesheet has zero hours of recording? Can we have a rule for this. If, possible please let me know what would be the base object 1. when we use import 2. and when we don't use import.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      I don´t understand what you want to achieve.

      When employee has not submitted a time sheet you want to have an alert? How shall this be triggered from time sheet when there is no action on it? And the time alert shall be sent to a time admin, to the employee, to whom? Upon direct time recording / upload - but when you don´t upload anything for a day / week how shall time sheet evaluation be triggered to generate an error?

      Please be more precise when you are asking. Describe the business process and not simply can we have this and that. Based on your two sentence I can only guess what you want to achieve.

      We are building generic time valuation checks for the next release and the subsequent release. I cannot tell right now if your requirement will be covered within these releases.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks a lot for your explanation.

      Our customer requirement is: When they upload timesheet through 'external time segment' where default import attendance type is working time. If working time they upload as '0' hours an alert should trigger to the approver.

      Want to know if it is possible. Basically if employee is absent then an alert or notification should go to manager.

      Please let us know if more clarification is required and also if this is achievable as of now.

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Why would you upload 0 hours on a day?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Volker,


      The Actual requirement is that Our Client is insisting for Notification for the absence hours(Eg If an employee doesn't clockin and Clockout)  An alert message needs to be triggered to him and his manager. Any possibility of achieving this? we were trying to write a rule that if working Hrs are equal to zero then the system should trigger an Alert or Workflow.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Here Clock In and Clock out means Time Entries in Bio Metric System

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Poonam,

      it would be good when you post this kind of deep dive questions in the EC specific forums like the EC Community or the EC Enablement Jam Group. There is more EC-related traffic and people who for sure are interested in your questions as well.

      But anyway, try following: - no guarantee cause I did not test it myself. And please drop a note on the result or otherwise there will be no answers anymore from myself ;-). Would be good to know on the customer name as well, you can send me a private message on that.

      Assign a post-save rule to the external time record object. In this you check if the hours are equal to zero. Than you can trigger a notification. How alerts and notification works are explained in the EC Time Off implementation guide that you can find on help.sap.com.

      But when you of course upload for each day regardless if the employee has planned time or not 0 hours than you sent too many notifications. Maybe you need to query in addition if the employee has got planned working time on this day.

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Poonam,

      Did the Alert message worked for you? If yes please can you share. We also have similar requirement, but without any condition we want to send employees a reminder notification, like on every Thursday; a reminder should go to employees, to fill up their deviations before the Time sheet  gets auto submitted.
      Thanks & Regards,
      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Poonam,

      Did the alert message work for you. We also have a requirement to send reminder email to employees to enter the deviations like over hours, business trip; before the time sheet is auto submitted. Any idea on how can we achieve this?

      Thanks & Regards,
      Shilpa.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi,

      I am trying to configure the Time Sheet in my instance, but i am not able to figure out how to configure the time sheet UI  as the handbook says go to "configure employee files" where we have people profile now. So i went to "Configure people profile" but i am not able to find the time sheet in the options to choose from on the right.Please refer the screenshot attached.

       

      Regards,

      Aditya

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

       

      What do you mean with "configure time sheet UI". The UI can´t be configured. You need to create time recording profiles and assign these to the employees. Those employees who have got a time recording profile (and the permissions) can use the time sheet Ui.

      Author's profile photo Mohammed Ferozkhan
      Mohammed Ferozkhan

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks for the information,

      Can you please Elaborate on the API update, means what is API that you are about to update with data.

      Like what API we should use for the same.

       

      @ Suggestions from any will be highly appreciated

       

      Regards,

      Ferozkhan

       

      Author's profile photo Volker Ruof
      Volker Ruof
      Blog Post Author

       

      Hello,

      sorry, don´t really understand your question. Update which API with what Data? We have own MDF objects. Most of them provide an API.

      What do you want to do?

      Regards

      Volker

      Author's profile photo Mohammed Ferozkhan
      Mohammed Ferozkhan

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks for responding.

      We are working on integration between SF and 3rd Party Bio-Metric System with SAP HCI. But client don't want to expose the data for internet in any method for Integration.

      So, thought of API data Upsert/Update. While will create a Odata API service and Updating the time record in to ODATA API - EmployeeTime.

      Can you please suggest us, on the API part as you have mentioned to update the new time record.

      Thanks in Advance.

      Regards,

      Ferozkhan

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Mohammed Ferozkhan
      Mohammed Ferozkhan

      Hi Volker,

      Thanks for response, now got the solution after trail and error.

      Yes as you say externalCode is the Mandatory feild, but we dint know that if we push the externalCode from the outside. Sf will not generate it and it will use the same internally if pushed.

      By this we have made the Odata API for MDF entity as a service for updating the BIO-Metric data from 3rd Party system to SF.

      Am attaching you the reference note which was helpful.

      Regards,

      Ferozkhanhttps://apps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/public/en/2243841

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Bryan Lee-Hock-Meng
      Bryan Lee-Hock-Meng

      Hi Volker,

       

      I know this is a kind of old blog. I just want to check if there is a way to avoid the auto time sheet submission? We just implemented the EC Time Sheet and our business would like the employee to check their time data (in case of any missing external time sheet) before submitting. Is there a way to deactivate the auto submission of positive time sheet. I understand that it is handle via TLMTriggerTasks. What is the impact if we disable this job?

      Thanks.

      Regards,

      Bryan.