Interview scheduling integration with Microsoft Outlook was introduced by successFactors in their Q3 2015 upgrade.
This was an Admin Opt-In feature. This integration was applicable for clients using Microsoft Outlook Exchange 2010, 2013
or Office 365.
Integration between various tools and applications will be always challenging and exciting. Following proper guidelines
to setup an integration is must and therefore I would suggest to get familiarize with procedures documented in
RCM implementation guide and RCM_User Guide_Interview_Scheduling_v3.1 (Available in SAP Jam).
This write up should have been posted as blog a while ago since this feature was delivered in older release.
I hope info here will be useful for reference point for customers who are freshly implementing Recruiting module
or would like to add interview central feature to their existing SF recruiting system. This write up has steps to
implement Outlook Integration steps (Interview Scheduling and Outlook Integration) and the project level activities
and also various teams involved.
Introduction:
Outlook integration:
Enables organizers to fetch availability of the interviewer from their outlook calendar
Sends meeting invite to interviewer when they are booked for interviewing candidate
Response of interviewers can be viewed in successFactors. When Outlook Integration is enabled,
Interview schedules, invites, and meetings appear directly on the user’s Outlook calendar.
Preparation
Various prerequisites and the team/person responsible:
Recruiting Admin:
- Online/Personal Interview Locations, Email Templates preparation
- Insure unique email addresses for Interviewers. Email ID entered in BizX user data must be same as Outlook email
- Set Interviewers time zones
IT Team:
- Must be using Outlook versions 2007 On-premise/2010 On-premise/2013 On-premise/Office 365 On-Demand
IT Mail Exchange
- Establish service account in Exchange.
- Exchange URL, service account credentials must be provided to SF Admin
- Must allow access to the service account for “Free/Busy Time permissions or greater
- Requests from Recruiting Customer Facing App server to Client Microsoft Exchange Web Services should not be
restricted by Client’s network firewall.
- Facilitate Port http, https
- Auto Discover Service should be running and published outside of Client’s network firewall, in public-internet domain.
Implementation Stages
Stage 1 | Details |
Enable Outlook Integration feature | Enable Outlook Integration in Provisioning |
Add Picklists for Interview Locations | Admin Center > Picklist Management. Picklist values are needed to be created with online and offline interview location list and maintain in Admin Center. |
Enable Interview Scheduling in instance | Admin Center > Manage Recruiting Settings > Interview Central > Enable Interview Scheduling > Select the Picklist |
Stage 2 | Details |
Manage E-Mail Templates | Admin Tools > Manage Recruiting E-Mail Templates |
Assign Templates to E-Mail triggers | Admin Tools > Recruiting E-Mail Triggers |
Stage 3 | Details |
Permission to Recruiting Admin to Set Up Outlook Integration | Admin Center > Set User Permission > Manage Permission Roles > Role > Permissions > Manage Recruiting > Set up Interview Scheduling Outlook Integration |
Create a Permission Group of Organizers and give access to calendar | Admin Center > Set User Permission > Manage Permission Roles > Role > Permissions > Recruiting Permissions >
|
Stage 4 | Details |
Recruiter to see candidates in interview status | Admin Center > Manage Recruiting > Edit Applicant Status Configuration |
Setup Outlook Integration | Admin Tools > Setup Interview Scheduling Outlook Integration |
Further Upgrades:
- In Q1 2016 couple of upgrades for outlook integration were introduced:
- E-Mail Trigger to Organizer when Interviewers respond
- Scheduled job to retrieve interviewer and room statuses periodically
- Another upgrade for outlook worth noticing is “Room Booking”
Note: You may want to follow release upgrades consistently to check new features and upgrades as SF RCM is continuously evolving.
Key Learnings:
- Configure all E-Mail Templates:
- As per “RCM_User Guide_Interview Scheduling_v3.1”, if only “Required” Email templates are configured,
functionality should work but it was observed that until required and recommended Email templates are not
configured, it does not work.
- You may need to be Patient on RBP front:
- It may happen that even after enabling interview scheduling, permission of calendar and Interview Scheduling
may not be visible in permissions. You may have to wait up to 3 to 4 hours approx.
- Check Service Account by logging in manually:
- Usually service account provided by IT Exchange of your client requires password reset on first login,
if that is not done manually outlook integration will not work.
- Why some clients may say NO to this functionality?
- It has been observed that clients who say NO to implement this functionality, are concerned about the
Service Account settings in e-mail exchange keeping IT Security in mind.
- Timeline to Implement
- While providing timelines to client, please ensure to calculate sufficient time for testing this functionality
because there are many scenarios which needs to be tested.
Make sure to explain the pre-requisites related to E-Mail Exchange server to client before proceeding towards implementation
as that is considered to be a bottle neck, although none of the clients who have implemented Outlook integration have reported
any IT Security breach as per SF.
Conclusion: Interview scheduling is a very useful feature . Coupled with outlook integration will increase the efficiency of the
overall recruiting process. Currently SuccessFactors supports only Microsoft Outlook integration.
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