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Author's profile photo Biplab Das

Much awaited “Compound Employee” ODATA API ( BETA) now available in Integration Center

** P.S -THIS FEATURE HAS BEEN ROLLED BACK BY SAP,  THUS SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED FOR ANY IMPLEMENTATION***

Yes – you have heard it right, the “Compound Employee” API in OData format is available in Integration center from Q1 2017 releases. This is still in “BETA” version and not yet available for production usage.This can, however, be used for evaluation, testing, and prototyping.

Now an employee file can be generated easily with Just one API from IC.

 

Steps to enable this feature

 

Login to provisioning

1.Choose the instance in which you want to enable the “Compound Employee” API ( BETA) for Integration Center”.

2. Go to “Company Settings“, make sure  “Employee Profile data audit” is checked

3. Go to “SFAPI Feature Settings” – enable the checkbox against “Enable Compound Employee entity in Integration Center”

4. login into SF instance and go to “ODATA API Dictionary” ( one can directly search this on the search screen or can navigate via Admin Centre->ODATA API Dictionary)

In the “Search All” option type “Compound_” and search, you should be able to see the Compound Employee ODATA API’s

(if you are unable to see this, do ODATA API Metadata refresh)

5. Open Integration Center and switch to the beta view by adding the suffix BETA to the URL:

Open Integration center and at the end of the URL add “_BETA” and press “Enter”

*UPDATE –  as of 1708 release we don’t need to add “_BETA ” suffix anymore.

Create an Integration( does not matter File, XML or EDI) and in the search, you should be able to find the CompoundEmployee API.

Simple employee file generation

In this example, I will show how the Compound Employee ODATA “BETA” API can be used to extract employee data from various portlets and a simple file can be produced.

I’ve chosen few fields from the biographical portlet

Select the navigations – As mentioned in the screenshot, in this screen it allows the only first level of navigation at this screen ( if you notice, Job and compensation are not visible here as those are under Employment). However, any field can be added in the field configuration screen.

 

Give the integration an appropriate name. I’ve selected Simple header, which will add column header in the output file.

go to the next screen – this should display all the primary fields for the portlets selected. For example, for Email – email type field would appear.For national id, card type field would appear.To add more fields click on the “+Add” button

To add a new field, in the search box, type field name and then “compound”( as shown in below screen).Here the field  “position” from Job information.

In the next screen, last modified date, and last run date parameter is populated ( considering this is an incremental interface)

SFTP server, folder, filename etc details are populated

 

Upon running the integration, a file is generated on SFTP Server.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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      14 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Arijit Das
      Arijit Das

      Good blog Biplab! Although the "_BETA" suffix to the IC is not required to access the OData Entity Compound_Employee.

       

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for letting me know. I've now updated the blog.

      Author's profile photo Vikas Bansal
      Vikas Bansal

      Hi Biplab,

      Can you please confirm if the "Compound Employee” ODATA API" is released in production.

      If no ,then whats the plan.

       

      Regards

      Manoj

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vikas,

      This feature is still in "BETA" and not yet released for Production.

      I am not sure about the timeline on SAP would release it for production.

      According to me this is really a good feature which can create simple employee data integration in 30 minutes. SAP should release it asap.

      Regards

      Biplab Das

      Author's profile photo Vikas Bansal
      Vikas Bansal

      Thanks Biplab

      When we say the API is released to production ,can we start accessing it using ODATA REST api.

      Or does this help only for generating report.

       

      We would like to access it using REST API.

      My use case is to get data from Employee Central.

      right now we have figured out Compound API from SOAP based approach.

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/b2b06831c2cb4d5facd1dfde49a7aab5/1708/en-US/cb9dd922478a4fd8a91fb914ce4af683.html

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vikash,

      When we say the API is released to production ,can we start accessing it using ODATA REST api.=>  that means this feature will be available in DEV, Test etc  but not in production instance of SF.

      for production you have to use CompoundEmployee API which is SOAP based.

      Author's profile photo Vikas Bansal
      Vikas Bansal

      Hi Biplab,

      Can you please confirm if there is REST end point for compound api's using ODATA

       

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vikash,

      As far as i know, till date CompoundEmployee ODATA BETA is exclusively designed for IC only. We need to wait and see if it will be made available for other middlewares/3rd parties to invoke.

      Author's profile photo Federico Bellizia
      Federico Bellizia

       

      Hi Biplab,

      do you have any news for API Access to Compound ODATA?

       

       

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Federico, i'm not sure if that is there in SAP's roadmap.

      Author's profile photo Naresh Purohit
      Naresh Purohit

      Hi Biplab,

      We have rolled back this beta Feature and it is no longer available. Can You please update your blog in order to have the latest Information.

      Thanks,

      Naresh

       

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

       

      Hi Naresh,

      Thanks for the information. Can you please let us know why this "seems to be good"  feature is rolled back?  Also do you have any document around the same ?

      Regards

      Biplab

      Author's profile photo Naresh Purohit
      Naresh Purohit

      Hi Biplab,

      We had multiple reasons to roll back feature including strategic reason. Since the feature was never released we have no documentation around this.

      I request you to please update or remove the blog to avoid confusion.

      Many thanks,

      Naresh

      Author's profile photo Biplab Das
      Biplab Das
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for clarifying. Blog updated !!