With every release, there are important features and changes to the user experience that both Employee Central administrators and employees will need to be aware of.
For the 1H 2021 release, we have consolidated a list of features that are “Must Consider” items for Employee Central. The following list is split between top considerations for EC administrators as well as considerations for employees.
Please also review other release related information at
SAP SuccessFactors Release Information as well as specific features coming in the 1H 2021 Release in the
What’s New Viewer.
Must Consider features for EC Administrators
Position Management
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Redesign for job2pos sync in Position management |
ECT-152851 |
Universal |
With this feature, you can now trigger a direct synchronization between Job Information to Position when less than 5 job information records are imported. Prior to this release, any changes made to job information from an import job, a scheduled job is triggered for position synchronization. A higher volume of such scheduled jobs can lead to a throttling limit exception.
In order to avoid this issue, a direct synchronization is triggered when the number of records imported for job information is less than 5, otherwise a scheduled job is created. This change will also apply for records changed via APIs.
Related Information:
Hire/Rehire
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Configurable New Hire in Manage Pending Hires |
ECT-160495 |
Universal |
New hire templates can be configured to flexibly configure the hiring process to cater to different needs for your workforce. When hiring from the Manage Pending Hires tool, if you have new hire templates configured and the proper permissions are granted, you are now able to select a template for new hire and rehire scenarios.
The following is expected behavior for mapped data coming from Recruiting and/or Onboarding:
RCM & ONB 1.0:
- If the block is not configured in the Hire Template, then the values are not saved to the database.
- The only exception to this is the Compensation Info & Payment Information blocks – these blocks will still save data and trigger onSave Business Rules that are setup in the configuration.
- Business rules on all other non-configured blocks are ignored.
ONB:
- If the block is not configured in the Hire Template, then the values are saved to the database.
- Business rules for Compensation Info & Payment Information blocks will still be triggered (even if not configured) and data will be saved
- Business rules on all other non-configured blocks are ignored.
Related Information:
Employee Data Imports
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Centralized Services - Universal Updates to Centralized Services for Data Imports |
ECT-159895 |
Admin Opt-out |
With Centralized services enabled, data imports for Job Information, Compensation Information, Recurring Pay Component, and Social Accounts Information support the following, as applicable:
- Business rules: Compensation Information, Recurring Pay Component, Social Accounts Information, and Personal Documents Information entities now support business rules. Job Information continues to support business rules as a legacy behavior.
- Identical record suppression: Compensation Information, Recurring Pay Component, and Social Account Information entities now support identical record suppression. Job Information continues to support identical record suppression as a legacy behavior.
- Employee data deletion: Data imports for deleting employee data now go through a series of checks to ensure data integrity, and prevent inconsistencies.
- Forward data propagation: Forward propagation of deleted data continues until a record is found with data different than the data being propagated.
- Workflows: Job Information entity now supports workflows.
Related Information:
Employee Data Imports
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Centralized Services - Rule Context Support for onChange Business Rules |
ECT-139255 |
Universal |
Centralized services now support rule context criteria applied for onChange business rules assigned to fields of an HRIS entity. Rule context criteria is applicable only if an HRIS entity is supported by Centralized services, and Centralized services are enabled for it.
Configuration Requirements:
For entities supported by Centralized services based on a configuration switch, rule context criteria is applicable only if the following settings are selected on the
Admin Center >
Company System and Logo Settings page:
- Enable Centralized Services, for Social Accounts Information and Personal Documents Information (Work Permit) entities.
- Enable Centralized Services for Job Information, for Job Information entity.
- Enable Centralized Services for Compensation Information, for Compensation Information entity.
- Enable Centralized Services for Recurring Pay Component Information, for Recurring Pay Component entity.
Related Information:
Employee Data Imports
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Identical Record Suppression with Data Imports |
ECT-160370 |
Admin Opt-out |
Identical record suppression is now enabled by default for all supported entities.
In the current version, the
Company System and Logo Settings >
Suppress update of identical records during Employee Central import for supported entities setting is selected by default. As a result, the identical record check is always performed with data imports of supported entities. Based on your requirement, you have the option to deselect this switch.
In the previous version, you had to manually select the
Suppress update of identical records during Employee Central import for supported entities setting to enable identical record suppression.
This change was introduced to improve data consistency and performance by ensuring that duplicate records are not added with data imports.
Related Information:
Employee Data Imports
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Auto-Interruption of Data Import Jobs |
ECT-158031 |
Universal |
Scheduled or manually initiated data import jobs are now automatically interrupted if they do not meet a specific criteria.
Employee data import jobs are now evaluated against the following criteria:
For example, if a job is running for more than 2 hours or utilizing more than 90% of system memory consistently for over 30 minutes, it’s interrupted. An interrupted job resumes shortly after it’s recovered. This auto-interruption feature improves overall performance and resource maintenance.
Related Information:
Data Replication Monitor
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Migration of the Legacy Data Replication Monitor to the New Data Replication Monitor |
ECT-146282 |
Universal |
The legacy Data Replication Monitor will reach end of maintenance May 21, 2021 and will be deleted on November 19, 2021. The new UI is introduced in the 1H 2020 version with improved performance and a new interface. The new UI has the same Provisioning switch as well as the same permission settings as the legacy Data Replication Monitor. There is no impact to any existing integrations in the system.
Data Protection & Privacy
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Russia Data Residency Solution Updates |
ECT-139174 |
Universal |
Russia Data Residency Solution now supports the Recurring Pay Component and Non-Recurring Pay Component entities.
Recurring Pay Component, Non-Recurring Pay Component entities, and the People Profile of Russian employees contain their personal data. As the administrator, you can now collect and store this information as part of the master data in the Russian Data Center. You can also generate reports for transactions done on the personal data.
Related Information:
Must Consider features for Employees
Validation Messages
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Improved Address Validation Warning Message |
ECT-151802 |
Universal |
We have made changes to the warning messages for Address Validation Service to make them more useful to our users.
Related Information:
Validation Messages
|
Feature Name |
Reference Number |
Configuration Type |
Validation Available for Work Permit Data Entered on UI |
ECT-108806 |
Admin Opt-out |
By default, we now validate work permit data entered on the UI to ensure only valid records are saved in the system.
Related Information:
Other Important Release Information
Employee Central and User Decoupling – AssignmentIdExternal from Business Rule
With the continuous effort to optimize the code, we have worked on this enhancement which is relevant to customers that have the option ‘Activate Generate Assignment ID External by Using a Business Rule’ enabled.
We recommend customers using the option ‘
Activate Generate Assignment ID External by Using a Business Rule’, which can be found in
Manage Data > Employment Settings Configuration, to test the following use cases/scenarios in the 1H 2021 release:
- Create a New Hire
- Rehire with New Employment
- Create a GA from the UI and using imports
- Create a CE from the UI and using imports
- Basic user, employment import to validate if the user is created with the expected assignment ID external
Related Information:
I do hope this information has been useful to highlight important features coming in the 1H 2021 Release. Again, you can find additional details regarding this release at
SAP SuccessFactors Release Information.
