SAP SuccessFactors LMS: 1H 2022 Release Highlights

[nageshpolu]

Hello!

As part of 1H 2022 release series blogs, this one, I want to give you a brief overview of my favorites of 1H LMS release. Again, Team SAP delivered a good number of enhancements. All the 30+ enhancements are equally important, but few stand out for me.

Here is the list of my favorites:

1. Enhanced Course Home: Game Changer! 1H 2022, SAP added support for online courses to the new Course Home experience. The new Course Home experience is controlled by the enableCourseHomeBlended configuration, also in System Administration à Configuration à System Configuration à If you configure both enableCourseHome=true and enableCourseHomeBlended=true, both online courses and instructor-led training uses the new Course Home experience, not the original Course Home experience, which means the original course home experience will reach end of maintenance soon.

• Configuration Type: Universal

 

Note: In the current version, setting enableCourseHome=true provides the original Course Home experience for online courses and instructor-led training only when enableCourseHomeBlended=false. Setting enableCourseHomeBlended=true provides the new Course Home experience for external courses, online courses, instructor-led training, and courses that are instructor-led with online content (blended).

 

2. Default Item Type Classification: Nice to have! SAP brings a feasibility to allow administrators to be able to select a different default item classification than online, or have the default be blank, so a classification must be selected during creation Administrators can now select a Default Item Classification for new items. This can be achieved via System Administration >> Configuration >> Global Application Settings >>  General Settings.

The following classifications are available for default selection:

• Online


• Instructor-led


• Instructor-led with online content


• Other


• Blank

• Configuration Type: Universal

 

3. User Creation for New Learning Implementations and User Connector Changes: Recommended! Users in new SuccessFactors Learning implementations are created with the User Source System of SF platform. Once you activate Identity Authentication, then the Learning-only user creation process is available. Although existing implementations will be able to use the User Connector to create SuccessFactors platform users in Learning, SAP recommends that both existing and new implementations use the SF User Connector. You can still use the User Connector to update information for existing users.

• Configuration Type: Universal

 

4. Administration Management of Learning Integration with SuccessFactors platform: Henceforth, the newly provisioned SuccessFactors Learning tenants will be delivered pre-integrated with a SuccessFactors platform tenant, and in these tenants the integration configurations will be read-only. Existing SuccessFactors Learning tenants that are already integrated will be transitioned to the read-only state. For these existing tenants a message displays on the home page. Selecting the configuration link brings you to the System Configuration page where you can see and confirm the Learning Integration Status or provide an alternate SuccessFactors Learning Integration URL.

• Configuration Type: Universal

Note: All the existing SuccessFactors Learning tenants that are not integrated with SuccessFactors platform must be integrated before the full Admin functionality is available.

 

5. Class Registration when One Seat Remains: Winner! 1H brings a business logic to check seat availability before a user completes their registration, if no seats remain at the time a user completes registration, a message displays informing the user that the class is now full. This logic now will prevent accidental over-enrollment in classes, which means, if two users start to register for a class at the same time and there’s only one seat left, the first person to complete the registration is registered and the second person sees a message indicating the class is full.

• Configuration Type: Universal

 

6. User Withdrawal from Manager-Registered Class: Nice to have! 1H brings the ability for users to withdraw from a class where they were registered by their manager. Administrators can enable this feature at the global level in Registration Settings. The global setting determines the default value of the setting at the class level. The setting can be changed for individual classes. This setting can also use Entity Configuration to hide the field in the class entity to prevent changes.

• Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

Note: By default, the feature is disabled at the global level.

 

7. Unified Learning History: One more enhancement that comes under nice to have category,  users can now view a consolidated Learning History for all their employments in Learning. Remember, this is only applicable in the Learner view and Manager view.

• Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

Note: There is limitation when it comes to the Learning History portlet, the history portlet on people profile & and Learning Administration pages does not show a consolidated view for completed courses across all employments of a learner.

8. Increase in the Number of Columns Supported for Learning Queries in Story Reports: Game Changer! The number of columns that you can select while creating a Learning query has been increased from 30 to 120. This enhancement will now allow you to create complex or detailed Learning queries that involve more than 30 columns.

• Configuration Type: Universal

 

One more feature that’s stand out other than above for me is the ability to launch the Learning content player within their business portals without having to navigate to the SAP SuccessFactors Learning application.

I once again tried to sum up the best. But, I would highly recommend checking out "What's New Viewer" for all the release updates, part of H1 2022. The What’s New View will provide the detailed release summary across application.  Let me also remind you, 1H 2022 release will be in production on May 20, 2022.

Note: For validated Learning (vSaaS), most of the enhancements will occur with the deployment of the 1H 2023 since vSaaS environments are only updated once a year and that update includes the 2H 2022 release.

See you soon with a new blog!

You can my previous blog on SuccessFactors Employee Central release highlights.