Five features help you take charge of SuccessFactors Employee Central

The manage business configuration app

The manage business configuration application (Figure 1) allows you to configure the portlets of the Personal Information, Employment Information and Employee Profile screens in the user interface. The portlets on these screens have been configured by XML that is uploaded via Provisioning, but SuccessFactors introduced the ability to configure them via this application in OneAdmin. This gives you full power to modify the Employee Files screens as you require, without the help of an implementation partner.

In the manage business configuration application you can add, hide, remove or rename fields, as well as change field attributes (such as whether they are required for input, synched to Employee Profile, or have PII masking), manage label translations and assign business rules to either fields within a portlet or to the portlet itself. You also can rename a portlet or hide the portlet.

If this application is enabled, the permissions for manage business configuration are assigned to your permission role or exist in the Permission settings for the role (Figure 2). If the application is not enabled, an implementation partner or SAP support must enable this feature in Provisioning.

The instance synchronization tool

For SAP customers, the thought of using a manual "transport" mechanism to move changes from one system to another would be inconceivable. Therefore, SuccessFactors introduced -- and recently enhanced -- the instance synchronization tool (Figure 3).

This easy-to-use tool enables the replication of configuration, objects and data between instances. This includes:

• Data models
• Foundation objects
• Generic objects (including object definitions, configurable UIs and rules)
• Data created for generic objects
• User data
• Picklists
• Workflows
• Role-based permissions
• System properties

The power of this tool means that you can easily make changes in your development and preview environment and transfer them to your test and production environment without needing to reproduce configuration or data in multiple instances, which had traditionally been the method used to transport changes.

To determine whether this tool is enabled, see if the permissions for manage instance synchronization are assigned to your permission role or exist in the Permission settings for the role (Figure 4). If the tool is not enabled, an implementation partner or SAP support must enable this feature in Provisioning.

The payment information portlet

The new payment information portlet (Figure 5) replaces the Direct Deposit portlet in the Personal Information screen. Previously the Direct Deposit portlet was fairly rigid, did not provide workflow capabilities and provided limited configuration options. Additionally, SAP will discontinue support for the Direct Deposit portlet.

Built on the Metadata Framework, the payment information portlet provides the flexible, configurable functionality that underpins the Metadata Framework and also delivers built-in bank account validations. By using the payment information portlet you can now modify all of the fields on the portlet (such as data type or adding PII masking), have granular permissions applied to different users and add much-wanted workflows. Additionally, the portlet is effective-dated so that all history can be viewed.

Customers currently using the Direct Deposit portlet can use the Upgrade Center to enable this feature and migrate data to the payment information portlet. Any existing interfaces may need to be adjusted, so they must be investigated. Integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll will continue to work as expected.

To determine whether this feature is enabled, see if the permissions for payment information in the miscellaneous permission category are assigned to your permission role or exist in the Permission settings for the role (Figure 6). If the feature is not enabled, follow the steps in the "Configuring Payment Information (Administration Guide)" on SAP Service Marketplace to enable it.

Data retention management

The data retention management feature (Figure 7) enables you to purge employees and related data from the system. From an Employee Central perspective, this data includes inactive users and Time Off data. This allows you to remove historical data for either legal purposes or purely just for data cleansing.

Because employees are unique, employee data that is expunged with this feature cannot be re-created. For example, removing a specific employee means that the ID cannot be reused again in the system.

To determine whether this feature is enabled, see if the permissions for manage data purge are assigned to your permission role or exist in the Permission settings for the role (Figure 8). If the feature is not enabled, an implementation partner or SAP support must enable this feature in Provisioning.

Manage mass changes

With manage mass changes you can make changes to the Job Information or Job Relationships of a group of employees (Figure 9). Any information from the Job Information portlet can be changed as well as any job relationship. You can create groups of employees in the same way that you can create Permission Groups or Workflow Groups.

Beware that validation checks currently do not take place when making mass changes. For example, a location could be assigned to an employee that the associations would not allow if an attempted change was made through Change Job and Compensation Info or through employee's history.

Although manage mass changes is limited to Job Information and Job Relationships at present, functionality is coming to enable mass changes for Positions.

To determine whether this feature is enabled, see if the permissions for manage mass changes are assigned to your permission role or exist in the Permission settings for the role (Figure 10). If the feature is not enabled, an implementation partner or SAP support must enable this feature in Provisioning.

When enabled, these five features can help you own your system so that you can configure and maintain it as your business changes. You will have more flexibility as you continue to adapt your business, without needing outside support that can take longer to procure than you would like. By ensuring that your implementation partner enables these features, you can be in control of your system long after your implementation is live.