SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2493579 - Person/User IDs Used Within Employee Central - Employee Profile

Symptom

  • A brief description on the different IDs which are used within Employee Central.
  • What are the system identificators within SuccessFactors?
  • What is the User ID?
  • What is the Person ID External?
  • What is the UUID?
  • What is the difference between the IDs in SuccessFactors?

Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.

Environment

  • SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
  • SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite

Resolution

General Name

Field (Table)

Information

Person ID

person-id-external

(personInfo)

The person-id-external, often referred to as the Person ID, is stored on the biographical portlet.

The Person ID is a unique ID which is associated to each person.  A employee generally only has one Person ID throughout their time at the company, as this ID is associated to each person.
Therefore, one person ID can be associated with multiple user IDs in Employee Central for profiles such as global assignments, concurrent employments, and rehired with new employment profile. Such profiles share same person ID but different User IDs.

You can manually assign Person IDs or have the system generated ones.
When you use system-generated IDs, set the visibility to “view” (to avoid anyone updating Person ID by mistake) and add the attribute allow-import=”true” (to update the Person ID, when required) to this HRIS field in the data model.

Please keep in mind you cannot set the field to Mandatory as this will give you a validation error message saying that a mandatory field cannot be set to View.

Simply set the field to Mandatory No in BCUI, and then set the Visibility to View and Import to true.

To generate the PersonID, you can use the system feature "Next Person ID Assigned" in "Company, System and Logo Settings". You maintain a digit here, which will automatically be incremented by 1 for each new hire.
Alternatively, you can set up a business rule to do this.

Please note that the generation of Person ID is possible when we do a new hire. During import of hires, we need to manually furnish the Person IDs in import file.

You can configure this field to be visible in the UI within Biographical Information by setting the field to visible.

This cannot be used for Single Sign-On (SSO).

UUID (Universal Unique Identifier)

per-person-uuid

(personInfo)

The per-person-uuid, often referred to as the UUID, is stored at a database level.

This ID was introduced for Suite Integration purposes.

This is an Immutable ID generated by the system when Person data is created. When you import Biographical or Basic User information, the system now automatically creates a unique identifier for each record. This is stored as the per-person-uuid field. This ID can be used to integrate Person Data in Employee Central with other modules like Onboarding, Learning, Recruiting, Talent, et al.

The UUID cannot be changed.

You cannot configure this field to be visible in the UI. It is stored at the database level only.

This cannot be used for Single Sign-On (SSO).
User ID

userId

(Basic User Info / UDF)

The userId, often referred to as User ID, is stored in the basic user field/employee export file.

The User ID is a unique number which is associated to each employment.
Its sole purpose is to be the system’s unique identifier for the persons employment and is mapped from the Person ID for EC customers on initial hire. The Person Id and User ID do not have to match, but they generally will when the first employment is created via the UI. 

If a concurrent employment or global assignment is added to the employee or the employee is rehired to a new employment, the system automatically assigns another user name and user ID to the employee, but the person ID remains the same as the original profile. This User ID is generated from the "Next Person ID Assigned" in "Company, System and Logo Settings".

The User ID cannot be changed. Once this value has been used, it can’t be reused.

You can configure this field to be visible in the UI. You need to have <standard-element-ref refid="userId"/> listed under <edit-template id="sysVisibleUserDirectorySetting">.

It´s not possible to display the User ID in People Profile with standard delivered functionality.

Username

username

(Basic User Info / UDF)

The username field, is stored in the basic user field/employee export file.

The username field is the field that a user uses to sign in and is generally mapped from the Person ID for EC customers on initial hire.

It can be different from the User ID and Person ID, but for simplicity it is often the same value.

If a concurrent employment or global assignment is added to the employee or the employee is rehired to a new employment, the system automatically assigns another user name and user ID to the employee.
The username can be changed via import or in the UI.

You can configure this field to be visible in the UI by setting the field to visible.

This can and should be used for Single Sign-On (SSO).

FAQ - Additional Information

Q) Where can I get information on this from the Guide?

A) Guide: Implementing and Managing the Employment Lifecycle (from Hiring to Termination)

Chapter:  Differentiating Between Person ID, User ID, and User Name in Employee Central

Q) Can you Change/Creating Username Using Business Rules

A) View: 2550552 - Change/Creating Username Using Business Rules Also view:

Q) Can you configure/map the email-address of any type to the "username" field in Employee Profile?

A) It's recommended not to configure/map the email-address of any type to the "username" field in Employee Profile.

  • Do NOT configure username as a standard-element-ref. View Guide: Fields Hard-Coded for Syncing  
  • As there is no "uniqueness" check available on EC side, the system can try to pass non-unique values to "username" which would result in UI/Import errors when attempting to do so.
  •  2336779 - Invalid HRIS Sync Mapping Configuration " HRIS Sync Job Failure"

See Also

For further information, please see the following section in the Implementing and Managing the Employment Lifecycle (from Hiring to Termination)

  • 2495643 - SuccessFactors User IDs - Clarifying the Different IDs
  • 2550552 - Change/Creating Username Using Business Rules
  • 2527668 - Default Username as Employee ID
  • 2594977 - How does HRIS Element Identifier userAccountInfo Work?
  • 2418814 - How to configure an MDF Sequence object and Business Rule to auto-generate Person ID during Hire
  • 2421728 - How to Autogenerate Employee ID/ Person ID Based on Country Using a Sequence
  • 2564277 - When re-hiring with new employment, the rule for creating the user-id is not respected
  • 2722881 - User Account Decoupling Feature Behavior
  • 2785629 - Check Tool: How to use Check Tool to check for duplicate usernames
  • 2392253 - How to modify employee User ID
  • 2730512 - Changing Username - Error Username already exists, please choose another one - Platform BizX
  • 2835790 - How To Use The Same Username For Rehire With New Employment?
  • 2594977 - How does HRIS Element Identifier userAccountInfo Work?
  • 2336779 - Invalid HRIS Sync Mapping Configuration " HRIS Sync Job Failure"

Keywords

person-id-external, PersonID, Person ID, iserID, user-id, USERID, username, user-name, USERNAME, UUID, Universal Unique Identifier, per-person-uuid, personIdExternal , KBA , LOD-SF-EC-PER , Person Data (All Person Data Types) , LOD-SF-PLT , Platform Foundational Capabilities , LOD-SF-EC-INT , Manage Pending Hires (Integration RCM/ ONB/ OBX + UI) , How To

Product

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central all versions ; SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite all versions