2627410 - Configuring and Troubleshooting Daily Goal Modification Notification

• How to configure the Goal Modification Notification in Provisioning
• How to troubleshoot issues with the Goal Modification Notification

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SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management

The Goal Modification Notification needs to be configured correctly in both the front-end and back-end of the system.

1. Go to Admin Center > E-mail Notification Template Settings
2. Enable the Goal Modification Notification

You can can customize the notification in the following ways:

• Change the text for each language
• Add or remove certain tokens (only add tokens that are supported for this notification type)

Once you have configured this notification in the front end, there is a job in the backend that needs to be set up for the notifications to run correctly.

How to configure Goal/Objective Modification Notification Job in the Backend (For Partners and Support Only)

• In order for the any notification to be sent out to users, it has to have a respective job triggering in the backend.
• The objective modification job is only to be triggered once per day.
• If it is triggered multiple times then you will receive duplicate notifications. 
• When this job is triggered it will only pick up modifications that occur in the lead up to its activation within the 24hr day to day period (12am-11:59pm).
• This means that if it is configured to run too early then any modifications that occur after its activation will not be picked up for that day.
• When configuring this you need to look at both the current server time and the time zone of the system you are working with. 

Please see the below:

1. Go to Provisioning.
2. Go to Manage Scheduled Jobs.
3. Click Create New Job.
4. Next select job type and find "Objective Notification Email" (sometimes it may be called "Goal Notification Email").
5. Now you can name the job (Objective Modification Email) and select a Job Owner. Make sure to use a user who is active in the system (support user for example).
6. Job Parameters: It is very important that you select "Today" and do not enter a start date and end date as doing so will lead to notification sending the same changes daily with any new modifications being added daily. This will lead to duplicate and unnecessary amounts of data being sent in each notification.
7. Set the Occurrence to daily and to an evening time. Set it for a time that is after business hours so no more changes will be made and missed when it is triggered.
8. The start date can be the same day but the time needs to be ahead of the server time as seen in the below screenshot. This section does not mean when the job will run, it means when the job will become active.
9. Click create job and submit it into the system to start at your configured time.

Note: starting with 2H 2022 Release, customers have also the possibility to directly re-run this job from the Admin Center (prerequisite is that is was previously created at least once from Provisioning).

1. On Admin Center, go to Scheduled Job Manager
2. Click on the tab Job Scheduler
3. On Job Type, select Objective notification email
4. On Actions, you can click on Run it Now (you will need correct RBP permission, see FAQ below for the pre-requisite)

Note: Users can only directly run this job using "Run It Now" option, it is not possible to schedule this job to a future date.

Troubleshooting issues with this notification:

One or more users not receiving the notification

If one or more users are not receiving this notification then some common reasons are:

• Users Location - Users in different locations will be on different networks to others who may be receiving the notification. The notifications may be being blocked by the networks firewall/spam settings. To avoid this you have to include all of Success Factors email IP addresses to the Allowlist > See KB article 2087468. Depending on the timezone and when the notification is being sent out, it may be falling outside of the 24hr daily window that notifications are sent by. 
• Active/Inactive User - Check to see if the user is active or inactive. If they are inactive they will not receive the notifications. If their E-mail address is incorrect then they will not receive notifications either. 
• Check if notifications are turned on for the users who are not receiving them (this check applies if users are not receiving all notifications) - Admin Centre > Change Email Notification Settings.
• Who is making the change? A user who modifies their own goals will not receive a notification.

No users are receiving the notification

If no users are receiving the notification then some of the common reasons are:

• The notification is not switched on in the instance - Admin Centre > Email Notification Template Settings > Objective/Goal Notification > Make sure the checkbox is ticked.
• The job in the backend is not configured or not configured correctly.
• The time of the job is not configured correctly or is configured to early to pick up the notifications.
• Emails are being blocked by the network that the user is on.
• Settings configured in the "E-mail Notification Template Settings" for the notification i.e. unsupported tokens
• Data centre issues - Occassionally there may be short disruptions with the data centre that is triggering the notifications. This could be a cause for no notifications being sent out or being sent late.

Other issues that can occur

• Duplicate notifications - If you are receiving duplicate notifications then this means the job is running more than the intended one time then it should.
• Old Notifications - If you are not receiving notifications based on the day that changes are made then the parameters for the job in the backend need to be adjusted to collect the correct modifications during the correct time period.
• Translation Issues - If you are not receiving notifications in your intended language then the notification template may not be configured in that language.

Note about contacting Product Support

• If all of the above is configured correctly and you have followed all of the troubleshooting options available and still the issue persists then the next step is to contact Product Support to assist further.
• The first steps for Product Support to troubleshoot this issue will be to verify the issue being experienced.
• Then they need to establish if the notification is being sent.
• This can be done by temporarily replacing the email address of a user who is not receiving the notification with a Product Support member's email address.
• This way we can narrow down the cause on whether it is an issue with the job/server, or the network that the user is on.

Development Goal Email Notifications

These function in the same way as the Goal notifications, with the additional step:

1. Admin Center
2. E-mail template notification settings
3. Click on 'Goal Modification Notification (daily)
4. Click on 'Customize Settings for Objective Plans'
5. Then select your Development plans (usually at the bottom of the menu)

For information on how the Goal Notifications work see KB article 2086636

SF success factors GM, Objective Development, Job, Not sending, Duplicate Notifications, Creation, Deletion, Email, E-mail, trigger, server, comment, modify, create, delete , KBA , LOD-SF-GM-EML , Emails, Notifications & Alerts , LOD-SF-GM , Goal Management , How To

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