3098201 - Rewards & Recognition - Milestone Programs

This article will go through the concept of Milestone awards as well as outlining how this is enabled and configured.

Please note Milestone awards is only available based on points and not currency.

Prerequisites

• Points are enabled in Rewards & Recognition
• Employee Central enabled

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

• SAP SuccessFactors Rewards & Recognition
• SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite

Milestone awards is the latest feature release within Rewards & Recognition which can be used in EC enabled instances.

We can use Milestone awards for employee recognition for length of service etc where these points can be redeemed through existing or custom vendors.

Enablement & Permissions

As mentioned previously, Milestone awards is based on points so points will need to be enabled within your instance.

This can be done through Admin Center> Compensation> Rewards & Recognition> Manage Award Program Settings:

Under Role-based permissions select your Admin Role and assign the following permissions under "Miscellaneous Permissions".

Once saved we can now manage Milestone awards. To confirm this, go to Rewards & Recognition and you will now see a tile labelled "Manage Milestone Award Programs".

Important

To see the Rewards & Recognition option within the Compensation tile in Admin Center, the Administrator will also require the following permission granted:

Additionally, the Administrator user will require the following permissions for managing Foundation Objects.

Finally as an Admin, go to Admin Center> Employee Files> Manage Data and ensure you can find the default "Wallet" which is created.

This is a default Wallet and more will be explained on this in later stages of this article.

Milestone Programs

Before creating any Milestone programs, there is a requirement for a document template group created which will be linked to your programs.

To to do this, go to Admin Center> Document Generation - Manage Document Template and create a new group.

The process here is the same as demonstrated HERE but with one difference, we need to select "Rewards & Recognition-Milestone" rather than "Rewards & Recognition" in "Category".

To create a program, go to Admin Center> Compensation> Rewards & Recognition> Manage Milestone Award Programs and select "Create Program".

In the following page there will be multiple options which will need to be populated. A breakdown of each section is below.

Program Settings

• Name - Name of your Milestone Award Program
• Description - Description for your Milestone Award Program
• Program Type - Select the program type for this Milestone. Please note this is only available with Points so if this is not enabled, this drop-down may appear blank
• Point Type - Select either one of the following drop-down options
  > Points
• Milestone Start Date - Select either one of the following drop-down options. All the following dates are from People Profile under Employee Details.
  > Hire Date
  > Original Hire Date
  > Seniority Date
  > Benefits Eligibility Start Date
• Pay Component - nonrecurring Component which is to be used
  Note: In this drop-down you will currently see a mix of recurring and nonrecurring pay components. This will be addresses in 1H 2022 to show nonrecurring only.
• Employee Email Group - Email to be sent onto employees who are granted Milestone awards on the program
  Note: There's an option to navigate directly to "Configure Template.." from the UI.
  Please note, should you do this and create a group through the pop-up the current session will need to be refreshed to pick up the new group.
  Therefore as noted above it is recommended to have this created before creating a program.

Important

When saving this section to move onto Eligibility, you may encounter the following error message.

Should you have this error, please go to Configure Object Definitions and select the "MilestoneProgramEligibility" object. Here ensure field "groupId" is set to Required = No.

Eligibility

Settings - Select either one of the following drop-down options:

•  Eligibility Rules (Use EC rules created on the spotAwardEligibilty rule type)
•  Dynamic Groups (Use Dynamic Employee Groups to manage your program eligibility)

Milestone Configuration

In this section you are setting up Countries where you want to use Milestone awards.

Click "Add Country/Region" and the following page will have a drop-down selection for your instances Country/Region.

Here you will have the following columns which require populating

• Duration - String input of an duration
• Dimension - Select either Months, Year or Days
• Award Amount - Award amount which the nominee will receive

Below is an example using Ireland where we have defined four milestones for 1, 5, 10 and 20 years along with the award amount for each.

NOTE

The duration entered will be coming from the program Milestone Start Date selection.

Once all everything has been defined, click "Save and Proceed".

Country/Regional Subgroups

There is also an option of creating sub groups to the countries selected in the first section.

In this section, you can select the following "Entity type" from the drop-down menu.

Currently, we support the following selections.

• Business Unit
• Company
• Division
• Department
• Cost Center
• Location

There may be some additional selections such as Work Location, Job Code/Classification, Employee Class & Worker Category, but these are NOT supported.

You may add multiple selections into subgroup which will work along with the Country/Region you have selected. Below, we have selected to locations in Spain.

Within each of these sub groups, you can create a Milestone award the same way this is created when defining your Country/Region.

NOTE

Should an employee meets the Country/Region criteria and not a sub group, the award given will be from the Country/Region section.

If an employee meets both the Country/Region and what is defined in the subgroup, the employee will receive the award defined in the subgroup section and NOT the Country/Region.

Triggering Milestone Awards

Following the creation of a program the below job will automatically created in provisioning.

This job will be triggered each day at midnight and should any employee's in the system meet the Milestone program criteria, this job will trigger another job which created the awards.

The second job for award creation is below.

Important

Should there be no employee's meeting any program criteria's, then this job will NOT be executed.

If you are expecting awards to be created and they're not, please review the employee dates and program criteria's to ensure they are correctly configured.

Lastly, the award creation job will fail with the following error in provisioning should there be no point to currency conversion found.

Please ensure all conversion rates are available in Rewards & Recognition> Manage Award Program Settings.

Milestone Award Alert for Errors During Job Run

With b2305 release, when an issue with the Milestone award configuration occurs, the award isn’t generated for that employee. An email alert is sent to the owner of the Milestone Eligibility Job alerting them that the award wasn't given. The following are the error messages included to indicate the configuration issue in the Milestone award program:

• Unable to fetch point currency value.
• Invalid point currency value.
• Wallet isn’t associated to point type.
• Amounts aren’t configured for the country/region.
• No point type is associated to the Milestone Program.
• Milestone Award Job failed due to some errors, contact Product Support. (This message sent when the issue can't be resolved by your changes to the Milestone award program configuration.

NOTE: The award is not automatically generated after the admin corrects the config issue unless the admin is able to run the "create milestone awards for eligible users" job from provisioning the same day.

Viewing Milestone Awards 

Following the creation of an award the receiver will get an email (based on the templates created on the program) confirming they have received an award.

To view these awards, the employee must have the following permissions granted.

Go to Rewards & Recognition and under the Award History tile select the "Milestone Awards: Received" option.

Here the employee will see all Milestone awards they have received.

  

NOTE

These awards will only be visible within the main Rewards & Recognition page within the Award History tile.

These will not populate within the nonrecurring portlet within People Profile.

Wallets

When the first Milestone program is created a default "Wallet" will be created and managed via Manage Data. This will be created for all customers.

In this new feature, we can map multiple Wallets to different point types which are linked to redemption options and finally your programs.

So, you may have three programs for Wellness, Work Events and Work Milestones which which may require multiple wallets/redemption options. If this is not required, all awards given to employees will go to the default Wallet.

With the redemption options which are linked to the Wallets in Manage Data, you may want to have certain program points used in certain vendor sites etc.

These sites may be segregated so that you may be directed to experience days on one Wallet and Gift Cards on another.

NOTE

For any segregation of vendor sites like Blackhawk, xoxoday please speak to them directly as these URL's are not provided by SAP.

Additional Information/FAQ

Should an employee already be granted an award, if the creation job is executed on the same day again will there be duplicate awards created?

No duplicate awards will be created in this scenario.

Can Milestone awards be deleted like point-based awards and currency?

Currently no. This will be coming next year.

If we want to share a message for the employee receiving an award, where can this be added?

This will need to be within the document group and linked template. This will then be shown for the employee within the Award History tile.

Who can see these awards in Rewards & Recognition?

Currently only the receiver may see their Milestone award.

Are we able to upload images for Milestone programs.

Currently no.

Known Issues

Below is a list of some known issues which will be fixed for Milestone awards:

Send Email button visible and then disappears once page loads. This while viewing awards under My Award History (RNR-5552)

milestone awards, milestone wallet, milestone permissions, milestone eligibility, groupid must not be null, groupid null, MilestoneProgramEligibility, createmilestoneawardjob, milestone subgroups, rnr-4526, rnr-4392 , KBA , LOD-SF-RNR , Reward and Recognition , LOD-SF-RNR-ADM , Admin Tools, Program Setup & Object Permissions , LOD-SF-RNR-INT , Vendor Integrations, Integration Center , Product Enhancement

SAP SuccessFactors Compensation all versions ; SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite all versions