3133870 - Compound Employee execution timestamp appears reduced between "Request Time" column under SFAPI Audit Logs and "<execution_timestamp>" response payload field

You are running the SFAPI CompoundEmployee queries and you realized one difference of timestamps between:

• Admin center > SFAPI Audit logs > "Request Time" column 
• The value you see inside the Response payload under "<execution_timestamp>" field

"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 Employee Central
  
  • Compound Employee API (SFAPI CE)

Run the SFAPI CE standard, delta or snapshot queries and observe the difference.

1) 

Admin center > SFAPI Audit logs, field "Request Time"

You can see the value 2021-12-21 18:41:33.869 Z

2)

SFAPI CE Response payload, field <execution_timestamp>

You can see the value 2021-12-21T18:41:29.000Z      (before log value above)

For queries in standard and snapshot modes the execution_timestamp is currently reduced by 10 seconds.

For queries for delta modes the execution_timestamp is currently reduced by 5 seconds.

The execution timestamp is determined in the first query and will be the same in following query mores.

The intention of this timestamp is not to make the request matchable with an entry in SFAPI audit log. 

Main idea behind is to use the execution_timestamp as next last_modified_on which will create an overlap between sub-sequent query calls.

The standard integrations (with SAP ERP for example) all use this pattern to prevent losing any information. Also, the execution_timestamp is used in issue analysis as we can find the dedicated logs for the query with it.

According the explanation above, this is the expected behavior of the SFAPI CE code.

If you are building custom integrations using Compound Employee, please consider the <execution_timestamp> to be used as next last_modified_on for subsequent calls (this is much better than handling the last_modified_on in the target system).

The SAP support and engineering team already resolved issues together with customers with wrong time settings in middleware and target system which created issues in delta calls.

Please also notice that you need to remove the milliseconds from the execution_timestamp before you can use it as last_modified_on. Sample of one correct WHERE last_modified_on > to_datetime('2021-10-01T00:00:00Z')

SFAPI CompoundEmployee, offset, delta, standard, snapshot, time difference, SFAPI Audit logs, execution_timestamp, <execution_timestamp>, last_modified_on, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, CE , KBA , LOD-SF-INT-CE , Compound Employee API , LOD-SF-INT , Integrations , How To