3252862 - Employee Central Release FAQ - Second Half 2022 (2H 2022)

This FAQ is to document all important enhancements to be aware of in the 2H 2022 release.

***Please be aware that the documentation links provided in this KBA will not work correctly until after the preview release has been deployed***

• SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite
• SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central - 2H 2022 Release

Release Information

FAQ Index:

• Product Documentation
• Release Related Blog Posts
• Must Know New Features for EC in 2H 2022

Product Documentation

The following documentation can be also found on the SAP Help Portal under SAP SuccessFactors Release Information:

• SAP SuccessFactors Release Information
• SAP SuccessFactors What's New Viewer
• SAP SuccessFactors Notable Fixed Issues
• SAP SuccessFactors Known Issues 2H 2022 
• SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Product Page - Employee Central & other related SuccessFactors Handbooks:
• Implementing Employee Central Core
• Implementing Business Rules in SAP SuccessFactors
• Employee Central Company Structure Overview
• Implementing Advances in Employee Central
• Implementing Deductions in Employee Central
• Implementing Apprentice Management in Employee Central
• Employee Central Document Generation
• Employee Central Country/Region Specifics 
• Implementing Employee Central Time Management
• Implementing Employee Central Service Center
• Implementing Alternative Cost Distribution in Employee Central
• Employee Central Position Management
• Implementing and Configuring Concurrent Employment in Employee Central
• Implementing and Configuring Global Assignment in Employee Central
• Contingent Workforce Management
• Employee Central Payment Information
• Employee Central Address Validation Service
• Implementing Global Benefits in Employee Central
• Implementing Dependents in Employee Central
• Employee Central Workflows: Implementation and Administration
• Employee Central Imports
• Managing User Information
• SAP SuccessFactors Data Model Reference Guide
• People Profile
• Managing the Employment Lifecycle (from Hiring to Termination) in Employee Central
• Manage Pending Hires
• Setting Up and Using Business Configuration UI (BCUI)
• Using Role-Based Permissions
• Integrating SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central with SAP Public Sector Management Funds and Grants Management
• Implementing Higher Duty or Temporary Assignment
• Implementing Pension Payouts for Employee Central
• Implementing Russia Data Residency Solution
• Location Based Payments in Employee Central

Release Related Blog Posts

• Must Know New Features for EC in 2H 2022
• List of guide changes for Employee Central in 2H 2022
• Employee Central Centralized Services in Second Half 2022 (2H 2022) Release – Innovation Alert
• Work Permit Validation Universally Applied First Half 2023 to include New Key Field – Innovation Alert Update
• Reimagining Automatic Enrollment Jobs in Global Benefits
  

Must Know New Features for EC

With every release, there are important features and changes to the user experience that both Employee Central administrators and employees will need to be aware of. For the 2H 2022 release, we have consolidated a list of features that are “Must Know” items for Employee Central Core, Time Off, and Global Benefits. All of the features listed below will also include links to related information that will provide additional details regarding that specific feature.

We have introduced universal support for some of the Centralized Services entities. These entities are no longer governed by the configuration option:

With this enhancement, you have access to the supported Centralized services entities by default.

Related Information:

• Blog: Employee Central Centralized Services in Second Half 2022 (2H 2022) Release – Innovation Alert
• Handbook: Implementing Employee Central Core – Centralized Services in Employee Central
• Handbook: Managing Mass Changes in Employee Central – Centralized Services for Employee Data Imports
• What’s New Viewer Link

Centralized services in Employee Central improves consistency in system behavior across UIs, imports, and APIs, as well as data validations from enhanced error message handling, which leads to better product quality and user experience.

With employee data imports, Centralized services work together to enable different HRIS entities to support functions like business rules, forward data propagation, identical record suppression, and more. With the Save action of selected History UIs, Centralized services enhances features like employee data deletion, forward propagation, and identical record suppression.

Please review the Admin Opt-out features listed in the table above as well as additional information featured in the Employee Central Centralized Services in Second Half 2022 (2H 2022) Release – Innovation Alert blog.

Related Information:

• Blog: Employee Central Centralized Services in Second Half 2022 (2H 2022) Release – Innovation Alert
• Handbook: Implementing Employee Central Core – Centralized Services in Employee Central
• Handbook: Managing Mass Changes in Employee Central – Centralized Services for Employee Data Imports
• KBA 3259852: Error on Saving Emergency Contact – 2H 2022
• KBA 3261936: Error on Save of Social Account Information – 2H 2022

The system no longer allows you to change the hire date of a user in the Job Information History UI. You can however still change a rehire date for a user rehired with their old employment record. Hire date changes can be done using the Hire Date Correction tool, which has been enhanced this release.

Previously, it was necessary to change past and present hire dates in the Job Information History UI. You must now use the Hire Date Correction tool to update the hire date of a user in the following scenarios:

• Changing past and present dated hire dates to the future, to today, or into the past
• For Onboarding new hires (once they have passed the Pending Hire stage in the Manage Pending Hires tool)
• For users with concurrent employment
• Target population permissions can be applied to restrict the creation of hire date corrections for users within this target population

Related Information:

• Handbook: Implementing and Managing the Employment Lifecycle – Changing an Employee’s Hire Date in Employee Central
• KBA 2636395: Hire Date Correction: Change Hire Date Retroactively across all Hire Date relevant portlets

You can now manage scheduled jobs on the Job Scheduler tab in the Scheduled Job Manager tool, for supported job types. You can use the Job Scheduler tab (previously called Scheduled Job Requests) to complete the following actions:

• Create a scheduled job request (to define which job type you want to run, on what schedule, and who receives email notifications about it).
• Submit a scheduled job request (so that the job runs at the next scheduled time).
• Run a job immediately (without waiting for the next scheduled time).
• Edit an existing scheduled job request (such as changing the recurrence or owner).
• Cancel a scheduled job request (so that the job is still set up but doesn’t run anymore).
• Delete a scheduled job request (to remove it completely from the system).

For each supported job type, the available actions vary. For example, for some job types you can only schedule a job request, but you can’t run the job immediately. For others, you can run it immediately, but only after it’s first been set up in Provisioning. Check the Actions menu for a specific job request to see which actions are available.

Also, more job types are now available on the Job Monitor tab within the Scheduled Job Manager tool. You can use the Job Monitor tab (previously called Scheduled Jobs) to monitor the progress and check the results of scheduled job requests, for supported job types. We’ve added the following Employee Central job types to the Job Monitor:

• Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Employee Master Data Changes
• Evaluate Offer for Affordable Care Act Reporting
• MDF Mass Change Run
• Position Management Daily Hierarchy Adaptation
• Migrate General Display Name

Please Note: More job types will be added over time. To see a full list of supported job types, go to Scheduled Job Manager > Job Monitor and open the Job Type menu. Job types that are not available in Schedule Job Manager can still be monitored in Provisioning or in legacy tools like Monitor Jobs.

The Monitor Jobs tool will reach end of maintenance on December 09, 2022 and will be deleted on May 19, 2023. Also, the Scheduled Jobs Purge job of BIZXDAILYRULESBATCH, which is a dependent processor on Monitor Jobs will be part of this deprecation.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Managing Scheduled Jobs – Managing Scheduled Jobs in Admin Center

You can now configure employee names that can be displayed consistently across SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite. A new admin option, Enable Adoption of General Display Name, is added to control it. You can see this option under Admin Center > Company System and Logo Settings. The new capability provides both consistency and flexibility to managing display names. With the new capability, employees’ chosen names are displayed in all interactions where a legal name isn’t required, while administrators and HRBPs can also access a person’s legal name whenever needed.

• For customers who have enabled Employee Central, before adopting the General Display Name, configure a name format you prefer using either Legal Entity or People Profile. General Display Name can be configured per legal entity, which means, as an administrator, you can configure name formats that meet the business needs and keep with the best practices of each legal entity.

• For customers who haven’t enabled Employee Central, after you enable the Enable adoption of General Display Name option, you can import General Display Name using Employee Import.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Managing User Information – Enabling the Adoption of General Display Name
• Handbook: Managing User Information – Important Notes About General Display Name Adoption
• KBA 3261324: General Display Name Troubleshooting
• What’s New Viewer Link

We have updated the Job Information Issues Alert to check for further potential issues with associations, field criteria, picklist entries, and mandatory field changes.

Fewer data inconsistencies help solve potential issues before they can become bigger issues. The system now checks for the following:

• Mandatory fields aren’t empty
• Picklist fields must have a valid picklist value (meaning that the system checks that the picklist value is active and/or exists)
• Cascading picklist fields must have a valid combination of parent and child picklist values
• Foundation Object/Generic Object fields must have a valid value (meaning that the object is active and/or exists)
• Associated Foundation Object/Generic Object fields whose values are actually associated

Please Note: The job frequency for HR Data Issues – Job Information Issues alert types can’t be changed. The default is now “none”, which means that administrators have to actively select Rerun to see the latest alerts. To ensure that you have the latest alert texts, we recommend that you run the HRDataIssuesIssueTypeIsUpToDateCheck check tool check.

These changes help improve the data quality and consistency as well as to reduce the administration costs.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Implementing and Managing the Employment Lifecycle – Working with Alerts for Job Information Issues
• What’s New Viewer Link

Most of the HRIS Actions from Business Configuration UI (BCUI) that are currently not used in configuration of the People Profile will be deleted on December 09, 2022.

Please Note: The HRIS Actions hireAction, reHireAction, and terminateAction are not deleted from the HRIS Actions section as these actions are still used by our customers. You can continue to configure these HRIS Actions from BCUI.

Related Information:

• What’s New Viewer Link

The issue date of a work permit is now used with other existing fields to generate a business key that uniquely identifies the work permit.

Previously, a work permit business key consisted of four fields: Country, Document Type, Document Number, and User ID. Including the issue date field in the business key allows users to keep multiple work permits that have the same Country, Document Type, Document Number, and User ID values but different issue dates. For example, after users renew their work permits and have new issue dates, the renewed documents will coexist with expired ones in the system. Validation based on the new combination of fields is supported for editing on UI, imports, and OData or CompoundEmployee API calls. Meanwhile, you can continue to use the two checks, WPWithDuplicateBusinessKeys and WPWithEmptyBusinessKeys, in Check Tool to find invalid work permit records.

Please Note: To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend that you adopt this feature as soon as possible. You won’t be able to opt out of it after our universal push. For more details on the feature and our plans for universal push, refer to the community blog linked below.

Related Information:

• Blog: Work Permit Validation Universally Applied First Half 2023 to include New Key Field – Innovation Alert Update
• Handbook: Implementing Employee Central Core – Additional Information for Work Permits
• What’s New Viewer Link

On the Editing UI of People Profile blocks for effective-dated person entities Personal Information, Addresses, and Dependents, the date input field for the effective date is now empty by default and users are required to enter a date before updating the information. Previously, the default effective date on the Editing UI was set to the current date.

This enhancement was made to help ensure that users manually enter the exact effective date, which is usually not the current date. For example, when users add a child as a dependent for an employee, the effective date is usually the date of the birth of the child.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Implementing Employee Central Core – Entities in Employee Central
• What’s New Viewer Link

The Benefits Auto Enrollment Job analyzes all employee records with each run, even those records where there are no changes based on the eligibility rule. This approach slows down jobs, affecting the performance with respect to time. Occasionally, the job can also fail due to memory consumption issues if the volume of data to be processed is very high. To improve performance, two new jobs have been introduced to replace the Benefits Auto Enrollment Job.

The Benefits Auto Enrollment Job is replaced by Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Benefit Master Data Changes and Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Employee Master Data Changes jobs.

Please Note: We recommend that you use the new tracker-based jobs instead of the Benefits Auto Enrollment Job from 1H 2022. After May 19, 2023, Benefits Auto Enrollment Job will be deleted, and you will not be able to use the job for any automatic enrollment changes. So, by May 19, 2023, you must set up the Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Benefit Master Data Changes and Create or Update Benefit Enrollments for Employee Master Data Changes jobs.

Related Information:

• Blog: Reimagining Automatic Enrollment Jobs in Global Benefits
• Handbook: Implementing Global Benefits – Creating Automatic Enrollment Job for Benefit Master Data Changes
• What’s New Viewer Link

We now support automatic updates to the enrollment status of the dependents enrolled for insurance benefit when there is a change in their eligibility.

For example, let us assume a child dependent is eligible for the insurance benefit only until the age of 21. After the dependent attains the age of 21, the dependent should be marked as not eligible. With this enhancement, the dependent is automatically marked as not eligible for the insurance without any manual updates to the enrollment. The new SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) story SF_BEN_ Dependents Ineligible (Aged out) for Insurance Benefits_v1.0 provides details about enrolled dependents who are becoming ineligible for insurance benefit.

The feature was developed to support the customer’s requirements for identifying and marking non-eligible dependents in an enrollment automatically without the need for manual deletion of enrolled dependents.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Implementing Global Benefits – Automating Updates to Insurance Enrollment due to Dependent Eligibility Changes
• Handbook: Implementing Global Benefits – Using Rule Scenario to Define Dependent Eligibility Rule for Insurance
• What’s New Viewer Link

Employees can now download the calendar file on submission of a leave request. As part of the employee self-service scenario, you can submit a leave request using the following screens:

• Request Time Off card from Quick Actions on the latest home page.
• Time Off
• New Time Sheet UI

After submitting your leave request, you can now download the calendar file in ICS format. Open this calendar file in your respective calendar application and save it to block your calendar. After you save the calendar file, if your time-off isn’t approved, you’ve to manually delete this event from your calendar. If you modify your leave request, delete the earlier saved calendar, and replace it with the latest calendar that you’ve downloaded.

Related Information:

• Handbook: Using Time Management in SAP SuccessFactors – Requesting Time Off
• What’s New Viewer Link

You can now change Basic rules to application-specific rule scenarios for several rules at once. This is now possible for rules that can be converted to application-specific scenarios of the following modules:

Time Off: Rules

• All rules that use the object Time Account Type are assigned to an application-specific rule scenario. (TimeAccountTypeNoBasicRules)
• All rules that use the object Time Type are assigned to an application-specific rule scenario. (TimeTypeNoBasicRule)

Please Note: As in the previous release, a warning is raised whenever you try assigning a new basic rule scenario to Accrual rule, Hire Rule, Interim Update Rule, Period-End-Processing Rule, and Take Rules. The current warning message will be converted into an error in a future release.

Employee Central Core: Rules

• All rules for workflows are assigned to an application-specific rule scenario. (WorkflowsNoBasicRules)
• All rules for event-reason derivation are assigned to an application-specific rule scenario. (EventReasonDerivationNoBasicRules)

Related Information:

• Handbook: Implementing Business Rules in SAP SuccessFactors – Changing Rule Scenarios Individually
• What’s New Viewer Link

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