3800464 - Employee Code Is Skipped and Cannot Be Recovered After Onboarding Process Failure and Re-Initiation - Onboarding

After an Onboarding process fails and the failed process is cancelled and a new process is initiated for the same candidate, the employee is assigned a different employee code than the one originally generated during the first attempt. The original employee code is permanently consumed and cannot be recovered or reassigned.

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding

1. Initiate Onboarding for a candidate.
2. Allow the Onboarding process to fail at the Create External User step (for example, due to an email address already associated with an existing user in the system).
3. Cancel the failed process.
4. Re-initiate Onboarding for the same candidate.
5. Observe that the employee is assigned a new employee code rather than the one pre-allocated during the first attempt.

The employee code is pre-allocated at the moment of user creation during the Onboarding process, before the process completes. When a process fails and is then cancelled, the pre-allocated employee code is consumed by the cancelled BPE process instance and cannot be reused. Cancelling and re-initiating Onboarding creates a new BPE process instance, which pre-allocates the next available employee code. The original code is permanently lost.

To preserve the original employee code after an Onboarding process failure, the failed BPE process must be restarted using the Restart option in BPE: Manage Process Tasks rather than cancelling the process and creating a new one. A BPE Restart resumes the same process instance from the point of failure and retains the pre-allocated employee code.

Important: The Restart option in BPE: Manage Process Tasks is not the same as the Restart Onboarding Process action available in the Onboarding Dashboard. The BPE Restart resumes a failed BPE process instance; the Dashboard restart is used for manager or start date changes.

For Live Customer(s):

1. After an Onboarding process fails, do not cancel the process before investigating the root cause.
2. Identify and resolve the failure before resuming. A common cause is an email address already associated with an existing user. Note: Verify that the candidate's email address is unique in the system before restarting.
3. Navigate to Admin Center > BPE: Manage Process Tasks and locate the failed task for the affected candidate.
4. Select the failed task and click Restart to resume the process from the point of failure.
5. Confirm the process completes successfully with the original employee code preserved. Important: If the process has already been cancelled and a new process initiated, the original employee code cannot be recovered. Employee code reassignment is not supported.

Expected Result: When the Restart option in BPE: Manage Process Tasks is used on the failed process after resolving the root cause, the Onboarding process resumes and the employee retains the original pre-allocated employee code.

• Role-Based Permissions for Administrators in Onboarding and Offboarding | SAP Help Portal
• Restarting the Onboarding Process Manually | SAP Help Portal

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