3807784 - Inconsistent Department labels in Latest Full Profile and/or Profile Preview & Spotlight – SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

An incorrect department label is displayed in People Profile. The issue was originally reported in the Full Profile header, where an unexpected department label appeared. The same incorrect label also affects Profile Preview and Spotlight (e.g., when accessed from Global/Action Search or Org Chart).

After a partial fix was applied by the engineering team, the department label in the Full Profile now displays correctly when the relevant feature toggle is enabled. However, the incorrect department label continues to appear in Profile Preview and Spotlight.

• SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite
• SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

1. Search for an employee via Global/Action Search.
2. Click on the small Business Card icon to view the Profile Preview.
3. Observe that an unexpected Department Label is shown in the Profile Preview header.
4. When clicking on the Spotlight button, the unexpected/incorrect department value is still shown.
5. Once the Full Profile is accessed, the Department label shows the expected value (provided the feature toggle described in the Resolution section is enabled).

Note: This can be done, e.g. from Org Chart or other tools where the Profile Preview shows up.

This is a known issue that was partially fixed by the engineering team. The partial fix resolved the department label in the Full Profile view (via a feature toggle), but due to a limitation of that fix, the incorrect label continues to appear in Profile Preview and Spotlight.

The affected system has a customized HRIS sync mapping that explicitly overrides the standard department-to-department mapping, as shown below:

<hris-mapping>     

    <hris-field-ref refid="division"/>    

    <standard-element-ref refid="department"/> 

</hris-mapping>

Background: Unlike EP fields, EC foundation object fields (such as department) support multi-language display. To preserve localized labels after HRIS sync — and to address customer complaints about translations being lost after sync — a reverse lookup mechanism was introduced. After sync completes, the API extracts the department external code from the EP field value and looks it up against all department records to retrieve the corresponding localized label. Under standard configurations, this works correctly. However, when there is a custom override mapping for department, the EP-side department field may carry external codes whose associated labels differ from those stored in the EC department foundation object records. In such cases, the reverse lookup produces an incorrect result. Specifically, the Latest People Profile API (workforce/v1/workforcePersonProfiles) is designed to support multi-language display. When retrieving the department label, it extracts the external code from the departmentName field in the API response. 

For example: 

departmentName: "department Test (300000)"

After extracting external code 300000, the API performs a reverse lookup directly against the EC department entity rather than honoring the source entity of the custom override mapping to fetch the localized label . As a result, the code is resolved against the EC department foundation object, returning a label that differs from the expected label.

Illustrative example:

• The EP-side department record has external code C001 and label: "test department C001 (EP)"
• After sync, the API looks up code C001 in the EC department foundation object and returns: "test department C001 (EC)"
• The People Profile header therefore displays "test department C001 (EC)" instead of the expected "test department C001 (EP)"

To verify: navigate to Admin Center → Export Data, select Generic Object: Department, and inspect the exported CSV. The label for the relevant external code (e.g., 300000) in the EC department foundation object will reflect the value being incorrectly displayed (e.g., "department Test").This behavior has been confirmed as expected by the API owner. 

Full Profile: A feature toggle is available to resolve the incorrect department label in the Full Profile view. SAP Support can be contacted to request the activation of this feature toggle as an interim workaround while the complete fix is being developed.

Profile Preview and Spotlight: The department label issue in Profile Preview and Spotlight will be resolved in the 2H 2026 Release under the same feature toggle. Once deployed, enabling the feature toggle will address the incorrect department label across Full Profile, Profile Preview, and Spotlight.

SAP SuccessFactors Product Release & Road Map Information

SFEDU-21172, 3763394, INC27927119, profile preview, spotlight, latest people profile, profile header, department, incorrect label, global search, org chart, label mismatch, foundation object, HRIS sync, custom mapping. , KBA , LOD-SF-EP-FPP , People Profile - Full Profile , LOD-SF-EC-HRS , HRIS Sync , LOD-SF-EP-SPP , People Profile - Spotlight , LOD-SF-EC-FOO , Foundation Objects (Organisation, Pay and Job Structures) , LOD-SF-EP-PPP , People Profile - Preview , Problem

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