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The release date for the preview environment is 9th August and the production environment is 6th September. Product updates can be optional or universal and the universal updates are pushed to the system.
Employee Central
The new Fiori screen for time off will be pushed to all the instances. It’s no longer possible to work with the old time off screen. The new screen improves the user experience, because all the relevant information is visible on the screen, such as the holidays and upcoming time off. It’s important to inform the end-users that they will see a new screen when they are requesting leave.
For time management there is also a new tile with admin alerts available in admin center 2.0.
For global assignment (home and host records), it’s now possible that employees can logon with their home record instead of being redirected to the host assignment.Redirection to the host record is no longer done with this optional feature. Previously the employee who wanted to logon with the home record was redirected to the host record.
Next to the technical updates, SAP has delivered Implementation Design Principles (IDPs). IDPs are documents that complement existing implementation handbooks by addressing real-life implementation challenges as well as frequently asked questions.
Talent Management
In previous updates, SuccessFactors has updated the screens to have one look and feel. One last remaining functionality were the 360 forms. These 360 forms now have the same look and feel as the Performance Review forms.
For calibration, the org. chart will be updated to the latest version as in Company Info. Next to this, it will be possible to view the talent cards in the Bin and List view.
Goal Execution will be end of maintenance by end of 2019, and in fact we have already stopped implementing the goal execution feature anymore. Our advice for a long time has been not to use this functionality because of its unknown future.
For customers without the subscription for Succession & Development, it was possible to have a Development Plan Light (CDPL) version in the performance form. But this possibility will be retired by Q2 2020. The alternative is to have a separate goal plan and call this development plan and link it to the performance form. Customers’ need to take action to remove the Development Plan light and to create a goal plan.
For Goal Management, it’s now again possible to show the classic user search. This classic view shows in the search the direct reports and if applicable the matrix reports. With the new user search, the contingent workers and peers are also shown.
There are new screens available for Reward & Recognition. The home page is redesigned with a focus on the employee. A new wizard helps to select the award and it’s possible to see the awards received and sent on one screen
A big announcement for Reward and Recognition is highlighted in the Q3 2019 release. This is the Points Program and Gift Card Fulfilment. Currently, Reward and Recognition has supported currency based sport awards. What will come is that employees can accumulate points and redeem them for gift cards and experiences.
Another improvement within Compensation, is the possibility that administrators can create up to three customised validations per worksheet.
For the recruitment solution there is an update on data capture forms. Previously, candidates information was not saved and the activity lost when an existing candidate submitted a form that hadn’t come from an e-mail campaign. Now recruiters can search on the employees who have experienced an unsuccessful submission.
Recruiters no longer have to click on Post & Manage jobs to see the status of their job posting on external job boards. Recruiters can now take actions directly from the Job Posting page of a Job Requisition. Job boards can now also be set as pre-selected with the use of business rules. This enables recruiters to dedicate more time to value-added tasks.
The new agency portal will be generally available and the old agency solution will be decommissioned.
It’s already possible to have business rules in the job requisition. With the Q3 release, the business rules are also available in the job application. This is an improvement what will help. An example for a business rule is to set a status value on the job application. But unfortunately it doesn’t work for all fields.
Within Learning, some major projects are on-going. One of the projects is the transition in the Learning administration from Flash to HTML to ensure continuity with latest browser support. Another big change due in 2020 is the new administrator engine within Learning. With this release the Learning administrator can be accessed after a time from the homepage.
Regarding the Reporting functionality, we have seen that for all modules, People Analytics by SAP analytics Cloud (SAC) is to be the reporting future. People Analytics will be centralised in Report Center. Learning data will not be directly available with the new engine but it’s on the route map.
Another nice improvement that will come is to have third-party (workflow) items in the to-do list on the homepage. With the Q3 2019 release, workflow items from ServiceNow are already supported.
As a last topic we would like to inform you that the SuccessFactors app is no longer supported for Android OS 5.x and iOS 11.x per December 2019. Users are requested to update their mobile device.
Note; the mentioned release features are not all the changes of the release. For a complete overview, we advise you to go to the SuccessFactors community page.
