Successfactors Time Management – new features in 1H 2023 release

Time Community !

I am Volker Ruof from SF Time Product Management. As usual it is a pleasure presenting our SF Time Management enhancements in May 2023 Release with some business and configuration context.

There are again lots of good new features in this release. The copy feature in time sheet for example will reduce the time spend for time recording and increase usability tremendously. Public holiday enhancements enables a new customer segment using our solution and closes business gaps (those working / producing 24/7 on any day, even public holidays). The information dialog feature in time off and time sheet will reduce the work of your HR Admins in explaining rules and regulations, cause you can bring them into the application.

And all in all we listened to our customer: 25 enhancement requests from the influence.sap.com have been delivered. Plus we did lots of groundwork (like our new time containers) to enable the time valuation entering into a new dimension.

Until production release upgrade this blog comes for the time being under the same disclaimer as our What´s New Viewer.

As usual, let me first give an overview on the most important new features before explaining them from a business and configuration point of view in more detail.

Overview:

1. Time Off Features

1.1 Half public holidays for clock time recorders – day model variants

If there are half public holidays like in Germany you cannot simply say it is half of the planned working time for a clock time based employee. You need concrete start / end times – and not only for planned time but also for all other information in the work schedule day model. Day model variants allow to do so on half public holidays

1.2 Public holiday as normal working day – holiday work pattern

Allows to have a public holiday defined in the public holiday calendar which is not as usual an off-day but a normal working day. Needed to support manufacturing companies that produce 24×7, hospitals or specific employee groups like security, plant fire brigade and any other employee who needs to work regularly on a public holiday

1.3 Information dialog in time off and time sheet UI

Ever wanted to have more information for your employees on your business processes or regulations inside of the end user application? Ever wanted to reduce workload on HR side to explain leave policies to employees? The information dialog offers lots of flexibility to do so.

1.4 New workschedule tab in the time administration workbench

we redesigned completely the workschedule tab in the time administrator workbench. The usability and design improvements are tremendous !

1.5 Display of contingent workers in team absence calendar

Not only employees, but also contingent workers are now included in the team absence calendar. This facilitates vacation planning for the whole team

1.6 Multiple time account payouts with same posting date

allows to have for example in the termination process multiple time account payouts sharing the same pay component on the same day

1.7 Miscellaneous Time Off topics

From early adopter to general availability
- effective dated time profile
- reallocation of time account deduction
- Time calendars for leave of absences with undetermined end date
New rule function “Get absence in days or hours for a period based on deduction quantity and timetype”
Take rule parameter to validate recurring absences in absence validation rules
Enhancements for automated “end of continous pay calculation” for sick leave Germany

2. Time Tracking Features

2.1 Copy possibility in time sheet UI

Lots of requests from customer for it: easy copy function in time sheet that facilitates and speeds up the process of time recording. This will boost the productivity in your company!

2.2 No extra submit needed anymore for single records that need an extra approval

big usability improvement based on customer feedback: single records that need an extra approval are now automatically submitted when saved

2.3 Rest period violation detection

is needed to cover regulations like for example European Working Time Directive according to which an employee needs at least 11h rest between end of work and start of work on the next day

2.4 Useful time valuation enhancement: Create time record out of nothing

usually you need an input to trigger a time valuation and to create a time valuation result. But this enhancement allows to create a time valuation result “out of nothing”, without any time record. Example is a time bonification for transfer time from the entrance gate far away of your working place.

2.5 Time Event (clock in/ out punches) reporting possibility

gives you a detailed report on clock in/ out events – where time pairs are missing, need to be approved and many more

2.6 Time Event API for Export

some countries like Greece require clock in / events to be send to state authorities in real-time. With this API you can do so.

2.7 Rounding of start / end working time to flextime bandwidth

last release we shipped the rounding of start / end times to the work schedule planned working time. This is now enhanced to round to the work schedule flextime bandwidth

2.8 Minimum break block guarantee

many laws and regulations like for example the German Working time law stipulate that a break recorded less than 15 minutes ought not to be regarded as a break. With this enhancement you can cover this requirement

2.9 Time valuation filter on holiday work pattern

allows to differentiate in time valuation for work on public holidays that are paid off days or that are normal working days according the the employees holiday work pattern from the job info

2.10 Import of external time data for overtime recorders

import of external time data is currently only possible for positive time recorders. This is enhanced now for overtime recorders as well

2.11 Configurable auto-submit of time sheets for overtime recorders

allows an auto-submit of time sheets for overtime approvers according to specific conditions

2.12 Configurable Information dialog in Time Sheet UI

allows customer specific information text inside the time sheet application

2.13 New SAC report for Time Tracking usage analysis

new cleaner SAC report for customers to analyze the time tracking usage in their company

2.14 Miscellaneous Time Tracking features

Initialization rules for time sheet UI

3. Miscellaneous

3.1 Mobile enhancements

brief overview on time enhancements for mobile application

3.2 Transport Management

allows configuration transports from one system to another

3.3 Auto-acknowledge of Admin Alerts

define by alert type a days period after which the alerts are auto-acknowledged

3.4 Time forms (Early Adopter) – Create letters based on templates with actual absence and
master data

allows to generate letters based on templates with actual absence or time account data out of the time off application

3.5 SAP Best practice enhancements

learn on the preconfigured new content that you can download into your system

Now, as usual: deep dive. Fasten your seat belts and have fun:

1. Time Off Features

1.1 Half public holidays for clock time recorders – day model variant

This is enhancement was desperately awaited by many customers in Germany. Up to now it was only possible to have half public holidays (like in Germany for 24th and 31st december) for duration based employees, but not for clock time based recorder. The reason was quite simple: how to define planned working time with clock times on a half public holidays? Half public holiday means (usually) the first half of the working day is normal working day, the other half is an paid off day, but for those who need to work there is a higher premium in this time slot. But how is this split into normal working day and half public holiday done in real life? Is for any employee at 12:00 end of working time? How is this for employees who are scheduled to start work at 11:00? Or at 06:00? Or part time employees whose normal working hours start only at 10:00 on this day? How to handle shift employees that got a late shift on this day starting at 14:00? As soon as you have clocktimes you cannot simply assume half of the duration of the day model – you need concrete start and end clocktimes for the planned working time. And then it gets tricky. As always in Time Management: when you look a bit into the details there are many questions to be answered.

Our answer to this question is: flexibility.

This means in detail: we use a similar concept as the SAP HCM colleagues know from the SAP HCM Time world: day model variants.

You can now define for any day model a day model variant which gets automatically choosen on half public holidays. And you can define this day model variant as you like. If for example the day model is a normal working day from 08:00 – 17:00 and a flextime bandwidth from 06:00 – 18:00 and a break from 12:00 – 13:00, you can define in the variant that the planned working time is only 08:00 – 12:00, no break and flextime bandwidth only from 06:00 – 12:00.

We have created a new object to cover this requirement: the work schedule day model identifier and and we have adjusted the day model object to differentiate between a “regular” day model and a “variant”.

Sounds complicated, but isn´t. Lets look on this step by step.

First you need to define your day model variant. This is done by creating a day model with different values like for example planned working time from 08:00 – 12:00. And very important: you need to declare this day model as a variant. This is done via a new field in the day model:

But how is the variant linked to the regular day model? This is done with the new assignment fields in the regular day model:

Means: A regular day model contains now a reference to the day model variant. Hence when an employee has got in his workschedule this day model assigned, than on half public holidays the day model variant is used instead of the regular day model.

You might now ask: does this mean that I need to edit all existing day models and choose “regular day model” if you want to use this feature? No, of course not. We have created a migration script that automatically sets all your existing day models to “regular day models”, so you don´t have to do anything here. Only if you create new day models, you need to decide if this is a regular model or a variant.

But wait – where is now the configuration that on half public holidays the variant instead of the regular model shall be used? This link is missing.

Let´s have a look on the very first field in the section “variant assignment” of the day model screenshot above. You can find here a “work schedule day model variant identifier”. What´s that? Well, this is more or less the rule that steers that on half public holidays the variant is read instead of the regular model. It is only a technical link, without any further business context:

Sounds a bit complicated- but if you once do the configuration it is quite self-evident.

And comparing to SAP HCM Time: the endresult of this configuration is more or less the same like the content of this table Q550X:

I estimate this configuration table to determine the day model variant in SAP HCM Time is nearly 40 years old and still active – not really understable at a glance and has for sure deficits in usability. I at least had my problems in the past to place the X in the right field ;-).

I think our concept is more easy to understand.

But coming back from this old fashioned R/3 table to our world:

How is this identifier used to link to the half public holiday? Pretty easy. You assign this identifier as seen in the screenshot above to the regular day model. And you need to assign it as well in the new “holiday planned working time determination” object:

(and please notice that this configuration object comes already with effective dating – so, whenever there are changes in the future needed, you simply create a new time slice. No need to create the object new).

Choose the half public holiday category and assign your identifier:

Side note: In order to use this feature overall you need to set the corresponding permissions:

I hear in my office in Sankt-Leon Rot already the big sighs from customers that this gap is closed. However, there is a small limitation (but we are working on this): the planned time segment of the day model variant needs to “inside” the orignal day model planned time segments. So, if the day models planned time is for example 08:00 – 17:00, the variants planned time needs to be inside this time frame for this release. Virginie Klein has written an excellent blog with step-by-step configuration details on the the half public holiday topic and also on the holiday work pattern topic – see next chapter. Please consult this blog for more details on the public holiday topics.

1.2 Public holiday as normal working day – holiday work pattern

Up to now a defined public holiday in the public holiday calendar was simply an off-day for the employee. The employee was not expected to come to work, planned working time was set to zero. If the employee took vacation across this public holiday there was no time account deduction.

But many customers do have employee groups that need to work regularly on a public holiday. Companies with 24×7 manufacturing or operating services, hospitals, security, police…Even if not the whole company needs to work on a public holiday but specific employee groups might need to do so.

You might say now: can´t this be solved by simply not having any public holiday in the calendars of those employees? No, this won´t work properly. Cause if these employees work their normal shift on a public holiday, there is most often a different payment compared to work on non-public holidays. Very often this employees get a public holiday premium pay, but it is not dedicated overtime, so no additional base hours payment, cause the public holiday is at least for salaried employees included in the salary. And if you don´t mark this day as a public holiday, then you cannot sort this constellation out in time valuation where these kind of premium pay generation is done.

The solution that closes this gap is our new “holiday work pattern”. This allows for specific employees to configure that there is a public holiday – but with the meaning of a normal regular working day. For SAP HCM Time Management gurus this is more or less what in SAP was called “day types”. But our configuration is much more flexible and transparent as it is in SAP HCMTime. For example: the “day type rules” in SAP are intransparent configured and assigned to the SAP workschedule in a configuration table – which led to the fact of doubling some work schedules only because of different rules to work on public holidays. In EC the holiday work pattern is assigned directly in the employees job info. This is more transparent and more flexible.

This feature comes within the Time Off module (cause this has also an influence on absence counting). However, if you want to use this feature for time valuation in our time records filters, cause you need to generate specific payments on public holidays that are normal working days, you need to have Time Tracking subscriptions. This is explained further down in the Time Tracking section.

Since this feature is only needed for specific customers and else this blog would become to big, I stop explaining it here. The main message is: it is possible now. Check out Virginie Kleins excellent blog post on this and on the configuration and handling of half public holidays:

Step-by-Step configuration information on public holiday enhancements

So, with this two enhancements on the public holiday handling we made big steps. But we did not yet reach the finish line with public holiday enhancements. There is more to come – like for example the possibility to include public holiday category into the absence counting rule to provide a more sophisticated absence counting on various public holidays – or the possibility to move public holidays via a temporary change of workschedule per employee, for those cases where employees travel in a country where the guest countries public holiday calendar is applicable of where in some countries public holidays are announced / moved on a short term notice.

1.3 Information dialog in time off and time sheet UI

This new feature allows to bring a leave policy description into the absence request UI and/ or information on overtime regulations or break deduction regulations into the time sheet UI.

This is useful if you want to provide your employees within the application more information on the companies leave policies that apply to them or on help texts how to use the application. Leave policies can be quite complicated – from when to when vacation accounts are valid, how many days entitlement for this and that leave type per year, accrual policies, sick leave policies and many more. Employees now can easily access this information with just one click – and not somewhere in the company portal, but right in the leave request application.

Now you might say – yes, this is fine, but we have time off in several countries, and in this countries multiple employee groups having different policies. How is this handled via a central button in the application?

Quite easy: the instruction texts are configured for a time profile or a time recording profile. And remember: these objects are assigned to the employees in the job information. And with this you easily can differentiate on a very fine granular level what information to show to which employees.

And the good thing is: the information dialogue uses BB code technology. With this generic technique you even can add links that refer to an external page or a portal page that contains more information and you can use html formatting to give the information dialog a nice look and feel. This is how an information dialog could look like:

You have got 4000 characters to put into this box – if you need to more you can place a link to a further page.

This is how the configuration looks like – as you see, you configure it in the time profile for time off:

For the configuration we use the generic BB Code technology – you need to have a bit of understanding of it, but this can easily be obtained via this page for example: BB Codes

You might now say – cool. Very useful. Less mails and enquiries to the time admins or HR admins cause employees can read now directly in the leave request application on the detailed regulations and leave policies – but it would be even cooler if this is also provided for the time sheet UI. Cause here it is the same: lots of different overtime and break and premium pay regulations that no employee understands or know by heart. Lots of enquiries to the HR administration folks on why is this break on top deducted, why did I get this and not that premium pay on Sunday work?

Okay. Good point. No problem, lets provide this feature also for the time tracking time sheet UI. ;-).

This is how the information dialog appears in the time tracking time sheet UI:

Similar to the information dialog configuration in the time profile the configuration of the time sheet information dialog is done in the time recording profile (this is where all configuration for the time sheet and time valuation is bundled).

The configuration in the time recording profile looks like this:

Overall very good way to pass additional information on the usage of the UI or on time recording policies, laws and so on to employees in the UI that they use and to reduce the workload of your HR or Time Admin offices.

Please note that instructions texts for time sheet UI are only available within the time tracking subscription. The instructions texts for the time off UI are available for every customer.

1.4 New workschedule tab in the time administration workbench

We are modernizing and improving the usability of our time administration workbench. This is the place for the time administrator to get detailed information on an employees absences and time account details, to perform time account adjustments and payouts and to get insights in the employees workschedule.

In this release we replace the “work schedule” tab with the new “planned working time” tab. You will see that this is a big win for you with respect to design, content and usability.

Not only do we now visualize in detail the employees planned working time (including public holiday calendar information) but we also provide a guided activity process to record a deviation from the job information workschedule, our so-called temporary change of workschedule.

As an entry point on the new planned working time tab you get a history list of assigned workschedules (from the job information) plus – depending on the filter- recorded temporary changes. Small recap: temporary changes of workschedule overwrite for a day or a period the information of the job info workschedule. This is used when your employee wants to swap a day shift with a night shift, or if he temporarily works according to a different workschedule pattern without any contractual or job information data change.

From here you not only see the history of assigned job information workschedules or temporary changes, but also edit an already existing temporary change, start the guided activity to create a new one or visualize the detailed planned working time in a calendar list view:

If you click on the right corner to switch to the calendar list view you get in a list for the selected period details on the planned working time, plus public holiday calendar information and recorded temporary changes of workschedules.

I have selected a year and you can paginate in the “more” section to see the subsequent days.

If there is a public holiday in the period it looks like this:

Those who are familiar with SAP Time will see from content point of view similarities with the transaction PT63 – personell workschedule.

This new view helps time administrators to get an overview on the shifts of an employee and to explain questions on for example overtime pay or time account deduction results.

Second nice enhancment is the guided activity for temporary change of workschedules. If you need to assign for a day or a period a different day model or workschedule cause the employee needs to swap a shift or wants to work for a limited time according to a different work pattern – you will be guided now in this activity step by step when you click on “create temporary change”. This is how the review screen of the guided activity looks like:

Thats it – this feature is universal push, so prepare your time admins that the look and feel and especially the usability of the previous “work schedule” tab has now improved tremendously. I hope you like it same way as I do.

1.5 Contingent workers displayed in team absence calendar

Besides hired “real” employees customers can have also contingent workers. You can assign a workschedule and a time profile to contingent workers so that they can record absences also in SF Time. This is necessary if you have for example a production team and you need to ensure that for each shift 5 workers are in the team available. In order to do the correct planning, employees and managers need to know on the planned absences of contingent workers. And to visualize this, we have included for web and mobile the contingents into the team absence calendar. There is a dedicated checkbox in the managers team absence calendar to include or exclude contingent workers:

If the manager checks the team absence calendar in the approval process then contingents are shown there by default (if they have absences during this period).

And in the employees team absence calendar the contingents are shown as well of course.

1.6 Multiple time account payouts with same posting date

If employees got terminated and they had more than 1 time account balance of the same time account type (because for example due to remaining balance from previous periods) a payout on the same payout date was not possible. Cause it was a payout for the same time account type using the same pay component.
This has now changed. It is now possible to create multiple time account payouts for the same user, pay component, and posting date. And it does not matter if the payout is triggered via the termination process or if it is a payout from the time admin workbench.