SAP SuccessFactors EC Time & Attendance : 2H 2021 Release Highlights

The Release blog series is back!

Here comes the third blog of 2H 2021 release series. This blog, I am going talk about EC Time & Attendance. As always, EC Time & Attendance is my favorite area when it comes to implementations. After going thru the release notes, I personally felt, this edition of Time Management is more like enhancing the previously released innovations. SAP SuccessFactors team ensured customer satisfaction with 2h 2021, Most of the innovations are from customer community. Yes, it is clear that SAP is listening!

Like my previous release blogs, let me talk about the key updates that I personally like, or you should consider. Here is the list:

1. Concurrent Absences in Time Management: Here it is, the most awaited, one other innovation that proves SAP is listening to customers, this feature is from customer community idea. You can now record an absence that overlaps, either fully or partially, with another absence. To be precise, user can now go “Vacation” absence overlap with the “Sickness” absence, which is common and legal requirement in most of the European nations.

This feature is currently available for Early Adoption in the following countries/regions:

• Netherlands
• United Kingdom
• Spain

• • Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

Note:  As aforementioned, this feature is in the Early Adoption phase, and it has few restrictions. If you’re interested in enabling this feature as an Early Adoption feature, please reach out to the Time Management Forum of the Customer Community.

1. Conditional Custom Fields Displayed Next to Standard Fields on Time Off UI: Thank you SAP once again, this has been like never ever ending discussion in most of the implementation workshops. Even as a consultant, we felt many times, why not? Anyways, finally, the conditional fields can now be displayed next to the standard fields on which the conditions are defined

• • Configuration Type: Universal

Note: This is now the default behaviour and there is no option left to display conditional fields at the bottom of the user interface, or to customize the order of the conditional fields. customers, please make a note.

1. Cross-Midnight for Attendances (General Availability): From only for early adoption to general availability, it is now enabled for all the customers. With this, employees can track their working time for cross-midnight shifts. Let me make it simpler, employees will be able to record working time working time starts on one day and but ends on another.

          Prerequisites:

• Ensure that you have enabled SAP SuccessFactors Time Sheet and SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking.
• To use cross-midnight for attendances, you also need to activate the new Time Sheet user interface (UI).

• • Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

1. Cross-Midnight Time Sheet Collision Checks: Nice to have! Effective 2H 2021, checks on collisions is now available when cross-midnight data is saved whose duration straddles the end of one-time sheet and the beginning of the next. These cross-time sheet collision checks are done when changes are saved in the Time Sheet UI. Employees see an error message and cannot save time sheets with collision whereas admins can save time sheets with collisions, in order to be able to resolve them later, but see a warning message. A new Admin Alert Type Time Data Collision has also been introduced to show the collisions that occur across time sheet borders in Time Management triggered by jobs such as the import job.

• • Configuration Type: Universal

1. Option to Configure Additional Restrictions to the Target Population for the Employee Time Object: One more enhancement from customer community, you can now define target criteria on the Employee Time object under the role-based permissions, in addition to the target population what we have. I can say one nicer to have innovation.

• • Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

1. Mobile Time Off Supports Field Level Overrides: The field level overrides permissions are now supported for the custom fields on the Mobile Time Off user interface. The fields now can be set to Read Only.

Mobile Time Off supports the following fields:

• Attachment
• Boolean
• String
• Number
• Decimal
• Picklist

• • Configuration Type: Universal

1. New Permission to Access Team Absence Calendar: SAP is listening, right from the time SAP SuccessFactors team came up with team absence calendar, many customers globally raised a requirement of granting permission to access the team absence calendar for certain user groups. This is user-based and not based on a target population, which means, you can now decide to allow only time admins or managers to access the team absence calendar. SAP introduced a new quick card, View Team Absences for the latest home page which is the root-cause for this innovation. The quick card respects this permission to allow specific managers and employees to access the team absence calendar user interface. With the latest home page, the team absence calendar is now also accessible to employees directly from the home page.

• • Configuration Type: Universal

1. Changed Layout of New Time Sheet UI: I still love the old UI, the new one as said earlier, is not a user friendly. Again, it’s my personal opinion Now let’s see what SAP has with new release – the modified new layout of the time sheet UI has now 2 columns instead of 3. The calendar column is now removed from the default view and can only now be opened with the Calendar button.

• • Configuration Type: Universal

1. Check Tool Support for Clock In Clock Out: The saviour! SAP SuccessFactors now allows admins to run the Check Tool to identify and fix errors and data inconsistency issues in Clock In Clock Out. The best part is it allows you to run Quick Fix to resolve the synchronization inconsistencies. Check Tool can now be used to identify any synchronization issues for the following:

• Clock In Clock Out Groups – Use the check Clock In Clock Groups are synchronized in Configuration.
• Time Event Types – Use the check Time Event Types are synchronized in Configuration.
• Employee Synchronization – Use the check Clock In Clock Out employees are synchronized in Employee Synchronization.

• • Configuration Type: Universal

1. Workflow Support for Approval of Time Events in Clock In Clock Out: Workflows to manage the approval process of manually created time events and to delete time events in Clock In Clock Out has been introduced with 2h 2021 release, which means, if an employee manually creates or deletes a time event in Clock In Clock Out, a workflow will be triggered to have the stake holders approval or decline the time event. The best part is, you can trigger workflows for various scenarios using business rules, allowing you for better customization. This will allow better monitoring of the manually created time events.

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Hope this helps and please do comment if I missed something very crucial from the current release. Also please find the documentation on the SAP Help Portal under SAP SuccessFactors Release Information, quick links under “What’s New” section will provide the detailed release summary across application.

See you soon with a new blog! Please stay safe!!