Check out SAP’s What’s New Viewer for this release. Interestingly, ~72% of them are Universal updates, meaning nearly three-quarters of all updates will be reaching end-users automatically after the mid-May production release. While most areas have similar or a smaller number of updates, there is a big increase in the number of Employee Central updates this time around.
There are also 576 Notable Fixed Issues and a set of published 26 Known Issues; while I’m sure every vendor would like to never have an issue, the next best thing is to be open and transparent in addressing these, which I think SAP endeavour to be.
However, back to the innovation … the “re-imagined” homepage is now moving to General Availability and is planned to be universally pushed to Preview environments with the H2 release later this year (2021), then be Universal from H1 next year (2022). This new innovation is causing a lot of discussion in the SuccessFactors Community Innovation Alert area – as a customer you can stay informed (& join in!) here. Activating the new homepage affects both the web and mobile experience simultaneously, but still has some limitations which you should be aware of if you are considering switching.
Amy Wilson’s (SVP Products & Design) usual highlights video is one of eight videos released by the SAP team which you can find on the SuccessFactors Community here giving their own insight into different areas. In addition to the reimagined homepage, continuous performance management (CPM) & goals, Amy touches on Time Tracking, Payroll Control Centre, Work Zone for HR, Rewards & Recognition and People Analytics.
Amy also recently announced that more than 2,000 customers have adopted CPM which is great to hear. At Zalaris, we are one of these customers, having used CPM throughout 2020 to help drive better employee conversations ahead of our annual performance review process in early 2021. The Feedback function is particularly popular (and encouraged).
Finally, I hope you and your families have stayed safe during the pandemic. With H1 2021, SAP SuccessFactors have released the “Health and Vaccine Status Tracking Block/Portlet in SuccessFactors People Profile”. It is built using a custom MDF in Employee Central and available for free; simply activate via the Upgrade Centre. It will be interesting to see what the “new normal” expectation will be on employees and visitors to declare this information – in my home country of the UK, there is much ongoing discussion on “vaccination passports” too.
Enjoy the articles!
I won’t keep you any longer … starting today and for the rest of the week, #teamZalaris will release articles on each functional area of the SAP SuccessFactors suite.
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Preview instances of SuccessFactors were updated on 16th April 2021, and the production instances are due to be updated on 21st May 2021.