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The sequence object allow you to take full control of many functions within SuccessFactors. One of the most useful things you can do with it is, for example, when you want to assign specific codes to positions according to different countries or legal entities. When creating a new position into Employee Central, copanies should ideally employ some logic into the code that will be assigned to it. This is specially important if a certain company wants to assign a certain logic to position codes depending on which legal entity or country the position will be assigned to. In order to avoid confusion or having to refer to a list with the correct order outside of SuccessFactors, a rule with an inbuilt sequence needs to be configured.
The purpose of this post is to share some of my knowledge about how to get the system to follow a chosen sequential logic when automatically assigning a code to an object such as a new position, for example. I will show you how to create a sequence (and how do they work) as well as how to build a business rule that will use the sequence created to get the desired effects. Finally, I will be showing you how to place the business rule into the position object and how the finished product looks like.
Let's say you want to assign position code numbers according to four legal entities located in two different countries; two in the United States (LE_US_01/2) and two in the United Kingdom (LE_UK_01/2).
Suppose that the client wants the position codes to start with the number 3 and that the country codes are 18 for the US and 19 for the UK. The client also wants each legal entity to start with a different number so you assing LE_US_01 and LE_UK_01 to start with the number 5 and LE_US_02 and LE_UK_02 to start with the number 6. So the logic will be as follows;
EC Country LE
3 18 5
3 18 6
3 19 5
3 19 6
Therefore the code of the first position created into the system in the legal entity 01 in the US would be 31850001 and so on. However you don't want the client to keep referring back to a list in a separate spreadsheet to know what was the last code used and what the actual order was - the system will have to do the dirsty work itself.
First, a sequence will have to be created for each legal entity. Go to Admin Center -> Employee Files -> Manage Data. In the top right hand corner, select Create New -> Sequence:
The "external code" and "name fields" are just explanatory fields that can be freely completed.
In the "start" field, the first number of the sequence must be entered. Please note that this is the number from which the first position that will be created in the system will start from. In the current example (and possibly in every case) some positions were already uploaded into the system from the legacy system, hence the high startin number. You will need to search what is the next available number and place the next one in the sequence in here. Note the number 3 indicating a position number, the number 18 for US and number 5 for legal entity 01. For the other countries and legal entities, this number will change accordantly.
In the "step" field you define the sequence that will take place. For example; if 2 is selected then the system will go from 100 to 102 then 104 and so on. This is particularly useful if you want to assign odd numbers to a group of employees and even numbers to another. In this case, however, a normal sequence will be assigned (one by one).
In the "current" view field, the system is informing you of the latest number used. This is only used as a reference point for the future.
The same logic should then be followed for the remaining legal entities.
Next you will need to create the rule that will make this sequence work. Go to Admin Center -> Company Settings -> Configure Business Rules.
Select "Create New" and then "Basic". Complete the fields on the right hand side and select Position as the base object.
The rule should look like this:
You can see that in the "If" logic the desired company is selected and in the "Then" logic the desired sequence is selected.
Now you can proceed to do the same for all other legal entities.
This is not enough, however. You now need to attribute this rule into the position object so that it will know what to do next time a position is added to one of those legal entities. Otherwise the rule will be loose in the system.
Go to Admin Center -> Company Settings -> Configure Object Definitions. Then search for Object Definitions -> Position. At the bottom of the page, in the "Rules" section, select the function in which the rule will apply to and save the rule there.
Now you're done! Let's now test the sequence to see if it really works.
Go to Manage Positions and create a new position under the desired legal entity.
Upon saving, the first number on the sequence created previously will be automatically assigned!
The system automatically assigned the 3 for position, 18 for United States and 5 for legal entity 01. The client won't need to manually check those things and can rest assured all is taken care of.
This shows how well the sequence object works and that it can be useful in a number of different scenarios. As long as those three steps are followed - creation of sequences, placing of the sequences into a business rule and attributing the rule to the position object - the possibilities of this functionality are endless. In this article I have used legal entities as an example but that works with virtually anything.
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