S/4HC Integration with SuccessFactors: How to limit transfer of availability information to professional services employees?

[marcus_munk1]

Hi all,

in our demo landscape, we have connected our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test and Demo (S4HC T&D) system with our SuccessFactors (SF) system via SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) and enabled various iFlows, especially for the transfer of availability information of employees listed in SF. Now, we experience the following three issues:

1. Within the Advanced Resource Management (DE_1KC) all employees listed in SF are shown as available professional services resources, even if they do not belong to the respective service organization. But we would like to see only those who actually work in professional services.
2. The transfer of the availability information from SF via SCP to S4HC takes very long (several hours, most often only over night), even though we configured all systems & iFlows to replicate the information within minutes.
3. The transferred availability information is limited to the next 30 days, even though we configured it to be 90 days.

So the question is, how can we limit the transferring of availability information to the employees actually belonging to the professional services organization? Is there a configuration in S4HC, SCP or SF? Or, do we need an extension (in-app or side-by-side) for this?

Any tips, hints, or thoughts are welcome! Thanks!

Best regards, Marcus

[Feras_Al-Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi marcus.munk1 ,

Thank you for posting on the professional services community. Please see my comments in response to your points below:

1. Are all the employees you replicated assigned to a cost center in S/4HANA Cloud of category 'C - professional services? And are the cost centers assigned to the employees also assigned to a service organization? Lastly could you clarify the Fiori apps you are observing the undesired behavior?

2. Regarding the performance issues with transferring availability information. I first recommend to refer to the performance optimization notes for SFSF APIs:

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2321639

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2234858

3. Regarding the transferred availability information please refer to the below note.

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2653039

From this note please see pg. 8 of the PDF guide on troubleshooting availability replication. Set ENABLE_LOGGING to true and proceed accordingly.

The volume of data being sent to S4HC is an important factor to consider. Accordingly you may use the parameter Splitter_size to control the amount of data transferred in a batch.

Lastly I am including andreas.hackl to this thread, an expert in the area.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Feras

[former_member94298 · Accepted solution]

marcus.munk1 - following this with interest.

Are these limitations in the iflow just related to the fact that you are using demo systems - where functionality is slightly limited and performance is always visibly worse that for a productive environment? It will be really interesting to get some feedback from SAP to confirm one way or the other.

Also an interesting question from the perspective that the Advanced Resource Management functionality it not cheap from a licence perspective - so you would want to be pretty sure that you were getting a good return on that investment from a business point of view!

[Feras_Al-Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi marcus.munk1 ,

Thank you for your detailed response and clarification.

With respect to performance issues, to be precise, I understand that the concern is with the OData Workforce Daily Availability API configured in section 6.4.6 Employee Availability IFlow of scope item JB1.

The recommended limit on availability replication days is 120 to avoid timeout errors (reference KBA 2653039). This time-frame is defined to be the difference between the retro period of days and days into the future that will be replicated.

In addition to ccsmith 's point regarding the performance in the test environment have you tried the different parameter options configured in SCP for the employee availability iFlow?

For instance splitter_size will allow you to define the number of employees for which calendar data will be fetched in one batch. Another way to improve the performance of the iFlow may be to only replicate the availability data for those employees who will be staffed on projects. This could be done by using the employee class parameter. Please note however that you would need to ensure there are distinct employee class(s) assigned to category of employees (ex: prof services and other) in your SFSF EC tenant.This would also tie into your challenge with all employees being available for staffing in resource management apps.

You also mention that there are challenges associated with the completeness of availability data being replicated and that you had set the replication frequency to minutes/hours. In response the below information is taken from the JB1 setup guide:

https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/categories/sap_s%254hana/areas/cloud/packageversions/BP_CLD_ENTPR/...

""The Availability Replication iFlow is recommended to be scheduled to run every hour. Actual data replication

only occurs once a day though. In every run, it is checked first if data replication has been successful once a

day. In this case, subsequent iFlow runs are completed without actual data replication.""

To that end, it is recommended to enable logging on this iFlow and make sure to monitor errors both in CPI and monitoring tools in SFSF EC for the API calls. In case of ongoing issues not resolved by the above I would suggest logging a ticket with SAP support.

Going back to the issue on viewing all employees available for staffing in apps for resource management. Besides the idea on filtering the availability replicated for non-professional services employees using the employee class parameter, I would like to go back to the way cost centers and assignment to service organization is setup. If a cost center is not assigned to a given service organization in S4HC then the employees assigned to such cost centers would not be available for staffing in resource management apps (I did a quick test from my end). Hence, do the cost centers that your non-professional services employees are assigned to also need to be assigned to a service organization? This is also a possible solution that may be considered.

Lastly, given the complexity and level of detail of this thread I will connect with our product management and technical colleagues and update this thread upon hearing further information.

Hope this helps,

Kind regards,

Feras

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Hi ‎@Feras Al-Basha,

Thanks for the quick reply, and sorry for the multiple posting of related issues. Please see my answers below:

1. The employees working in the professional services department are all assigned to the respective cost center, and the cost center is assigned to a service organisation. In total there are 5 employees in the professional services department (i.e. service organisation), who should be available for staffing for projects, and who should be able to record their time spent for project activities.

However, our demo company has in total 38 employees. This includes management, as well as all other departments (Finance, HR, etc.). All these 38 employees have been created in SF, and have been transferred to S4C. They are all users in S4C, since we need them for our various demo scenarios.

Now, when we open the App "Resource Management for Projects", all 38 employees are listed as available resources (see attached screenshot). This does not make sense, since only 5 of them work in professional services on projects, and thus should be listed here.

At the same time, transferring availability data of 38 employees seems to have serious issues with respect to performance and completeness of the availability data: Even though we increased the frequency of the transfers it takes forever until new or changed availability data arrives in S4C. Some data never makes it to S4C. For example, we also increased the time frame for availability from 30 days, to 90 days and even to 365 days with no effect. Only availability data for the next 30 days is transferred to S4C!

It appears that the transferring iFlow between SF and S4C has a capacity limitation far below 38 employees x 90 days!!!

Therefore, we would like to know, how can we limit the transfer of availability information to the 5 employees we actually need it for. But we would still like to have all other information of the remaining 33 employees to be transferred from SF to S4C.

Is that possible at all? If so, how do we configure this? And, where? In SF, SCP or S4C?

Would it make sense to open a support ticket for this?

2. and 3. Yes, we have seen that and tried all of it before - to no effect.

Thanks again for your help!

Best, Marcus

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Hi ferasbasha3 ,

Many thanks for your quick and profound answer. We will check what you propose and I will keep you posted.

Best regards,

Marcus

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Hi ferasbasha3,

We have played around with various parameter options configured in SCP for the employee availability iFlow, especially with respect to the parameter splitter-size. What you wrote, explains why changes in availability are not reflected instantly, or within the same day, but rather on the next day. I must say, this is not really sufficient!

According to your proposal, we have just set up a distinct employee class for professional services employees in our SF EC tenant. Let's see tomorrow, if that helps ...

However, our SF/ HR experts told me, that this would be a misuse of the employee class functionality. The correct way, would be the use of the employee position information. But that cannot be selected as filter criteria in the iFlow.

Lastly, I have checked again the assignment of employees to cost centers and service organizations. Unfortunately, it does not work the way you describe it: Only professional services employees are assigned to the cost center "Consulting (D9901902)", which in turn is the only cost center assigned to a service organization. Nevertheless, all 38 employees of our demo company are listed as available resources (please see attached screenshots for details).

Is there anything wrong with our T&D tenant? Or, did we miss any configuration step?

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Marcus

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Please refer to the attached file.

[Feras_Al-Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi marcus.munk1 ,

Thank you for your response back. Glad to her that we were ably to clarify some of the points asked on this thread.

The comments made by your HR/SF colleagues are certainly valuable in the decisions you take for designing the solution. Given the complexity and depth of this discussion it is difficult to prescribe design/project solutions in the absence of the complete picture/details - please do factor this in.

Concerning the idea on service organization, cost center assignment and employees being available for staffing. In your screenshot for the app "maintain service organizations" I see the default cost center for which the professional services employees are assigned. Are the cost centers assigned to the remaining employees that are not intended to work on projects defined as additional cost centers? If so they would need to be removed for the change I mention to take place (see attachment).

Hope this helps,

Feras

[Feras_Al-Basha · Accepted solution]

Hi marcus.munk1 ,

Thank you for following up and providing feedback. Glad to here that the employee class recommendation has served your purposes to an extent.

As per your question on removing the outdated availability data for other employees. Am assuming that the work-schedule in SFSF EC is set to reflect no availability and that you want to replicate this information to S4HC to update the availability data that was previously replicated. Accordingly you may test to set the parameter "TEST_MODE = TRUE" and set the desired value for the parameter "MAXDATEFROMLASTRUN_TESTMODE" to pass the latest availability information for outdated schedules using the employee availability iFlow as a part of JB1. This would also tie into resolving the challenge you have with the Resource Manager Overview Dashboard you mentioned.

Lastly, I take this opportunity to mention that this thread has been an engaging discussion with multiple different but related questions asked. For future reference please do stick to a question per post to allow easier tracking and reference for the participants of the community. Kindly mark the post that is most relevant to the 'best answer.' I understand that not all questions/comments have been resolved but this is also due to the nature of the discussion that is also close to design/solution decisions.

Kind regards,

Feras

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Hi ferasbasha3 ,

Your recommendation to use a distinct employee class for professional services employees in our SF EC tenant, and limit the transfer of availability information from SF to S4C did the trick: Only availability data of employees belonging to this employee class arrives in S4C.

However, we view this rather as a workaround than a proper solution, since the employee class should not be misused for this. There are other, better fitting attributes within SF to select employees working in professional services. Also, we now have outdated availability data for all the other employees in S4C, which is neither updated nor deleted by the transfers from SF. How do we get rid of that old availability data in S4C?

Thanks for the documentation regarding cost center/ service organziation configuration. That's exactly how we did it. Nevertheless, in the ResourceManagerOverview-Display all employees of the company are listed as resources, which doesn't make sense and distorts the displayed KPIs.

Unfortunately, the other two issues, namely "Transfer of availability information is incomplete" and "Transfer of availability information takes very long" remain unsolved. Since we are only dealing with a demo company with 38 employees, of which 5 work in professional services, we doubt that this integration setup is capable of dealing with real life situations with hundreds of employees.

Therefore, we have decided to have our integration setup and system configuration checked in an expert session. If that does not solve the issues, we will open a support ticket.

Anyways, thanks for your time and help!

Best, Marcus

[marcus_munk1 · Accepted solution]

Hi ferasbasha3 ,

Thanks again for your valuable help and the suggestions you made! We will try it out. I will keep you posted.

Best, Marcus