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Here comes the fourth blog of 1H 2021 release series. This blog, I am going talk about EC Time & Attendance 1H 2021 release highlights. EC Time & Attendances is always a been my favourite area when it comes to Employee Central implementations. I feel, upgrade release cycle from quarterly to half-yearly is really helping development team to get much more time to develop the new features. The new timesheet UI and Cross-Midnight Recording is one such finest innovations SAP brought in this release. Personally, I love old time UI though!
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Like my previous blogs in the series, I will talk about the key updates that you should consider.
- New Time Sheet UI: A new employee self-service (ESS) user interface (UI) for attendance recording is available. This new UI supports accessibility standards and can be used on both desktop and mobile devices. The new UI includes all features of the current UI except for a limited list of custom field types, field criteria, and search fields in the cost center selection popup. The best part is, you can first test the new UI and later depending on the customer interest you can go for upgrade, isn’t cool? You have a URL extension, there you go, start testing the new UI. I have provided the test URL below. Also, SAP has introduced a 2-month calendar overview which displays the status of previous time sheets, so employees can keep track of their scheduled payments. The new UI is responsive to screen size, meaning it always displays the correct amount of information for the user's specific screen.
Personally, I love the old UI, new one is ok-ish!
- Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

You can also create absence from the same screen!

Note: You must ensure that no custom fields of type User have been configured. Otherwise, the new UI displays an error message. Also, before you choose to upgrade, it is strongly recommended that you test the new UI in the test instance, or in your production instance using the separate URL provided by SAP. This gives us the opportunity to assess the new UI and prepare user guides and rollout material for your employees. The new UI is easier for employees to navigate.
URL:
www.<placeholder>.com/xi/ui/attendancerecording/pages/sap/sf/attendancerecording/timesheet/index.xht... (login to system and simply replace the placeholder with your own company URL)
- Working Time That Ends at Midnight: Here it is! The most awaited! You can now allow employees to record working time that ends directly at midnight. Additionally, you can now define segments in the work schedule or in the work schedule day model. You can also define time segment filters in the time valuation that end at midnight. Bingo!
With this new function, it is now much easier to support any working time models that allow employees to work during the night.
- Configuration Type: Universal

- Full Day Field Is Hidden for the "Full Day Bookings Only" Setting: You can now choose to hide the Full Day field on the Time Off UI. When the Permitted Fractions for Unit Day setting or Permitted Fractions for Unit Hours in the Time Type object is set to Only full day bookings allowed, then the Full Day field on the Time Off UI is hidden. The Full Day field is hidden to both clock-time and duration-based users. This enhancement is coming from Customer Community Ideas.
- Configuration Type: Universal
- Employee Time Permissions Respected by Other UIs: The permissions for Employee Time are now respected by UIs such as the My Team UI, the Org Chart, and the Employee Profile. If you don't see any absence data in these UIs, please check whether you have the permissions assigned listed in the prerequisite section of this document. We enhanced this feature so that once you have the Employee Time permission, you can see absences on other UI’s.
- Configuration Type: Universal
Note: You have the User Time Management Object Permissions Employee Time permission. If the Employee Time object is secured, you also have permission to view/edit the Visibility item. Otherwise, you won't see absence data on other UIs.
- Calendar Run Limited to 365 Entitlements: Better performance! The entitlement calendar now creates a maximum of 365 entitlements for each calendar run and time account. SAP improved this feature to prevent performance issues.
- Configuration Type: Universal
- Validation when Deactivating the Time Type: Nice to have! A validation error is raised when you try to delete or deactivate a time type that is referenced under the time profile in the available time types, this ensures maintain data consistency.
- Configuration Type: Universal
- Retrigger Periodic Time Account Update on the Admin Alerts 2.0 UI: You can now trigger a rerun of the periodic update process on the Admin Alerts 2.0 user interface (UI) control. After you've selected a new alert on the UI, go to Action > Retrigger Periodic Update. This gives admins to look at alerts, correct errors, and retrigger the periodic update directly on the Admin Alerts 2.0 UI control, compared to retriggering it from the Manage Time Off Calendar UI.
- Configuration Type: Universal

- Permission to Restrict the Target Population to Peers in the Team Absence Calendar: We can now use the Granted Users' Peers permission to restrict the target population to peers for a permission role. Again, this particular enhancement is from a Customer Community Idea. Cheers!
- Configuration Type: Admin Opt-in

- Opening Accrual and Opening Entitlement: Perfect! we can use the opening accrual and opening entitlement posting types to manually post an initial leave balance to a time account. This will enable us to restrict to recalculate opening accruals and opening entitlements. Hence, going forward, we can use to manually post an initial balance to a time account, for example, when migrating the time account balances. SAP introduced these posting types to make it easier for admins to post balances for time accounts with the Entitled as Transferred entitlement method.
- Configuration Type: Universal
Alright! Hope this helps someone, the “record working time that ends directly at midnight” innovation is the king of this release. Thanks to SAP SuccessFactors team.
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. Don’t forget to wear a mask!
You can go thru my other blogs on 1H 2021:
- SuccessFactors Employee Central 1H 2021 Release Highlights Here
- SuccessFactors LMS 1H 2021 Release Highlights Here
- SuccessFactors Recruiting 1H 2021 Release Highlights Here