SAP SuccessFactors Reporting and Analytics Quick Tips: Ensuring EC Reports Return Results in All Languages

[mikehoekstra]

What is this?

This post is another in a series of SAP SuccessFactors Reporting and Analytics Quick Tips.

As you're likely aware, SAP SuccessFactors enables numerous localizations across the HCM Suite.  Do you share your Employee Central reports (Canvas/ORD/Advanced Reporting) with a global audience?  In this post, I'll show you how to ensure that these reports successfully return results for employees running the reports in a different language.

 

About Me

Mike Hoekstra is an SAP® SuccessFactors® Reporting and Analytics expert at Aasonn, an SAP® Gold Partner.  He is certified in SAP® SuccessFactors® Reporting, and as a Workforce Analytics (WFA) Technical and Functional Consultant.  He leads new implementations, delivers training sessions, and assists clients in developing complex reports.  

 

Prerequisites

• Employee Central


• Canvas/ORD/Advanced Reporting


• Knowledge of your code/label mappings

 

Procedure

How your Canvas/ORD/Advanced Reporting Reports could return incomplete results

For many fields in Employee Central, there are three versions of each field.  Using Employee Status as an example, there is

1. Employee Status--an internal ID


2. Employee Status (External Code)


3. Employee Status (Label)

 

When creating filters in your report, it is typically most straightforward and logical to use the Label version of a field.

A simple example would be if you are creating a report in US English, and filtering on Employee Status.  Let's say you want to include employees with Active, Paid Leave, Unpaid Leave, and Suspended statuses.

Filtering on Employee Status (Label), you can choose these values as follows:



 

This report will complete just fine when your report consumer uses English (US).

However, when a user in another language runs the report, their values for the labels may change.  For a French user, if those labels are different, no rows will be returned:



Even if you aren't a French speaker, if you've created and/or run enough Advanced Reporting reports in the past, you'll recognize this as the dreaded "No Data Returned" message.

The fix:  Filter with External Codes

What to do to fix this? Instead of filtering on the Label version of a field, you need to filter on the External Code version.

So now change your filter to be on Employee Status (External Code): 



 

New! With the Q1 2018 release, a Tool Tip has been added on this page: when you hover over each code, you will see the corresponding label. For example, for 'A' above, the tool tip shows "Active."

Now, your report will accurately return results for users in all languages.

 

But I don't know my code/label mappings!

If you don't know your code/label mappings, you have a couple of options to find these:

1. Create a quick query that includes codes and labels for your desired field(s); export this to Excel and filter on unique values.


2. Consult your implementation documentation/workbook that lists these code/label pairs.

 

Wrap-up

Thanks for reading!  Was this helpful?  Did it make sense?  Leave a comment below and let's discuss.

 

Related KBA

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2427719