I hope you and your families are well and healthy! While health is top of mind these days, we at SuccessFactors are continuing to focus on bringing our customers the innovations they need to support employees who are working from home, to help people make the most of this time to sharpen their skills, or to make sure everyone has what they need to return to work stronger than ever.
Early this year I read the
Forrester Future of Work 2019 report, which talked about their expectations that automation will change the nature of what an organization is, what a company does, and how work is done. The report contends that companies must become learning institutions, and employees must become continuous learners, not only staying abreast of new skills and topics to quickly pivot to new markets, products and services, but also adapting to whole new ways of working. Last month we saw the business world jump to light speed as every company that could put every employee who could to work at home.
SAP Successfactors is with you during this change and it is with this in mind that we have built out a business continuity program of learning content from SAP Content Stream by Skillsoft with
a 30 days free trial as well as
free offerings from our partner ecosystem. I know this is not part of the 1H2020 release shipment itself but I wanted to make you aware of it in case it might help your organization in this time of change.
To set the stage for our 1H 2020 release of SAP SuccessFactors Learning, I’ll touch on how we are
reimagining Learning and Development as part of our HMX strategy: Human resources (HR) is no longer about pushing top-down programs to employees; it’s about placing employees’ experience at the center of every process and decision. We call this
human experience management (HXM) and with HXM, organizations can harness intelligent technologies to personalize the user experience, use data to understand how employees feel, and leverage an open ecosystem to tap into a wide range of solutions.
And stellar user experience is more than (though it certainly includes!) offering an immersive experience to the learner. Our Learning administrators are power users who spend much of their work day with the SuccessFactors Learning Administrator Interface, and with this release we’ve completely overhauled the application to make their lives easier, from modern design to streamlined navigation and updated, intuitive terminology.
Benefits to your business:
The optimized user interface for Learning administrators offers
- Consistent design and organization for all types of records reduces everyone’s cognitive overhead and speeds onboarding for new admins
- Menus and screens redesigned to present most commonly used information first, reducing clicks and freeing up valuable time
- More relatable terminology adds to the increased intuitiveness and great usability ratings!

Here are some of the specific updates and features for the Learning Administrator we’re shipping with this release:
- New Access Point to Learning Administration – A tile allows administrators to access the new Learning Administration directly from their home page.
- Terminology Changes – Updated terminology is reflected not only throughout the admin UI, but also making life easier for learners.
- New Menu Navigation – Learning Administration is organized in a tree structure with a navigation pane on the left side. The new structure puts the most commonly used tools all under a primary menu, “Manage User’s Learning.” Previously, these tools were spread over multiple menu items.

- Wizards located with Entities – Previously located under Tools, many wizards have been relocated within specific entities.

- Entity Manager – The major entities have a new layout to edit and manage information. The header contains key details that allow administrators to verify that they are working on the correct record. The header can be collapsed or pinned and Actions are available in the upper right corner.

- Display of Data within Entities – Within an entity, related data displays on horizontal tabs. Within some tabs, data displays in tables. The tables use a consistent layout, with ID as the first column on the left. Data can be sorted and, depending on the entity, additional functions can be performed (such as editing, grouping, and changing prices). This consistency reduces ramp-up time for new administrators.

Though we’re excited to share the new Learning Administration user interface with our customers, we will continue to provide access to the legacy UI until the 2H 2020 release. You can find a complete transition guide, a catalog of the terminology changes (in all 42 supported languages!) and even more details, as well as guidance on how to proceed as response to Adobe’s decision to deprecate Flash, in the
customer community area
When we talk about user experience then I don’t want to miss to mention that we have also enhanced mobile features with 1H2020 release. In addition to the new Admin UI, we are also bringing some great mobile features as well as support for Timed Assessments in our newer assessments tool.
The Android SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app now supports deep links to
- Learning Program Details: This allows users to select the link and go directly to the relevant details of the program
- Learning registration details: This allows users to select the link and go directly to the Registration Details screen
- Learning scheduled offerings: This allows users to select the link and go directly to the relevant Scheduled Offerings information
- Learning scheduled offering details (for iOS): This allows users to select the link and go directly to the relevant Scheduled Offering Details screen.
Users can also launch mobile-enabled content in full screen view by using the Android mobile navigation bar. And the Follow-up Survey and Evaluation Survey functionality offers that a survey for one or more instructors of a course can be completed in a streamlined experience for iOS and Android SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app users.
Interested in more information on release highlights across the SuccessFactors suite? Check out this
blog and our
SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite 1H2020 release highlights video. You can find a list of all mobile and other enhancements
here.
I hope this information helps you to get a good overview of some of the enhancements shipped with 1H2020 for Learning (and the suite).
Stay healthy and let us all get through this difficult time of uncertainty - even stronger!