Incorrect Learning Assign Date stored in SuccessFactors Learning - Time Zone management

[pauline_dumont]

Hi,

since the 2H2024 release, the learning assign date recording in the LMS data base has changed. I've seen no communication about that (please let me know if I missed one), but a KBA has been released, which I discovered when the support closed my ticket as the issue is considered as an expected behaviour of the system.

Faced situation:

When a learning item is assigned to a user in SAP SuccessFactors Learning, the assign date stored and displayed is the day before the actual assignment date. I.e. if you assign an item to a user today, the assign date mentioned in the LMS is yesterday.

Impacts:

• Wrong user experience
• Inaccurate information stored/displayed/reported on => potential issue in compliance and legal reporting
• Inaccurate training due date calculation => potential issue in compliance and legal reporting
• Impossible to reassign a course on the same day of its completion. 
  Indeed, if you assign an item today at 15:00 after the user has completed it at 14:00, as the assign date is recorded as yesterday, today's completion is considered to have applied to (i.e. completed) yesterday's assignment, so the assignment does not appear in the user's learning plan.
  => Issue when you test an online item you are building, when you do demos during an LMS training, and of course in real life use cases when you need to reassign a training to comply to specific retraining requirements.

Explanation:

3490433 - How is Assignment Date Stored in LMS Database
With 2H2024 release, the Learning Engineering Team changed the way the assignment date is stored in the LMS database: 
The assignment date selected by the admin will be stored as 00:00:00, using the admin's current time zone, and then converted to UTC.
Example, with an admin connected in the CET time zone which is 1h ahead of UTC:

• The assignment is done at 15:10 CET on 22 November.
• The system makes it 00:00 CET and then converts it to UTC.
• The final stored date is 23:00 CET on 21 November 

Solution:

There is currently no solution proposed, only a suggestion to raise an enhancement request.

My demand:
The solution should be to simply store the accurate date and time of assignment in the data base. This should not be problematic in any case.
Before escalating, I would like to know if any of you has already escalated this issue, in order to regroup and give more weight to that escalation.
Do you see additional impacts than the ones above?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Pauline

SAP SuccessFactors Learning @Marine 

[Marine]

@pauline_dumont this appears to have been a bug fix delivered in 2H2024 but indeed is not present in the patch notes.

Researching internally I found this information:
"When item is assigned from Item entity page, click 'Run job now' will leave Assign date as point in time instead of start of the day in UTC which is inconsistent when compared with other areas such as Assignment Profile, Manage Assignments, Data import etc."

Thanks,

Marine

[pauline_dumont]

Hi @Marine,
thanks for your quick answer.

Sorry I don't understand the note though. Could you explain me a bit more what it means concretely?
That depending on where the assignment is done, the assignment date is recorded differently? Has any correction been applied since I last tested the issue last week?
My understanding of the topic is that an inconsistency of the system (described in the KBA) has been corrected by generating even more inconsistency...
If the behaviour is still the same as I mentioned in my post, how can we proceed to get to a solution that would resolve all of the incoherences?

Thanks again!
Best Regards,
Pauline

[pauline_dumont]

Hi @Marine,

I've creates an enhancement request for this.
Incorrect Learning Assign Date stored in SuccessFactors Learning - Improve Time Zone management 
Could you please support it?

Happy New Year by the way 🙂

Best Regards,
Pauline