Sequence ID Object and usage ( with Position management)

[Uppal]

Fellow SuccessFactors customers and experts,

Background :

We are into our Position Management implementation and we used the Sequence MDF object to create sequence ID for our Position IDs in SuccessFactors Employee Central. We are using EC since 2014 and used sequence object first time in 9 years time for Position Management.

We have both validations business rules and workflows as users ( Managers, or HR ) creates Position on EC.

Problem:

The challenge we face is sequence object is not truly a sequence. It skips 1 , 2 ,3 ( minimum 1 ) when we create a position.

The data gets replicated to SAP ECC, Our recruiting side job requisition uses this id and don't want this to be random number, with M & A, reporting / Analytics , Financial planning , Contingent WFs etc. and some asking where did the Id go.

Example:

If 10000 is the current sequence in Sequence Object. Now when you create a Position it will create 10000 as the id and then the next sequence will be 10002. So next position id is 10002, and if you have screen validations message - for each warning / evetime message appears it will skip , so 3 message , next sequence will be 10004 ( for the next position ID) .

Solution:

SAP is saying this is expected behavior and create a enhancement, but no recommendations. Sequence is not sequence ?? if you use business rules to validate or trigger WFs.

Request:

Any of the company which has used sequence object and Position (or any object creation) with WFs and Validation business rule , how did you handled this situation. or Any suggestions you have ?

Thanks & Regards,

Uppal

[nlgro023]

I've personally never had issues with it to be fair and would not exactly find it an issue if it skips any. I'd say it's rather a matter of perspective as it's not completely random, it's just the first next number available (hence apart from tops a few numbers higher it is still reasonably the next available number).

If you really want it to be predictable, you can always choose different setups (i.e. concatenating certain values / leveraging the date / time of the moment of creation), but I doubt the receiving systems will accept that as I recall at least ECC commonly wishes a certain number range. Otherwise, you may wish to investigate ways to apply the number of the sequence before any validations (i.e. onchange or oninit vs. onsave as also described partially in this blog Employee central: Automatic User ID generation | SAP Blogs, but only when the value is blank) so that the number is already set in stone (which may be easier via manage data than via the position org chart in practice), but even then it may be challenging to achieve unfortunately.

[NathanWilkinson]

I agree with Jasper it has never really been an issue.
Also remember that on the requisition you don’t get complete sequences either!