Implementation Design Principles

Implementation Design Principles (IDPs) provide structured guidance and advice on how to address challenging customer requirements as well as frequently asked questions occurring during the design and implementation phases of project. IDPs deliver these best practices by means of documents created in collaboration with our top implementation partners and SAP`s services and further "verified" by product.

Why IDPS

To know more about why IDPs are required, check the blog post on Implementation Design Principles. Please provide feedback on this blog post.

Implementation Assets

To help customers and partners understand how and when to leverage the different implementation assets available, check this blog post.

Claim IDP Rising Star Badge

SAP SuccessFactors partners and consultants: you can claim an SAP knowledge badge called SAP SuccessFactors IDP Rising Star after passing the product web assessment available in the SAP Learning Hub. Below are the links to the SAP Learning Journey (LJ) & Learning Program (LP) that you can access to claim your respective IDP Rising Star badge:

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

Administration

Employee Central: Managing Alerts and Notifications

This document showcases typical business scenarios needing alerts and notifications with business rules in an efficient way. The document helps in understanding the job for alerts. It will also provide a recommendation on how to avoid some common mistakes during configuration.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Implementation Considerations for a Phased Rollout

This document reviews the implementation and operational challenges of a phased rollout of Employee Central and discusses deployment options in the context of operational scenarios which will be encountered typically by larger global implementations.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Recognizing Gender Diversity

This document provides recommendation on how to maintain gender values in Employee Central for complying with legal regulations in some countries including situations with global assignments. It also explains the configuration, integration to ERP and adoption of gender in Talent modules.
Document | Blog Post 

Employee Central: Optimizing Business Rules for Select Business Scenarios (Updated)

The MDF-based business rules framework has provided the ability to define business rules for a wide range of applications in Employee Central. The flexibility of this functionality is the solution for a variety of customer-specific requirements. The same flexibility provides multiple ways of achieving an end-result, some more efficient than others. This flexibility also allows for creative solutions to complex problems not easily identifiable. This IDP illustrates examples of these scenarios and the optimal solution for each.
Document | Blog Post 

Employee Central: Processing Mass Transactions (Updated)

SuccessFactors provides multiple tools to process mass changes including the mass changes tool, employee data imports, and MDF object imports. This document showcases various scenarios that need mass changes and which tools can be best used for those.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Managing Pensioners

This document focuses on how pensioners can be managed in Employee Central specifically for those who get a pension from the company.
Document | Blog Post 

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Position Management: Design Considerations and Recommendations (Updated)

This document addresses challenges faced during the implementation of position management and proposes recommended position management settings, sample rules and configurations to aid in the design of the system.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central: Job Information Entity Configuration Considerations

Job information entity in SuccessFactors Employee Central is an important entity which is used to record Job related Information of an employee during the course of employment. This document provides configuration guidance by explaining certain aspects of Job Information.
Document | Webinar

Integration

SAP Fieldglass and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Integration: Solution Design and Implementation Considerations (New)

This document provides implementation design considerations and configuration guidance to manage external workers, in particular contingent workforce, implemented using the robust integration between SAP Fieldglass and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, the leading solutions to manage Total Workforce Management (TWM) of an organization. This document considers the standard packaged integration (based on SAP Integration Suite – SIS) between these systems which forms the basis of the recommendations. In addition, it provides guidance on managing distributed processes, field mapping, and data maintenance along with addressing other frequently asked questions in this integration.

Document | Webinar

Manage Pay

Employee Central: Managing Pay Scale Based Salary Increases (Updated)

This document provides an efficient process on automated pay increases for common and complex scenarios for employees who come under collective agreements considering various factors like system performance, accuracy, and maintainability.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Managing Indirect Valuation of Pay Components (Updated)

This document explains how to automate pay components assignment and its valuation for different employee groups and salary structures across various compensation-related processes in an effective way using MDF lookup tables, data model extensions, and business rules.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Manage Pay Scale Progression (Updated)

This document provides details on how Employee Central can be configured to achieve automatic grade step progression with minimal setup and maintenance. It also provides a mechanism to update the employee`s compensation and job-related information to match the pay rate of the new pay scale level.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Manage Payroll Relevant Data Changes (Updated)

This document provides guidance on how to set up Employee Central for considering restrictions on payroll-relevant master data changes in a way that the necessary checks occur already during data input in Employee Central rather than during replication to payroll systems.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Manage Employments

Employee Central: Managing Employments in SAP SuccessFactors Suite

This document discusses the scenarios and impacts of multiple employment across Employee Central and Talent Management functionality. It provides recommendations on the need for the use of multiple employment for specific scenarios like International transfers.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Manage Localization

Employee Central Country Specific: Recording Work Permit Information with Different Document Formats

Some companies spread through several countries face the need of recording several work documents (or work permits) with different formats. Although the standard Work Permit element allows the creation of custom fields, it can be cumbersome from the user’s perspective to use the correct fields for every single document. This document provides some options to overcome these challenges, with two options that can be used, each with their pros and cons.

Document | Blog Post

Employee Central Country Specific: Managing Legal and Union specific Dismissal Protection

Some country specific laws or union agreements, especially in LATAM countries for example in Brazil, An employee is protected from termination if he goes on certain types of leaves. Regardless of the reason why the employee is under this condition, whether legally or due to union agreement, the company is at risk of paying taxes and even court sanctions in case this process is not respected. The content of this IDP addresses a way to manage protection records based on time off events according to the criteria satisfied by the employee condition. This protection management covers both the creation and the inactivation of records automatically.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Integration to SAP Business Suite

Side-by-Side

Employee Central Side-by-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations

This document details the recommendation for Side-by-Side solution architecture explains how it can be applied to a cross-country multi-system environment and how it is possible to transition from a Side-by-Side deployment to a Core Hybrid deployment.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Core Hybrid

Cross-System Workflow for SAP SuccessFactors Solutions (Updated)

Cross-system workflow is a solution that is used to connect processes that span the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP HCM or SAP S4/HANA systems. This document gives detailed guidance on how to setup and configure the cross-system workflow.

Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Extending cross-system workflow for SAP SuccessFactors (New)

This document describes how customers/partners can extend the cross-system workflow for the SAP SuccessFactors solution to introduce additional phases and actions. For example, it can provide a seamless process orchestration from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to a 3rd party payroll system.

Document | Blog Post

Employee Central Core Hybrid: Handling Employee Identifiers

This document describes in detail the key employee identifiers existent in EC, Talent Suite and SAP HCM and how these impact requirements related to multiple employment and job/talent history.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central Core Hybrid: Data and Process Distribution Strategy (Updated)

This document provides architectural and business process guidance for distributing OM and employee master data between Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM systems.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central Core Hybrid: Data and Process Distribution Details (Updated)

This document provides functional and process guidance for distributing HR data & processes between Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM systems including detailed explanation on topics such as employee planned working time and compensation information.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central Core Hybrid: Organization Structure Design Considerations (Updated)

The document explains the basics of organization management structures and describes the factors that influence organizational structure design. Difference structure designs are presented in this document with the advantages and disadvantages of each option including the recommendation of which option can be used and when.

Document

Data Migration

Employee Central Core Hybrid: Migrating Contingent Workforce to EC (Deprecated)

SAP HCM customers frequently employ a non-standard solution reusing the employee master data structure (infotypes) to also store contingent workforce data. This document provides guidance on how to migrate this non-standard contingent workforce data from SAP HCM to EC using Infoporter.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central Data Migration: Cutover Optimization Using Infoporter

This document provides ways of optimizing the data migration and replication cutover process for Employee Central implementations with the aid of SAP Infoporter solution. It discusses cutover activities like delta migration, freeze period, testing data replication and performing the initial replication from Employee Central.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

Employee Central: Employee Data Migration Strategy and Implementation Considerations

Every Employee Central implementation will necessitate data migration of the existing employee population from a legacy system. This document describes in detail the strategies and considerations involved with data migration and provides industry best practices on employee data migration specifically for greenfield Employee Central implementation.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll

Employee Central Payroll

Employee Central Payroll: Migrating from ERP HCM Payroll to Employee Central Payroll

This document will review some of the key concepts of the ERP HCM Payroll solution and compare these with the EC Payroll solution and will discuss the considerations for migrating the ERP HCM Payroll solution to EC Payroll and provide guidelines and migration processes which can be leveraged.
Document 

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll: lntegration to SAP S/4 HANA On-Premise

This document will review typical integration scenarios between SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll and S/4 HANA for the available deployment options. It will enlist some of the best practices underlying these integration scenarios by explaining the critical configurations needed to run the processes seamlessly.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite & People Analytics

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management and Employee Central Integration

This IDP provides guidance on design and configuration considerations for mapping various standard and custom fields to ensure smooth data flow from SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management to Employee Central.

Document | Webinar


SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting: Guide to Leveraging Job Requisition OData APIs (New)

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting has a large customer base and customers, and partners alike look for ways to complement the core ATS functionality to address the various individual customers’ business needs including but not limited to automation, UI integration and process improvements. Partners can leverage existing OData APIs to integrate and complement core SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting. This IDP focuses on the demystifying the OData APIs with practical guidance on how to leverage them to address a mutual customer's needs.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting: Guide to Leveraging Candidate and Job Application OData APIs (New)

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting has a large customer base and customers, and partners alike look for ways to complement the core ATS functionality to address the various individual customers’ business needs including but not limited to automation, UI integration and process improvements. Partners can leverage existing OData APIs to integrate and complement core SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting. This IDP focuses on the demystifying the OData APIs with practical guidance on how to leverage them to address a mutual customer's needs.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite Integration

SAP SuccessFactors Suite: Identity & Access Management

This document describes the enablement of secure user access using single sign-on for customers with a landscape consisting of SuccessFactors in the cloud, on-premise consisting of SAP applications, SCP extensions, as well as other third-party applications. It also explains some of the single sign-on scenarios involving internal employees as well as externals/contractors, besides explaining the upcoming features and updates regarding Identity Authentication with SuccessFactors.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite: Configuration Life Cycle Management

Most SuccessFactors customers have at least three instances and, commonly, they have additional instances. This wide landscape of instances become a challenge when it must be aligned to ensure replicability of behavior across them, or when newly developed configuration needs to be copied. SuccessFactors provides effective options to help customers and partners in doing so. This document guides on the best option tool to be used depending on specific scenarios, describe important aspects of it, and present considerations on audit control.
Document | Blog Post 

SAP SuccessFactors Compensation

SAP SuccessFactors Compensation: Design and Integration of Different Salary Structures in One Global Compensation Template

Salary structures may differ considerably between countries, industries and unions. Local collective agreements may affect how merit-based compensation can be performed. This document explains how local aspects and different salary structures can be handled in a single Employee Central-integrated Global Compensation Worksheet.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics

SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics: Story Report Design & Implementation Considerations (Updated)

This document provides various design and implementation considerations on leveraging SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics - Story Report to create visually rich and critical reports for various business scenarios as well as provides product guidance on how to successfully help customers migrate to the new report story from the existing reporting artifacts. It also provides necessary guidelines to effectively create and manage Story Reports, that are important to you as a report administrator.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar Part 1 | Webinar Part 2

SAP SuccessFactors Learning

SAP SuccessFactors Learning: Setting up an Open Content Network Provider

SAP SuccessFactors created the Open Content Network (OCN) framework to partner with Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) providers to provide content to SAP SuccessFactors Learning solution. SAP SuccessFactors partners can leverage the resources to build and deliver these learning courses at minimal cost and development efforts using a single implementation framework and a common set of APIs. This document helps to understand how different components in SAP SuccessFactors Learning are used to deliver courses hosted by different Open Content Network vendors in a customer landscape.

Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Learning: Impact of implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

This document will address the considerations for changes to SAP SuccessFactors Learning system around integration and updates on configurations or business process upon the introduction of Employee Central for customers who would or already using the SuccessFactors LMS solution.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Learning: Implementation Considerations for Efficient Security Design

Every implementation involves the design of an administrative security model, regardless of the complexity of the implementation. While several resources describe the technical elements involved in LMS security, it is often unclear how those technical elements should be leveraged to best satisfy the security needs of the customer. This Implementation Design Principles (IDP) will explain some of the criteria that one should consider when designing a security model that is sustainable and scalable and provide clarification on the best practices around implementing an effective security design in the LMS.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Learning: Sustainable System Design

A learning system that is sustainable and effective must meet the customer's business needs to their satisfaction, without generating complex maintenance for the customer post the go-live. This document shows how to set up the learning management configuration effectively and sustainably, avoiding rework, issues, and high-effort maintenance.
Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Learning: Employee Centered Learning Experience

SuccessFactors Learning is extremely flexible in terms of its configuration and can reflect the changing learning needs in customer’s organization, while still maintaining the essential functionality that customers need. This Implementation Design Principle document addresses design considerations to define a better user experience for the learners as well as make best use of the capabilities available to customers today to not only improving the learner experience but also meet business needs.

Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding: Furnish Equipment integration to External Application

This document provides the equipment requisition process integration for Onboarding with any procurement or ticketing system. Onboarding offers the task of creating a request for equipment. Once the request is created, an intelligent service event is triggered. This event could be used for creating a request in the ticketing/procurement application.
Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding: Configuration Optimization Techniques

This document covers the usage of business rules for Home page customization, Email Services, Onboarding Programs, and Process Variants. Additionally, it demonstrates the creation of custom objects for data collection based on the customer PDF document. It also covers activating compliance forms for the UK and Australia.
Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding Rehire Process (Updated)

The Onboarding functionality within SuccessFactors supports the ability to rehire employees. This document provide insights when to use rehire on old employment or a new employment in the system using the standard functionality alongside the workarounds wherever it’s still necessary to use the same. Each of the proposed options comes with certain advantages and limitations that need to be weighed in by the customer whilst picking up an option. It covers holistic recommendations to guide the customer while implementing rehire related processes for an organization.

Document | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding: External HRIS Integration (SAP ERP HCM)

This implementation design principle document covers necessary details, along with design considerations for multiple business scenarios relevant for SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding integration with external HRIS, mainly focused on SAP ERP HCM.
Document | Blog Post 

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding: Role-Based Permission Guidance (Updated)

This document focuses on the design considerations for Role-Based Permissions in SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding. The typical roles that are required in the onboarding and their corresponding permissions are mentioned in this document. It also lists challenges that are encountered due to missing permissions and provides probable possible resolutions for the same.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace

Implementation Considerations for SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace and Talent Intelligence Hub

This latest version of document focuses on providing a holistic overview and to elaborate the configuration pre-requisites, functionalities  and troubleshooting tips on implementing the solution SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, Talent Intelligence hub & Growth Portfolio.
Document | OMP Blog Post | TIH Blog Post

For customers who are still leveraging Center of capabilities framework can make use of the predecessor IDP document which addresses two streams - Capability portfolio & Center of capabilities along with Talent Intelligence Hub & Growth Portfolio. This document would be sunset soon as Center of Capabilities has been replaced by Talent Intelligence Hub.

Document 

SAP SuccessFactors Time Management

SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking: Clock In Clock Out Configuration and Integration Considerations (Updated)

The Implementation Design Principal document provides an overview of Clock In Clock Out functionality which is part of SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking product along with configuration recommendations and troubleshooting tips. In addition, it also details the integration scenarios and patterns with 3rd party clock vendors.

Document | Blog Post | Webinar Part 1 | Webinar Part 2

SAP SuccessFactors Platform, SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone & Integration

Integrations

SAP SuccessFactors Integration: Migrating EC-ERP Productized Integrations from Dell Boomi to Cloud Integration [deprecated]

Cloud Integration (previously known as SAP Cloud Platform Integration, CPI) is a capability within the SAP Integration Suite. Customers who previously integrated EC & SAP ERP HCM with Dell Boomi Middleware look to move into the Cloud Integration and its productized integrations. This document discusses the available migration paths and considerations for a smooth transition.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Integration: Integration Center and Cloud Integration

This document discusses the choice of using SuccessFactors Integration Center and Cloud Platform Integration (previously SAP Cloud Platform Integration) within SAP Integration Suite and also provides recommendations on when to use each tool in SuccessFactors implementation projects. We also define possible Integration Center scenarios based on required senders and receivers, protocols, triggers and formats. In addition, we added tradeoff details on using customer versus SAP managed SFTP servers with Integration Center.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Integration: Best Practices using SAP SuccessFactors APIs for Custom Integrations

This document provides advice on the technical design of SuccessFactors custom integrations using OData APIs and Compound Employee APIs. It covers comprehensive guidelines for picking the right API for different use cases, delta and deletion handling, handling date/time data with API, batching API request, accessing workflow data and writing data into Employee Central.

Document

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Data: Integration Best Practices and Considerations

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is a Core HR Information System which enables businesses to manage/maintain Organization, Job & Pay Structure data and Person & Employment data. This Implementation Design Principle describes best practices for extracting data from Employee Central in addition to security considerations when exchanging the data between SAP and Non-SAP Systems. It also explains the choice of Employee Identifier depending on the downstream system and landscape.

Document | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Integration Patterns – Bidirectional Identity Integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory

This IDP focuses on the bidirectional integration aspects of identities between SAP SuccessFactors and Microsoft Active Directory(MS AD) and Microsoft Azure Active Directory(MS Azure AD). It explains how a customer landscape can evolve from SAP on-premise with SAP IDM to an integrated landscape with SAP SuccessFactors where MS AD, MS Azure AD and SAP Identity Authentication Service coexist.

Document | Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Integration: Migrating SAP SuccessFactors API calls from Basic Authentication to oAuth2.0

With Basic Authentication being deprecated for OData and SOAP API calls for SuccessFactors, all custom integrations have to switch from Basic Authentication to a oAuth 2.0 flow using SAML Assertions. Learn in this IDP what integrations are affected and see what the required steps are to migrate API calls for custom integrations in SAP Integration Suite. In addition get firsthand information what options there are for migrating custom integrations on 3rd party integrations platforms or for custom integration code.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar Part 1 | Webinar Part 2

SAP SuccessFactors Suite - Building Extensions Leveraging SAP BTP (New)

This document focuses on side-by-side extensibility and most known challenges when building extensions for SAP SuccessFactors. We provide an overview of available assets, communities, and processes to help you with a jump start. With further iterations, we will provide guidance on architecture and best practices for building extensions by comparing the pros and cons of different solution approaches and call out common pitfalls or anti-patterns.

Document | Blog Post | Video

Platform

SAP SuccessFactors Suite: Instance Management to Support Project Implementation Lifecycle

Designing an Instance strategy and management approach is an important element to effectively enable and manage the multiple streams of work being done to implement the SuccessFactors solution through phases of an implementation project as well as subsequently to operate and maintain the solution after going live. This document details recommended instance layout and architecture for common functionality combinations and looks into the optimum number of instances in order to support the implementation considering module compatibility and integration requirements across the functionality.
Document | Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Suite: Design and Implementation considerations for Role Based Permissions

For larger global organizations, considerable thought and effort needs to be invested in designing Role Based Permissions. Governance, Maintenance and Performance aspects need to be also considered upfront during the design stages. This document will draw upon experiences from implementations and support situations to provide guidance and a reference for customers who are either in the design stages or looking to review their current permissions set up to improve upon their initial design.
Document | Blog Post 

SAP SuccessFactors Reimagined Home Page: Key Considerations

This document details features of “Reimagined Home Page”, which is designed with people experience at its center - in line with our HXM strategy. It covers key considerations for deployment of latest home page and provides possible guidance for the common challenges faced during implementation.

Document | Related Blog Post

SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone

SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone: Migration and Implementation Considerations

This Implementation Design Principle addresses some of the essential architecture, migration and implementation concepts to be considered while planning and executing an implementation of SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.
Document | Related Blog Post | Webinar

SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone: Developing and Extending Content

This Implementation Design Principle document provides guidance on using SAP BTP Services (as part of SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone) to create new extensions and/or modify standard content as per customer’s needs. 

Document

Visit SAP SuccessFactors On