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Get insider info on SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite for core HR and payroll, time and attendance, talent management, employee experience management, and more in this SAP blog.
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Today, almost 7 out of 10 customers who use our Core HR cloud solution, Employee Central, have built custom extensions to meet their specific business needs.

Before diving in any further, you may be wondering what the “SAP SuccessFactors Extension Center” is. The SAP SuccessFactors Extension Center is a significant enhancement and replacement to our extensibility framework, which was formerly known as the Metadata Framework. Rather than using a technical term “Metadata Framework” we decided to change the name to Extension Center – 1.) it’s easier for our customers and partners to understand 2.) we’ve delivered a significantly enhanced UI with the Extension center.



The Extension Center was released in Q3 2016.

What are some of the benefits of using the Extension Center?

For example, let’s consider the steps in creating a company car extension. The goal of the extension is to allow senior managers at a certain company request a company car. The senior manager’s direct hiring manager would then login to SuccessFactors to approve or deny the request.

Previously, using the Metadata Framework, the HR admin was responsible for creating this business process by defining all objects, and configuring all of the fields, rules, picklists, all without any guidance. They would have to understand how each of the objects were related to all of the extensions.

Before, when using the Metadata Framework – customers created new objects and were responsible for figuring out how to configure all of the fields (name, employee, location) rules (which users were qualified to have a company car), workflows (relationships between the requestor and approvers), picklists (year, make, model of the car) without any direction.



Today, the Extension Center dramatically simplifies this problem by consolidating all of your extensions and the underlying object relationships all in one simple to use UI. Furthermore, customers can reuse and add existing objects into an extension quickly and easily, by clicking on the “Add Existing Object” button within the Extension Details.



 

What are some other extensions or applications built on the Extension Center?

The Extension Center is powered by the same technology that SAP SuccessFactors has used to build our own flagship products – Employee Central, Recruiting, Onboarding, Workforce Analytics, Succession Planning (just to name a few).

Most customers who have built extensions have used them for their own specific business needs. In the above example, we’ve shown the company car – however customers have also built extensions for asset management, health and fitness programs, and for tuition reimbursement systems.


How do I enable the Extension Center?


For a comprehensive guide on how to start creating and managing extensions via the Extension Center – click here.

This is part 3 of a 3-part blog series on SAP SuccessFactors extensibility. Special thanks to Suvankar Bhaduri, Beth Solomon and Abhijit Salvi for their contributions to this blog.  
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