Reviewing SAP SuccessFactors Career Development and Mentoring Features and Enhancements in the 1H 2024 Release

Future dates are subject to change.

The Spell Check feature enables you to check spelling in many places where you enter text, in the following product areas:

• 360 Reviews
• Compensation
• Goal Management
• Performance Management
• Career Development
• Recruiting

It also includes the Manage Company Dictionary tool in Admin Center, which enables you to maintain a company dictionary that's used by the Spell Check.

We're deprecating the Spell Check feature, including the Manage Company Dictionary tool, because most modern browsers have a built-in spell check function that you can use instead.

SAP SuccessFactors made numerous minor visual enhancements in 1H 2024. The following enhancements are of particular note, although many less-visible enhancements have been made.

The entries in the table are of four visual change types:

• Text changes (labels, error messages, roll-over text)
• Iconography (new or changed icons)
• Interaction pattern (new position of interaction, new order of list, new or changed buttons)
• Styling (design treatment, changes to themes, adopting an SAP style)

Each entry may contain one or more change types. Please note that the list isn’t exhaustive.

We want to provide customers with a detailed list of visual changes in each release.

Use the Product, Module, Change Type, and Valid as Of filters to get the list of changes you're interested in. Use the text search in Before and After columns to further narrow down the result. To expand an image, click the magnifying glass.

Valid as of: 2024-05-17

In the previous version of Career Worksheet, the role card includes the following information:

• Thermometer image
• Role readiness on the right side of the card
• Action icons in the bottom-left corner of the card

In the current version of Career Worksheet, the role card includes the following information:

• Role readiness in the bottom-left corner of the card
• Action icons in the top-right corner of the card

Valid as of: 2024-05-17

In the previous version of Career Worksheet, the name, tooltip, and confirmation message of the switch for users to show a target role in People Profile were not consistent.

In the current version, we've changed the confirmation message to a question to follow the text guidelines.

Valid as of: 2024-05-17

In the previous version, tabs in a mentoring program in Admin Center → Manage Mentoring Programs were all in capital letters.

In the current version, tabs are in title case.

Additionally, messages shown when the list on the Mentors, Mentees, or Matches tab has exceeded the system limit have been consistently changed to the following: The list is incomplete because the number of results exceeds the system limit. You can search by user name to narrow down the list.

Employees can use the AI-assisted writing tool to enhance the quality of the content they write in the text fields in SAP SuccessFactors applications.

AI-assisted writing is an interactive tool that uses generative AI capabilities to assist employees with their writing tasks. The following is a summary of the capabilities offered by the AI-assisted writing tool:

• Uses language processing capabilities to understand the context of a sentence and suggest enhancements in grammar, spelling, vocabulary choices, and phrasing.
• Ensures improved readability and a consistent tone (professional, personable, or constructive) to suit the communication needs for different audience groups in the organization.
• Provides the options to communicate a message in fewer or more words and transform paragraphs to bulleted lists.
• Provides additional actions in the context of the tasks that users perform in their SAP SuccessFactors applications. For example, the AI-assisted writing tool provides an additional action in Continuous Performance Management to make feedback actionable.

For more information about the options available in the AI-assisted writing tool, refer to AI-Assisted Writing.

In the current release, the following SAP SuccessFactors modules support AI-assisted writing capabilities.

The AI-assisted writing tool helps to enhance employee experience, optimize productivity, and improve the overall quality of the organization's business communication.

• You've purchased the SAP AI Units license. For more information about SAP AI Units license, please contact your Account Executive.

• You've enabled the AI Services Administration → Assisted Writing option in Admin Center.

• You have the Administrator → Manage AI Capabilities → AI Services Administration permission.
• Employees have the User Permissions → AI Access → Assisted Writing permission.

The AI-assisted writing tool offers some common options to improve users' content. In this example, it is being used to change the tone of comments provided on a 360 Reviews form.

It also supports module-specific actions. In this example for Continuous Performance Management, it comes with an extra option that makes users' feedback more actionable.

The latest Goal Management is automatically enabled with the 1H 2024 release. This enhancement is no longer available for 1H 2024.

• If you're already operating on the latest version, there's no action required.
• If you're using the legacy version, you'll be upgraded to the latest version by default. You can check upgrade details in Upgrade Center → Completed Upgrades → Latest Goal Management.

If you're not ready for the upgrade, you can revert to the legacy version within 30 days after the Preview release and again within 30 days after the Production release. The revert option will be removed 30 days after the Production release. Please note that if you manually upgrade to the latest version for a second time, you won't be able to revert to the legacy version

Users also get the new experience when working with goals in modules that have already integrated with Goal Management, including Performance Management, Continuous Performance Management, Career Development, 360 Reviews, and Card Services.

By making it your default solution to manage goals, we're encouraging wider adoption of the latest Goal Management, which offers improved user experience and unique features as compared to its predecessor.

The upgrade is done automatically. To undo the upgrade (revert to the legacy version), go to Upgrade Center → Optional Upgrades → Revert to Legacy Goal Management and choose Upgrade Now. Please note that the reversion is temporary.

Future dates are subject to change.

The legacy version of Goal Management is being replaced with the latest version of Goal Management, which has been generally available since the 1H 2023 release. You can manually upgrade to the latest Goal Management in Upgrade Center. Make sure that you're aware of changes and differences coming along with the upgrade. Once triggered, the manual upgrade can't be undone.

With the 1H 2024 release, you will be automatically upgraded to the latest Goal Management. We'll provide a 30-day window for you to revert to the legacy version if you're not ready for the upgrade. We plan to universally roll out the latest Goal Management in early 2025. By then, the option to revert to the legacy version will no longer be available.

• Visit the SAP SuccessFactors Customer Community Latest Goal Management Opt-Out in 1H 2024 & Universal Planned Around March 31, 2025 for all the latest updates and discussions.
• Read through the Customer Communication email Latest Goal Management Announcement on Feature Deprecation sent by your SAP Team to get more materials and prepare for the upgrade to the latest version.
• Review the latest documentation about differences between the legacy and latest versions:
  • Supported and Unsupported Features
  • Alternatives to Deprecated Legacy Features
  • Changes to Goal Plan Templates
  • Supported Elements and Attributes Comparison: Legacy and Latest

In the latest Goal Management, users can now create personal goals, including both performance and development goals, using generative AI capabilities.

Users are offered a text box where they can write a brief description of what they want to achieve. When users choose Generate, the generative AI creates content based on their input. Upon content review, if users update their input and regenerate content, they can compare the original content with AI-generated content and choose to accept or discard the generated content.

Alternatively, users can use the traditional option Create from Scratch to create a personal goal, but can choose Generate at any time during the creation process.

Goal fields available for AI generation are name, desc, metric, start, due, and milestones. Custom fields of text and textarea types are additionally supported for development goals. On the goal creation page, fields with content generated by AI are tagged with "AI-enhanced content". On the goal details page, such a goal is marked "This goal is enhanced by AI."

Once the feature is enabled, users can create goals using generative AI from Performance Management, 360 Reviews, and Continuous Performance Management.

The feature saves users time by automatically generating relevant content during goal creation.

• The latest Goal Management is enabled.
• You've purchased the SAP AI Units license. For more information about SAP AI Units license, contact your Account Executive.
• For performance goals: you've enabled Assisted Performance Goals in Admin Center → AI Services Administration.
• For development goals: you've enabled Assisted Development Goals in Admin Center → AI Services Administration.

• You have the Administrator Permissions → Manage AI Capabilities → AI Services Administration permission.
• Users have the User Permissions → AI Access → Assisted Performance Goals permission.
• Users have the User Permissions → AI Access → Assisted Development Goals permission.

In the latest Goal Management, a new Goal Creation Options page is introduced for users to choose how they'd like to create a personal goal.

The Create Goal button takes users to the new page with goal creation options Create from Scratch, Copy from Goal Plan, and Create from Library, according to your configuration.

Previously, the options were shown in the dropdown list of the Create Goal button.

Additionally, we added a breadcrumb trail that allows users to navigate back and check information provided in a previous step during creation of a personal goal.

The enhancements are also applied to Performance Management and 360 Reviews.

The user experience enhancements offer users better context regarding options when creating a personal goal.

The latest Goal Management is enabled.

In the latest Goal Management, users can now include Continuous Performance Management (CPM) activities and Learning activities in the PDF output.

Linked Activities and Linked Learning are shown as optional items to be included in a printing task. Linked Learning appears only for development goals.

We made this enhancement to support offline review of more comprehensive goal content in PDF format.

The latest Goal Management is enabled.

In the latest Goal Management, goal weight is displayed in the goal plan header and on goal cards.

On a goal card, a percentage preceded by a balance scale icon indicates the weight of this goal. In the goal plan header, the total weight at the goal plan level is shown in a percentage value.

You can also define maximum or minimum total goal weights for goal categories. When the total weight doesn't meet the values predefined for a category, users will see a warning icon next to the category name. It opens a pop-up that shows messages about the recommended total weight and current total weight.

This feature is from Customer Community Idea 281416, Customer Community Idea 300901, Customer Community Idea 303748, and Customer Community Idea 306865. This feature gives users immediate access to goal weights of individual goals and the total weight of the entire goal plan

• The latest Goal Management is enabled.
• Users are granted the read permission for the weight field in XML configurations.

In the latest Goal Management, users can now use the Legal Scan feature to check whether their input for goal comments comply with their organization's legal requirements.

With Legal Scan, words that don't comply with the requirements are highlighted, with possible corrections suggested.

We made this enhancement to help users quickly identify inappropriate words in their input and correct them.

• The latest Goal Management is enabled.
• The Legal Scan feature is enabled in Provisioning.

The Horizon visual theme is now available in more product areas.

We continue to update the visual styling on more pages over time. In 1H 2024, we added the Horizon theme to the following product areas:

• Employee Central - Company Structure Overview
• Platform
  • Coaching Advisor
  • Directory Search
  • User Settings page (except for the Groups tab)
• Recruiting
  • Candidate Profile page
  • Candidate Rating and Search
  • Job Postings and Agency Listings
  • Internal candidate experience, including: Job Search, Job Applications, Saved Jobs, Saved Searches/Alerts, My Candidate Profile, Saved Applications, and Referral Tracking.
  • Message Center
  • My Recruiting Preferences
• Succession & Development
  • Career Path
  • Career Worksheet
  • Succession Planning

We also added it to the following Admin Center pages:

• Compensation - Compensation Home
• Learning Administration
  • Curriculum
  • Import Content
  • Item Actions
  • Item Email Notifications
  • Item Instructors
  • User Module
  • User Tabs
• Platform
  • Email Notification Templates
  • Metadata Framework tools: Configure Object Definitions, Import and Export Data, and Manage Data
  • Org Chart Configuration
• Recruiting - Applicant Status Configuration

The Horizon theme is the latest design standard for all SAP applications.

We've made some user experience enhancements to the Career Worksheet, Mentoring, and Career Explorer features.

Most job role names were truncated in the title of the competencies section.

The title, adaptive to the screen size, can accommodate longer job role names without truncating them.

In Manage Mentoring Programs, the fields provided limited space for Mentoring administrators and program owners to enter signup form questions.

In Manage Mentoring Programs, the question fields provide more space to enter and show content.

A recommended job role could be recommended to users again in the onward layers of the same career path.

A recommended job role will never be recommended to users again in the onward layers of the same career path.

The reason why the roles in the second and onward layers are recommended was phrased as follows: {Role name} is recommended to you based on the following recommended job role: {Role name}.

The phrasing is made more specific: {Role name} is recommended to you because it's a common job role that people often transition into from {role name}.

We made these enhancements to improve user experience in Career Development.

Career Worksheet allows users to manage their current and target roles and associated skills and attributes. Through the redesign of key features and interactions, we've significantly improved users' experience with it.

The new experience starts from Growth Portfolio, where users can preview the information about their current roles and target roles, if any, in the Roles and Aspirations section. The information includes how long they've held the current role, top three skills and attributes they've already achieved or they need to improve, and their readiness for a role. Choosing the Explore Career Options button directs users to Opportunity Marketplace where they can explore recommended career roles.

For each role, users can follow the Go to Role Details link to view more information about the role on the Role Details page, including the following:

• Description of the job role.

• Skills and attributes they've already achieved or they need to improve.

• Recommendations for the skills and attributes associated with the role, such as learning, open jobs, and mentors.

Users can also perform the following actions specific to a current or target role:

• Create development goals.

• Evaluate role readiness by launching a self assessment form.

• Show or hide a target role in People Profile.

• Set or cancel a target role as the primary role they're considering to move into.

Here's a screenshot of the latest Career Worksheet:

The latest version of Career Worksheet is a powerful platform integrating with multiple SAP SuccessFactors products and modules, such as Growth Portfolio, Opportunity Marketplace, Performance & Goals, and People Profile. With its modernized look and optimized interaction, it empowers users to track their career progress and map out next steps for growth.

To use the latest Career Worksheet, you must have enabled the following product and features:

• Career Worksheet V12
• Talent Intelligence Hub, including Growth Portfolio
• SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace

To enable the latest Career Worksheet, go to Upgrade Center and upgrade to the latest version. Make sure that you're clear about the effects of the upgrade and feature differences. For details, refer to the latest Career Worksheet documentation in Related Information.

Users can now view the role details of their current job role in Career Worksheet.

By choosing the Information icon on the role card in Career Worksheet → My Job Roles → My Current Roles , they can view the role details, including the responsibilities and expectations associated with the current role.

Here's a screenshot of the feature:

This feature is from a Customer Influence Idea. It provides an easier way for users to access critical details of their current role and required skills and competencies.

Talent administrators or similar roles in your organization can now manage an employee's development goals directly in the employee's development goal plan.

After development goal plan templates have been configured, talent administrators with proper role-based permissions can use People Selector to search for a particular employee within their target population. They can then perform various actions on the employee's goals, such as viewing, creating, and deleting goals. Here's a screenshot of the feature:

This new feature is from Customer Community Idea 260823 and Customer Community Idea 203504. It enables talent administrators or similar roles, who aren't an employee's manager or HR representative, to oversee and manage an employee's development goals in a more holistic way.

You've configured desired action and field permissions for the new role, TA, in development goal plan templates.

• Supported action permissions are private-access, create, delete, move, and share.

  In this example, talent administrators can view an employee's development goals:
  Code Snippet

  Copy code

  Copy code

  Switch to dark mode

  Switch to dark mode

  1234
  <permission for="private-access">
  	<description>Talent administrators can view unshared or private goals.</description>
  	<role-name>TA</role-name> 
  </permission>

• Supported field permissions are none, read, and write.

  In this example, talent administrators can view specified fields of development goals:
  Code Snippet

  Copy code

  Copy code

  Switch to dark mode

  Switch to dark mode

  12345678910
  <field-permission type="read">
  	<description>Talent administrators can view name, description, metric, start date, due date, and competencies of goals.</description>
  	<role-name>TA</role-name>
  	<field refid="name"/>
       <field refid="desc"/>
       <field refid="metric"/>
       <field refid="start"/>
       <field refid="due"/>
       <field refid="competency"/>
  </field-permission>

• Talent administrators have the User → General User Permission → Company Info Access → User Search permission and a defined target population.
• Talent administrators have access permission to development goal plan templates granted in User → Goals → Goal Plan Permissions and a defined target population.
• Talent administrators have the Administrator → Manage Career Development → Manage User's Development Goals permission and a defined target population.

In the latest version of Development Goals, users can now select predefined content in Coaching Advisor and add it to development goals.

Coaching Advisor is a tool that helps users come up with meaningful advice for developing competencies. It offers mentoring and development suggestions that users can incorporate when creating development goals.

We developed this feature to achieve feature parity with the legacy Development Goals.

• The latest Goal Management is enabled.

• Coaching Advisor is enabled in a development goal plan template.

Users can now link custom learning activities to development goals in the latest version of Development Goals.

To do that, choose Manage Learning → Link Custom Learning on the goal details page. Users can link a maximum of 10 custom learning activities one time, but there's no limit of the total number of learning activities. Linked learning activities are shown in the Custom Learning subsection of the Linked Learning section. Additionally, when creating or editing a custom learning activity, users can view associated development goals.

Here's a screenshot of the feature:

Be aware of feature differences between the legacy and latest versions of Development Goals:

• In the legacy version, users link development goals to learning activities when creating or editing a custom learning activity.

• In the latest version, users link learning activities to development goals on the goal details page.

We developed this feature to achieve feature parity with the legacy Development Goals.

• The latest Goal Management is enabled.

• Transcript learning is enabled and users are able to create custom learning activities.

• The dev_goals field is configured in the learning activity template.

• Users have read and write permissions to the dev_goals field.

On the Pending Requests tab in Manage Mentoring Programs, mentoring administrators and program owners can view the pending mentoring requests sent by mentees to mentors.

The tab is available for open enrollment and unsupervised programs only. For open enrollment programs, it's shown when a program is in progress; and for unsupervised programs, it's shown when a program is in the mentee signup stage or in progress.

Administrators and program owners can view mentors, mentees, and requested dates in a table view. They can also view an employee's details by choosing (business card) beside the name, sort the table by column headers, and search for users by name.

Here's a screenshot of the feature:

This feature is from a Customer Influence Idea. It enables administrators to identify and address blockers in mentoring programs more efficiently.

Mentoring administrators and program owners can now change the order of signup form questions when creating or editing a mentoring program.

On the Signup Form tab or Questions tab of a mentoring program in Manage Mentoring Programs, they can choose (Move Up) or (Move Down) to adjust the question order as necessary. Here's a screenshot of the feature when editing a mentoring program:

This feature is from a Customer Influence Idea. It allows users to easily change the order of the questions, without having to delete them first and add them back.

Mentors can now access the Continuous Performance page directly from Mentoring to create a 1:1 channel with their mentee for ongoing meetings and activities.

On the mentoring program page, mentors can choose (More) and View Mentoring Details on the mentee card to view a mentee's mentoring preferences and activities. We've added a link to Continuous Performance under the Activity Plan section, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

We built this feature to leverage the meeting channels in Continuous Performance Management that mentors and mentees use to drive their collaboration and track joint goals and activities.

To allow mentors to create a 1:1 channel on the Continuous Performance page, make sure you've met the following prerequisites:

• You have a Performance & Goals license and have enabled Continuous Performance Management.

• Mentors have the User → Continuous Performance User Permission → Access to Continuous Performance Management permission.

• You've enabled the multiple roles support in Continuous Performance Management and configured the respective target population permissions.

You can now add the [PROGRAM_NAME] token to customize two email notifications: Mentoring Invitation to Additional Mentors and Mentoring Invitation to Additional Mentees. Previously, the token didn't take effect.

This enhancement is from a Customer Influence Idea. The token enables users to go to the mentoring program page directly from an invitation email.

With the View User's Career Opportunities in Career Explorer permission, you can now view an employee's recommended job roles and career paths in Career Explorer.

You can search for specific employees in your target population and view their career opportunities. However, the permission doesn't allow you to add a recommended role as a target role or remove any role on their behalf. To switch back to your own view, clear the user name in the search box. Here's a screenshot of the feature:

We built this feature to allow customers to review AI-driven recommendations before they grant the feature access to employees.

You need to configure permissions to use the feature. See Role-Based Permission Prerequisites.

• You have the User → Career Development Planning → View User's Career Opportunities in Career Explorer permission and a defined target population.

• You have the User → General User Permission → Company Info Access → User Search permission and a defined target population.

You can now check the trained model metrics of role recommendations in Career Explorer.

When an AI model is trained successfully, the following metrics are available in the Manage People Connection Integration admin tool:

• Average hit rate: Average percentage of users with correct recommendations. For example, the item selected by a user is inside the top-k recommended items.
• Coverage: Percentage of items that the model is able to recommend. For example, among all 1000 items on a website:
  • 1% coverage for a pure popularity recommender that always recommends the top 10 popular items.
  • 100% coverage for a pure random recommender that randomly recommends all the items.

Here's a screenshot of the feature:

These metrics can offer you insights into the performance and reliability of our trained models. You can leverage this information to make informed decisions regarding the use of role recommendations in your organization.

You have the Administrator → People Connection → Manage People Connection Integration permission.