Creating Picklists

Whether you are a recruiter selecting the country and division of a job or a candidate filling out your education profile, you encounter many dropdown menus with options. In SAP SuccessFactors, these dropdown menus are known as picklists. Picklists can also have a parent-child relationship, in which options in the child picklist are associated with options in the parent picklist. These are sometimes known as cascading picklists.

Historically, picklists in different SAP SuccessFactors solutions have been managed using different tools: the Picklist import/export tool for legacy picklists and the Metadata Framework (MDF) tools for MDF picklists. Management of legacy picklists was cumbersome and error-prone.

To alleviate this difficulty, picklists have been standardized and are managed in the system. All picklists in the suite are managed from a unified, easier-to-use Picklist Center tool that reduces the risk of errors and potential for data corruption. The migration process has occurred for most users already. Now, administrators can maintain picklists effectively and easily for any or all of the SAP SuccessFactors suite.

Picklists allow end users to easily select an option from a pre-defined list of choices. The following list describes picklists and their functionality:

• Picklists are fields in a dropdown list within SAP SuccessFactors modules.
• You can edit picklists through Admin Center within Picklist Center.
• With picklists, you can create consistent content for reporting and candidate searching.
• With picklists, you can handle multiple languages.

Within Recruiting, there are many different types of fields which have picklists attached to the them. Some basic fields like Full / Part Time may have a simpler configuration where the picklist is defined in the XML and connected via the picklist ID. While other fields like Division could be a generic object and require additional, more complex configuration steps.

Traditionally, the picklist id and values were imported and stored in Picklist Management. With an effort to make creations and edits more efficient, our teams designed and transitioned to the Picklist Center. Picklists are still configured or identified in the XML by way of the picklist ID. Then, the picklist IDs are associated to the import or data manually entered for the picklist values. Below are examples of the varying types of fields:

To locate the Picklist Center, use the Action Search or Admin tool search by typing Picklist Center.

Once you have located Picklist Center, an expandable listing is available for selection. For a faster find, begin typing the name of the picklist. If needing to create a new picklist or import/export a picklist, use the appropriate button within this section:

To use the Picklist Center, be sure to grant the Picklist Management and Picklist Mappings Set Up permission within Manage Permission Roles.

To manually create a picklist in the Admin Center, follow the procedure below:

1. Use the Action Search to navigate to Picklist Center.
2. Choose Create New.
3. Enter the picklist data.

   Data may consist of the following fields:

   Field	Description
   Code	Unique business key that is used to identify the picklist (if you are familiar with legacy picklists, which is the equivalent of the picklist ID.)
   Parent Picklist	A picklist can have a parent picklist. For example, if only certain states can be chosen when a specific country is selected, the Country picklist is the parent of the State picklist. When legacy picklists are migrated to MDF picklists, an optionId is generated for existing MDF picklist values. For legacy picklist option that have been migrated, the existing optionId is stored in the mapping table. Note After the migration, if you create a picklist from the Picklist Center, an option ID is generated for all records. The present effective dated record is used; other effective dated entries for the parent picklist are not considered.
   Display Order	Order in which the picklist values are listed in the picklist dropdown, for example, alphabetically or numerically.
   Name	Unique name of the picklist. For example, if the picklist is for the type of address (home, mailing, business, billing, and so on), you could name the picklist "Address Type".
   Status	Specifies whether the picklist is active or inactive, that is, whether it is available for use.
   Effective Start Date	A picklist can have different sets of picklist values for different start dates. For example, to add a new value, New York, to the Location picklist so that it is available after January 1, 2017, enter 01.01/2017 as the effective date. This picklist that contains the new value is available after the January date.

4. Enter the picklist values. For example, if your picklist is State, your values could be Alabama or Alaska.

   Field	Description
   External Code	MDF external code: a unique business key that is used to identify the picklist value, for example, state_Alabama
   Non-unique External Code	Legacy external code: Unlike the MDF external code, it can be blank or duplicated.
   Parent Picklist Value	For example, if the external code is state_Alabama, the parent picklist value would be United States. If the value is state_Alberta, the parent picklist value would be Canada.
   Label	For example, if the external code is state_Alabama, the label would be Alabama.

5. To enter any additional data for the picklist values, choose Details.

   Field	Description
   Status	Specifies whether the picklist value is active or inactive, that is, whether it is available for use.
   Minval	Use -1 unless working org chart icons.

6. Choose Save.

When editing a picklist value in the Picklist Center, follow the procedure below:

1. Go to the Action Search and enter Picklist Center.
2. In the Picklist Search field, enter the name of the picklist and select the one that you want to edit.
3. In the Take Action menu choose Make Correction.
4. Continue as you would when creating a new picklist.

Importing picklists through Picklist Center is a two-step process. First, you will import your Picklists (IDs, effective date, and so on.) and second, you will import your Picklist Values. These are two separate CSV files attached in the e-mail for you to download and use for this exercise.

1. Use Action Search to locate the Picklist Center.
2. Choose the Import/Export button.
3. Select the action to perform: Import Data.
4. Select the CSV File tab.
5. Select Generic Object: Picklist.
6. Select File: Browse to locate and select the Picklists.csv.
7. Select File Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8).
8. Select Purge Type: Incremental Load.
9. Select Key Preference: Business Key.
10. Select Use Locale Format: No.
11. Select Enable Decimal Round Option: No.
12. Select Date Format: MM/DD/YYYY.
13. Select Validate (optional).
14. Select Import.

Next, to import the Picklist Values, repeat this import activity with the following changes:

1. Select Generic Object: Picklist-values.
2. Select File: Browse to locate and select the Picklist-values.csv.
3. Select File Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8).
4. Select Purge Type: Incremental Load.
5. Select Key Preference: Business Key.
6. Select Use Locale Format: No.
7. Select Enable Decimal Round Option: No.
8. Select Date Format: MM/DD/YYYY.
9. Select Validate (optional).
10. Select Import.

When the two jobs complete, you will receive an email with any errors that occurred during the import. If any errors occurred, you can check the complete report (and download a CSV file with notes of errors) under Admin Center→Monitor Job.