Objective
The calibration session defines the time frame the session is applicable to, as well as the owner, participants, and subjects of the session. There are three tabs that must be competed to calibrate the session: the Basic Info tab, the People tab, and the Validation tab.
Watch this video to learn how to create a Calibration session.
To start creating a new calibration session, we will follow these steps:
Navigate to the Manage Calibration Sessions area.
Select the Create New button.
The Basic Info tab defines the session details. It contains the following options:
| Option | Function | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Template | You can select the calibration template to be used in the calibration session from a dropdown menu. | Yes |
| Session Name | This option allows users to give the calibration session a unique and descriptive name. | Yes |
| Session Date | This option specifies the start date of the session. | No |
| Planned Activation Date | This option specifies the date from which the session is active and visible. This date must be before the session date. | No |
| Location | This option specifies the physical or virtual location of the calibration session. This entry appears on the email notifying the user of the calibration session, but is not visible in the session itself. | No |
| Session Owners | In this field, the managers who calibrate the ratings are listed. | Yes |
| Select subjects and participants automatically according to the owners | If the customer wants the participants and subjects associated with the session to be automatically added to the People list, you can select this option. This list can be modified using the People tab. | No |
| Session Facilitators | This option specifies the session facilitator (usually a HR representative). You must set the session facilitator’s permissions according to whether the facilitator needs to edit the forms during the session, or only view them. | No |
| Add Attachment | This option allows users to add attachments during the calibration session. | No |
The People Tab defines the users involved in a calibration session.
In the People tab, the owners, participants, and subjects of the calibration session can be modified.
If you selected the Select subjects and participants automatically according to the owners option on the Basic Info tab, the People tab is pre-populated. You can make further changes to any of these roles at this time directly in the People tab.
On the left-hand pane of the People tab, you can manually add participants and subjects by using the filters and Search button, or by using the Org Chart. It is also possible to use Dynamic Groups to select the participants and the subjects.
To add fields to the list of filter options in the Search By Filter option, you must navigate to the Succession Data Model. There is a special place here for <custom-filters> where various modules define the ability to filter fields in their module.
By using the tag <filter-module id="calibration"> under <custom-filters> in the Succession Data Model, you can define other custom fields to be visible in the Search By Filter option. Again, this is a global setting and not configurable per calibration template.
To add a user to the session, select the checkbox next to their name, and select Add to List. A dialogue box asks whether the user is to be added as a participant or a subject. If you add the user as a participant, the system asks whether that user’s direct reports are also to be added to the session. The participant field is not mandatory. It means that you can leave the participants list empty while creating a Calibration session.
Note
While creating a Calibration session, the target population validation will be in effect and you will not be able to add subjects that are beyond your target population to the session. The list of the subject(s) that could not be added to the session, if any, will appear on the Validation page.To select the participants and the subjects, we can select the Use Org Chart link.
When you access the Validation tab, the system reviews the subjects and verifies whether they have review forms in the calibration step.
Validation can fail for the following reasons:
A subject’s review form is not yet routed to the calibration step in the route map. You have the option to automatically route the form to the next step.
A subject does not currently have a review form.
A subject is already participating in another calibration session.
Rather than create sessions individually, administrators can use a CSV file to upload several calibration sessions simultaneously. For large organizations that need to create, validate, and activate hundreds of sessions this option provides significant time savings. To do this navigate to Mass Create Calibration Sessions from the Action Search bar.
There is a CSV file template on this page that you can download, modify (by adding sessions), and save as an import file. After doing this, you can follow the steps outlined to validate the import file, create sessions, validate sessions, and, finally, activate sessions. Each step triggers a job that updates an administrator via email. Each email contains job specific details (for example system generated Session IDs) that help an administrator move forward to the next step in the process.
Any existing calibration session can be cloned or modified. Therefore, if the customer would like to use the same essential elements of a calibration session again, it is not necessary to recreate the session.
To clone an existing session, navigate to Manage Calibration Sessions, and select the Clone Session icon to the left of the trash can. The session is then cloned, and you can modify the cloned session as desired.
For reporting purposes and possibly also for mass creation of calibration sessions, you can export existing calibration sessions in an Excel Worksheet format (XLSX). The file downloaded will be compressed as a ZIP file.
The XLSX file(s) generated have similar columns as the template for mass creating calibration sessions except for the Status column.
An Online Export All Threshold can also be set when the system has too much data to extract due to a huge number of calibration sessions (by default, it is set to 250). This prevents the system from reacting slowly and also saves time for an administrator to do other tasks while the systems generate the report (XLSX) offline. This threshold is set in Manage Calibration Settings → Global Settings → Online Export All Threshold.
When the threshold is reached, a warning is issued to notify the user that the session export will run as an offline job.
Large organizations often manage hundreds of calibration settings, which includes finalizing all of those sessions. Since manually finalizing hundreds of calibration sessions can be extremely time intensive, SAP SuccessFactors has added the option to bulk finalize calibration sessions. Bulk finalization can either be done online within the Calibration module or via an offline job. Administrators can also set the Online Mass Finalization Threshold within Manage Calibration Settings → Global Settings. The default threshold is 25 sessions for finalizing sessions online, which means that, if an administrator attempts to mass finalize more than 25 sessions at a time, it will be processed as an offline job. Once the processing is completed, you receive an e-mail with the result of the mass finalization.
The value for Online Mass Finalization Threshold can be increased or decreased as needed. Note that setting up a very high value for the threshold may impact on the performance, if attempting to finalize online a significant number of sessions.
Navigate to Manage Calibration Sessions from the Action Search bar.
Select the calibration session to modify.
If the session is already activated, you will need to deactivate it to make any changes.
Make the desired modifications.
Select Save.
If desired, reactivate the session.
Existing calibration sessions can also be deleted from the system. This does impact sessions that have already been conducted, so ensure that you understand the repercussions of deleting a session before doing so. This action cannot be reversed.
Navigate to Manage Calibration Sessions from the Action Search bar.
Select the calibration session to delete.
Select the Delete Session icon.
The calibration session is deleted, and cannot be restored.
Approved sessions can be reopened by administrators if there is a business need to reopen a finalized session to allow participants to make additional changes. There are some prerequisites to allow this action:
Navigate to Calibration from the Home menu.
You can use the Filters option available to filter those sessions by status Approved.
Locate the icon that reopens a session. You can see an example on the screenshot below
When selecting the option to Reopen, a confirmation dialog will display. Any forms used in the session would be routed back to the calibration step. Select OK to confirm.
Participants will be notified that the session was reopened, if the corresponding Email Notification is enabled.
The calibration session has been reopened and updated back to In Progress status.
Calibration settings allow you to set read and write permissions for facilitators, owners, participants, and co-facilitators, both during the session and after the session has been approved. Another function in calibration settings allows the administrator to modify the fields in the database that are available in a search.
To access calibration settings, navigate to Manage Calibration Settings from the Action Search bar.
An Admin tool, Remove Subjects from Calibration Sessions is available to search for sessions where an employee has been included as a calibration subject. Administrators can easily search by Subject (required) and Template (optional) . From the results, you can select from all sessions based on a Calibration Template (or Templates), and remove the subject.
The subject can be removed from both active and inactive sessions, regardless of the status (setup, in-progress, approved, or deactivated).
As a prerequisite, permission to access the tool should be granted in Manage Permission Roles → Administrator Permissions → Manage Calibration.
You can also enter multiple names. The system will return the sessions that include any of the specified employees. When the subject is included in many sessions, you narrow down the search results by selecting a calibration template name. Then, only the sessions created with the specified template are listed.
Email notifications are sent out automatically when calibration events occur. You can disable these email notifications if the customer wishes, and they are not shared with other modules.
To enable or disable or to customize the email notification template, navigate to Email Notification Template Settings from the Action Search bar.
The notification template to "Notify Calibration Rating Changes during Session Finalization" cannot be deactivated in Email Notification Template Settings. However, the customer can choose for which calibration template this notification will be used. Navigate to Manage Calibration Templates → select Calibration template → Advanced tab. The customer can decide if they want to enable the option Manager notification with rating changes on session finalization at the calibration template level.
The following email notifications are associated with calibration:
| Template Name: | Purpose: |
|---|---|
| Notify Calibration Participants to Submit Ratings | Alerts manager of upcoming Calibration session and notifies them that the form has yet to be routed to the designated step. |
| Notify Calibration Participants of Session Finalization | Alerts session participants of the session finalization, usually associated with the "locking" of ratings and comments. |
| Notify Calibration Participants of Auto-Routed Forms | Alerts manager that a form was not manually routed to the designated step on time. In order to activate the session, this was done for them by the admin/facilitator. |
| Notify Calibration Participants of Session Activation | Alerts participants of upcoming session, which now may be visible to them in the Calibration tab. |
| Notify Calibration Rating Changes during Session Finalization | Alerts a manager when an employee’s rating has changed as a result of a finalized calibration session. |
You can now use the text replacement feature for Subjects and Participants UI labels.
The replaceable labels appear on:
The Calibration Org Chart page
The Session List page
The Table Reports
The text replacement feature enables you to replace the default UI labels on the application with the labels of your choice. To access the feature, navigate to Text Replacement from the Action Search bar.
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