Creating Offer Letter Templates

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to create offer letter templates

Offer Letters

When recruiters are ready to send that all-important offer letter, they do not want to start from scratch every time.

Offer letter templates for various types of jobs (for example, employee or intern) allow recruiters to send a letter quickly, with an attachment if necessary, that auto-populates some fields.

Offer letters are available when the candidate is in a status that triggers offer letter functionality, for example, Offer status.

Offer letters may be created from offer letter templates within Admin Center or written from scratch.

Users sending offer letters can choose from the following actions:

  • Email as PDF attachment

    • Offer letter uses offer letter templates

    • Email body uses recruiting email templates (at least one must be configured first)

  • Email as text

    • Email body uses offer letter templates

  • Print

    • System prompts the user to download the offer letter as a PDF, which can then be printed. The action is tracked in the Offer Letter Audit Trail portlet

  • Verbal Offer

    • No action taken by the system, but Verbal is tracked in the Offer Letter Audit Trail portlet

Offer Letter Template Creation

To begin creating offer letter templates, go to Admin Center → Recruiting → Manage Offer Letter Templates.

Select Manage Offer Letter Templates to start creating offer letter templates.

Manage Offer Letter Templates

  • To review existing offer letter templates, click the template name hyperlink.

  • To create a new template, click Create New Template. For this example, select Create New Template.

To create a new template, select Create New Template. To review the existing offer letter templates, select the hyperlink of the template name.

Manage Offer Letter Template: Add New Offer Letter Template

  1. Select the country and language (if multiple are enabled).

  2. Type in a Template Name.

  3. Enable the status so it may be used.

  4. Type in the Subject (this is the subject the candidate will see).

  5. Design the content of the message in the Body field and save the template.

Enter the required fields to edit the offer letter template.

Offer Letter: Tokens

Note

Tokens are available for use in the Body area.

  • Tokens can pre-populate the offer letter with fields from other recruiting XML files.

  • Include tokens by clicking the icon with the little green plus sign, as shown in the figure below.

Include tokens in offer letter by clicking the highlighted icon.

The list appears and you may use as many tokens as needed. Select the radio button next to the token you would like to use and choose OK.

List of available tokens are displayed.

Offer Letter Template Guidelines

Note

You must do this even if the customer is only using English.

  • Ensure that the Language Packs checkbox is selected in Provisioning and that at least one language is selected.

    Select the required checkbox to enable the Language Pack in Provisioning.

  • When generating an offer letter, if the field a token is tied to is blank, the token code will display on the letter.

  • There is no limit to the number of offer letter templates that can be configured.

Role Based Permission for Offer Letters

You can enable Recruiting Offer Letter Template role-based permission that restricts which recruiting users can view and select specific offer letter templates by using Manage Recruiting Settings.

This is especially helpful for large customers who have hundreds of active offer letter templates for different hiring purposes. By restricting access to offer letters, you can ensure that the appropriate Recruiting roles have access to the offer letter templates they need (rather than accessing hundreds at a time.)

To enable role based permissions for offer letters, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Admin Center → Manage Recruiting Settings.
  2. Go to the Offer Lettersection and select Enable Role-based Permissions for Offer Letter Templates.
  3. Select Save.

You can now set up permissions for offer letter templates. To assign role-based permissions to users for offer letters, navigate to Admin Center → Manage Permission Roles, select the appropriate role and under User Permissions, you will see a new section for Recruiting Offer Letter Templates. 

Select Recruiting Offer Letter Templates to configure permissions for the offer letter templates.

Introduction to Dynamic Offer Letters

Dynamic offer letters provide recruiters with the ability to reduce the large volume of templates needed to accommodate the various conditions offered to applicants, as well as provide a way for recruiters to further automate the process of customizing each letter. 

Offer letters can be extremely complex depending on a variety of factors, including country/region, job level and industry while also explaining incentives that are offered as part of the candidate’s total compensation package. Dynamic offer letters alleviate the amount of manual effort it takes to create and maintain various amounts of offer letter templates.  

The difference between using the standard offer letter feature within SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting and dynamic offer letters is how much of the offer letter automatically changes from one offer to another while using the same template. Using standard offer letters, you can configure tokens within the template, which allows individual fields to be interchangeable from one offer letter to another (ex: first and last name of the candidate). Dynamic offer letters allow for entire paragraphs to be interchangeable from one candidate’s offer to another (ex: including the verbiage required for a US benefits package for full-time employees vs. a benefits package for part-time employees).

The configuration of dynamic offer letters is completely dependent on the business requirements for each customer. This configuration can be as simple or as complex as necessary, depending on how much of the offer letter must be customized for each candidate.  

Watch this video for a demonstration of how dynamic offer letters can be configured.

The Conditional Offer Letter Token

The configuration of dynamic offer letters requires the maintenance of the ConditionalOfferLetterToken object within Admin Center → Manage Data. This object provides 100 tokens which can be used as placeholders for sections that need to be included within the offer letter. Each token represents a placeholder that can be used in the offer letter templates to insert paragraphs as needed. When updating this object, you will need to relabel each individual token to represent the different sections of the offer letter.

The labels of the offer letter tokens can be as specific as needed. Updating these labels helps clarify which token is used for which offer letter section when creating the business rule to add conditional sections in offer letters.

Sample labels for the conditional offer letter token object is displayed. Information about Conditional Offer Letter Token is provided in above paragraph.

Paragraph Data for Offer Letter Tokens

The next step in the configuration process is deciding how the offer letter paragraph data should be stored. Creating lookup tables (custom MDF objects) is the recommended method to storing dynamic offer letter data. By creating a custom lookup table, you can configure the table to store the offer letter paragraph details, as well as the variables that will help with the configuration of the business rule.

It is critical to understand each customer’s offer letter requirements prior to completing this step of the configuration. It is also important to note that a separate business rule may be created for each offer letter template that the customer has. This means that while there are only 100 conditional offer letter tokens, these tokens may be used differently within each offer letter template. This provides incredible flexibility and opportunities for our customers and their offer letter requirements.

Consider the following requirements:

  • How much of the offer letter should become dynamic (replaced with conditional offer letter tokens)?
  • Do you need to create a lookup table for each token? (For example, one lookup table will be created for benefits details that may be inserted into any offer letter template.)
  • Alternatively, do you need to create one lookup table to host all the variables and paragraphs for an offer letter? (For example, one lookup table will be created to host all possible paragraphs that may need to be inserted into an employment contract for German offer letters, along with the variables used to determine which paragraph is necessary.)
  • What are the variables (flags, validators) that determines which paragraph should be inserted?
    • Are these variables fields that already exist on the job requisition, application or offer letter? If yes, include these in the custom lookup table.
    • Do you need to create new fields to use as flags/validators? If yes, configure these fields first in the respective templates prior to creating the lookup table.

Configure the Object Definition

Once it is decided how the dynamic offer paragraphs should be stored, create the custom lookup tables.

Steps

  1. Navigate to Admin Center → Configure Object Definition.

  2. Select Create New → Object Definition → .

  3. Enter the following metadata details for the Object Definition.

    • Code: cust_OL_Dynamic_TokenXX
    • Effective Dating: Basic
    • API Visibility: Editable
    • Status: Active
    • Label: XYZ

  4. Define the fields needed for the lookup table.

    • You will need to create a Details custom field to host the paragraphs for the token. Remember to increase the maximum length to 4,000, or change the data type to CLOB if a larger number of characters is needed for the offer paragraph.
    • Configure the fields that will be used as validators (or flags) to help create the logic of the business rule, determining when the paragraph should be used within the token.

  5. Save

Example

An example of a custom lookup table for dynamic offers is displayed.

Create Dynamic Offer Letter Paragraph Data

Now that the object definition has been configured, create the data necessary for the dynamic offer letter paragraphs. Create the paragraph data directly within Admin Center → Manage Dataor use the Import/Export function in Admin Center to create your paragraph data in bulk.

Steps

  1. Navigate to Admin Center → Manage Data.

  2. Select Create new and search for the name of the custom lookup table you have created.

  3. Populate the object details as follows:

    • externalCode: Provide a code for the paragraph.
    • externalName: Provide a label for the paragraph.
    • Effective Start Date: Enter the date you would like this combination to take effect (ex: today’s date, or you can use 01/01/1900).
    • Details: Enter the required data for the custom fields you have created, including the paragraph details to be inserted in the offer tokens.

  4. Choose Save.

Example

An example of a benefits paragraph for US offer letters is displayed.

Create the Business Rule to Add Conditional Sections in Offer Letters

After creating the paragraph data, create the business rule to determine what data to insert into the conditional offer letter tokens.

Steps

  1. Navigate to Admin Center → Configure Business Rules.

  2. Choose + to create a new business rule.

  3. Select the Recruiting category and choose the Business Rule to Add Conditional Sections in Offer Letters scenario.

  4. Enter the following business rule details:

    • Rule Name:REC_Dynamic Offer Letter_[ENTER SECTION NAME].
    • Rule ID:Prepopulates by the system.
    • Rule Start Date:01/01/1900.
    • Rule Description:insertion of this data is optional.
    • Job Requisition Template:Select the appropriate Job Requisition template to create the rule against.

  5. Select Next.

  6. On the next screen, you will first create the IF/THEN expressions of your business rule. You can set the IF statement to be always true if there is no conditionality that needs to be met.

  7. Create the THEN statement as required:

    • Select Output type: Set.
    • Under Job Application Template expand Offer Letter Paragraph to find and select the token you wish to replace with a paragraph.
    • Change Text to the Lookup() function and select the lookup table you have created as the base object.
    • Select Output field as the paragraph details field you have created.
    • Effective Date is equal to System Context Effective Date.

  8. Specify following parameters to be validated using the + icon to add a new expression:

    • Use the expression to select the field in the lookup table that should be validated against a field in the candidate’s application, job requisition that they’ve applied for or their offer details.
    • You can create as many expressions as needed to validate as many variables as necessary.

  9. Choose Save.

Example

A simple business rule for setting conditional paragraphs in offer letters using a lookup table is displayed.

Application of the Business Rule

Once the business rule has been created, apply the business rule within Manage Rules in Recruiting under the Application tab. Select the job requisition template that you have created the rule against.

Under the Template-level rules, you will find a section for Conditional Offer Letter templates. Select the offer letter template and apply the appropriate business rule.

Dynamic Offer Letter: Sample Use Case

Best Run’s offer letter template is mostly static, meaning that most of the offer letter template does not need to change beyond basic personalization (candidate name, job title, hiring manager, salary, etc). However, Best Run would like to utilize the dynamic offer letter feature for their benefits paragraph which changes based on country.

Using the dynamic offer letter configuration, a conditional offer letter token was relabeled for the benefits section of the offer letter. A custom lookup table was created for the benefits offer letter token, hosting the benefits package details for each country. A custom field was defined within the custom lookup table to host the country code which will be validated against the job requisition the candidate is receiving an offer for in the business rule.

The offer letter template (with tokens) is displayed.
Preview of a job offer in the United States is displayed.

Create an Offer Letter Template

Business Example

The offer approval xml template has been configured. Now it is time to decide what to say to the candidate in the offer letter. In this exercise, you will create an email template for offer letters.

Task 1: Enable Offer Letters in the JRDM

Steps

  1. In an XML editor, open the latest version of the JRDM.

    1. In Provisioning, navigate to Managing Recruiting → Import/Update/Export Job Requisition Template and download the latest version of the JRDM to your hard drive.

    2. Open your XML editor and open the version of the JRDM that was downloaded.

  2. Find the offerLetter feature permission.

  3. Remove the beginning (<!–) and ending (-->) comment tags.

  4. Insert Status Name e.g. Offer where indicated in the feature permission definition. In this status the user will be able to send offer to candidate.

  5. Save the file with a new name, validate, and return to Provisioning to import the updated file.

Task 2: Create the email template in Admin Center

Steps

  1. Log in to the instance as an administrator.

  2. Navigate to Admin Center → Manage Offer Letter Templates.

  3. Create an offer letter with the following requirements and text:

    • Set the Country to United States.

    • Give the template a name and set the status to Enabled.

    • For the subject and the body, refer to the text below. Use tokens for the fields in bold, using the icon labeled Insert Job Requisition Field.

    Subject: Please join the staff at Best Run!

    Dear Candidate,

    We are pleased to extend an offer for the position of Job Title reporting toHiring Manager.

    Your starting salary will be Salary / Salary Frequency, and you will be eligible for a bonus in the amount of Target Bonus Amount at the end of your first year.

    This offer is contingent upon passing the background check. Please respond no later than one week from today.

    Sincerely,

    Recruiter

    Best Run Recruiting Department

    1. Select Create New Template.

    2. Enter the template name.

    3. Set the Country to United States.

    4. To make sure the template is enabled and can be used, select the Enable radio button.

    5. For the subject line and the body, enter the information provided in the exercise table. Use tokens for the fields in bold, using the icon labeled Insert Job Requisition Field.

  4. Save the template.

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