Configuring the Admin Center Matrix Grid Report Settings

The Matrix Grid Report settings define how each Matrix Grid Report works and the ratings to be used. They allow the administrator to configure the Matrix Grid Report in a way that it only pulls the necessary information and displays it according to the business need.

There are two Settings options for the reports, depending on which Matrix Grid you are configuring. To open the report settings, using Action Search navigate to the appropriate settings page:

• Matrix Grid Reports: Performance-Potential
• Matrix Grid Reports: How vs What

The two settings pages are identical in the options available, so we’ll use the Performance-Potential report in our examples.

The following screen elements are available in the Matrix Report Settings:

1. Report Name: Customize the label at the top of the Matrix Grid Report.
2. Locale selector for language-specific configurations. By changing the locale on this dropdown, you can configure labels according to each language.
3. Label: Define the name of each axis inside the Matrix Grid Report.
4. Trend: Determines which rating is being used on the Axis. These ratings are mapped to system-defined portlets inside the instance, and are the same ratings that is available through the Trend export inside Extended User Information in Admin Center. You can use the following Trend rating information for any of the boxes:
   • Performance
   • Potential
   • Competency
   • Objective
   • Custom1
   • Custom2
5. Scale values and labels: As defined in the Rating Scale Settings.
6. Custom Weight: Set your custom weights if necessary. Custom weights are detailed later in this lesson.
7. Process: Choose the process to be used by the Matrix Grid Report. Depending on the Process selected, and on the sources added to each Process, the Matrix Grid displays the ratings accordingly. Identifying the source of the ratings is detailed later in this lesson.
8. Select this option to show the Axis name on the Matrix Grid (set under the Label option in #2).
9. Select this option to exclude the ratings from forms that are still in progress.
10. Select this option to exclude the ratings from forms that have been deleted.
11. Select this option to use the average of all the ratings, instead of using the latest rating. The Date Range that you define in the Matrix Report Filter will affect how many ratings are available and if you wish to use the latest rating or an average of all ratings.
12. User Limit Per Cell: Determines the limit of how many users are shown in each cell, for both the displayed reports and printed reports. The system limit is 5,000.
13. BG Color: Enter a hexadecimal color for the background of each grid.
14. Label: Enter a label for each grid.
15. Text Color: Defaults to black, #000000. This element cannot be changed with Matrix Grid Reports v12.
16. Reverse Scale: Reverse the rating scale for one or both axes. This would be enabled if you’re using a descending scale (3-2-1) instead of 1-2-3.
17. Enable "unrated": If enabled, any employees that do not have ratings for at least one of the axes or that have an "Unrated" rating (a special type of rating) coming from a Performance Form or Calibration session will be included in this cell. Once enabled, you can also configure the background color and label. Text color defaults to black.
18. Enable "too new to rate": If enabled, any employees that have a "Too New To Rate" (a special type of rating) coming from a Performance Form or Calibration session is included in this cell. Once enabled, you can also configure the background color and label. Text color defaults to black.
19. Link: If you wish to enable a link on the Matrix Grid Report screen (shows up under the i icon), enter the link’s title and URL (including http://). The link title is used as the tooltip for the icon.
20. Be sure to Save Changes made to the settings.
21. Reset: If you haven’t saved your changes yet, reset all elements to their setting when you opened the screen.
22. Set Default Color: Rather than selecting your own colors for each grid, use default colors set by the application. Default colors for a 9-box grid are shown in the following screenshot.

Settings shown for the Performance-Potential report are also available to be configured for the How vs. What reports.

The Matrix Grid Report can be customized to retrieve ratings from specific sources (Live Profile, Performance Forms, Calibration) and to include in-progress, deleted, or only completed ratings.

The Admin Center configuration settings for the Matrix Grid Report determine the rating sources (Live Profile, Performance Management, Calibration) that are considered when retrieving the latest ratings for the users. Let’s look at the area of the settings that affect ratings. Navigate to Matrix Grid Reports → Performance-Potential or How vs. What using Action Search to review the settings that control the source of ratings.

1. The Trend Element selected for each axis determines the type of ratings that you must look at (Performance, Potential, Objective, Competency, Custom1 or Custom2).
2. The Process (source of ratings) selected determines what are the sources of ratings (whether they come from Live Profile, Performance Forms and/or Calibration Sessions). If you have All data sources selected (first option in the list), this means that all ratings from the instance are included. If another process is selected, you must go to Processes and Forms in Admin Center to understand the configuration (Processes and Forms details are below).
3. If the checkbox Exclude in-progress forms when retrieving ratings is enabled, the Matrix Grid Report does not consider ratings from in-progress forms.
4. If the checkbox Exclude deleted forms when retrieving ratings is enabled, the Matrix Grid Report does not consider ratings from forms that have been deleted.
5. If the checkbox Use average of all found ratings, instead of latest is enabled, you must retrieve all the ratings for the given date range and average them. If this checkbox is disabled, which is the most common use case, the system retrieves the latest rating available for the given date range.

If you have All data sources (the first option from the list) selected in the Process, the Matrix Grid Report retrieves ratings from all sources, including Live Profile, Scorecard, Performance Manager, and Calibration.

If another option is selected, then you must check the process configuration. Navigate to Processes and Forms using Action Search to create a custom process or edit an existing process.

The figure shows the templates and data being used for the process "Employee Scorecard" being used for the Matrix Grid Reports. The process configuration is divided into the following sections:

1. Performance Form templates: Ratings from the forms included in this Selected Templates section is considered by the Matrix Grid Report. This means any type of ratings, regardless of what is selected in Succession Data.
2. Succession Data: Ratings from the Live Profile, Scorecard, and Calibration sessions are considered by the Matrix Grid Report if the respective Trend element is included in this section.

After analyzing the process, you should understand if data from the Live Profile, Scorecard, and Calibration sessions are being considered for a given Trend element and what Performance Forms are being considered.

Calibration Session Data

It’s possible to include in-progress Calibration session ratings. To enable this:

1. Navigate to Manage Calibration Settings and then Global Settings.
2. Enable the option Show In-Progress Calibration Ratings in Live Profile.

Normalization of ratings is the process of converting a rating from one rating scale to a target rating scale so that it can be displayed in some context. As an example, you might use a 5-star rating scale for Performance forms, but you have a 3-star rating scale for the Matrix Grid Report (3x3 box). Due to these differences, the system identifies when a rating is on a different scale and normalizes it to fit the scale being used by a different module.

Using the same example mentioned earlier, let us assume the following Scenario:

• Performance forms use a 5-star rating scale, from 1-5.
• Matrix Grid Report is configured as a 3x3 matrix, so the Performance axis will use a scale from 1-3

Since the Matrix Report Performance Rating Scale is set to a 3-star scale, any ratings added directly through the Employee Profile will use this 3-star scale. Meanwhile, completed Performance Management forms will show as a 5-star scale in Employee Profile.

When those ratings are used in the Matrix Grid Report, and one rating is on a different scale than the one being used by the Matrix Grid, the system will automatically normalize it. All ratings are plotted on a percentage scale from 0 to 100 and then converted to the appropriate system rating scales for output on the matrix grids. The figure shows how the system normalizes the rates for this specific example:

If a rating of 2 comes from a Performance Form, it will show up at the Matrix Grid as a rating of 1. The system will do this for any ratings that come from a different scale; this behavior cannot be changed.

For additional details about how the normalization calculation is performed, reference the following Wiki topic: Matrix Grid Reports - Normalized Ratings, Custom Weights and Average Rating | SAP Help Portal.

Adding Custom Weights

You can customize how rating scales are distributed in your Matrix Grid Reports. By defining your own weights along the axes, you override the standard rating normalization that handles conversion between rating scales.

Note

The following are a few specific things to consider before configuring custom weights:

• Drag and drop is not supported in Calibration sessions when you use custom weighting.
• The drag and drop rating option on the performance or potential section of the form is also not compatible with custom weights. The matrix still allows drag and drop on the form if configured, but the rating is not affected by the custom weighting, so this configuration is strongly discouraged in order to prevent confusion over the meaning of entered ratings on a scale that is unevenly distributed.
• Custom weights are not respected by the Succession Org Chart.

Customizing the output weights, or ranges, allows you to tune the normalization for each output rating. For example, you could tune the weighting so that the following behavior is expected when converting a 5-point scale to a 3-point scale:

• Ratings entered as 1 = 1 on the 3-point scale
• Ratings entered as 2, 3, and 4 = 2 on the 3-point scale
• Ratings entered as 5 = 3 on the 3-point scale

To achieve this result, you would enter a proportionally higher weight for the middle tier of a 3-point scale so that it captures more of the normalized range. The weight should be large enough to capture the ratings of 2/5 and 4/5 into the middle tier.

The customization described above is illustrated in the following figure. Custom weights are added through the Matrix Grid Report Settings.

Note

Ratings on the exact border between output tiers show the score in the lower tier. For example, in the 20/60/20 configuration above, a rating of 1.8 is exactly on the border between 1.0 (LOW) and 2.0 (SOLID). The rating is therefore displayed in the 1.0 (LOW) tier. A rating of 1.8001, however, is displayed in the 2.0 (SOLID) tier.