Employee Central to SAP ERP

HCM system

Tripti Phadake

SAP Certified - HCM Techno-Functional Consultant | SuccessFactors Employee Central | Cloud Platform
Integration | Integration Expert between EC/ HCM System Consultant | Certified Professional Scrum
Master
December 13, 2023

When SAP HCM customers want to move to SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) for global HR
purposes and attain cloud benefits, they can divide their core HR process of Hire to Pay into two
systems. The process now becomes “Hire in EC” and “Pay in SAP HCM”. An employee hired in EC
makes her way into SAP HCM ERP. Basically here employee mast data flow from Cloud EC to on
premise SAP HCM system so payroll , Time management and other custom processes can be run. This
is classic example of Core Hybrid deployment model.

In this diagram, SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) is the cloud middleware from SAP that
orchestrates the whole integration between the cloud EC and the on premise system SAP ERP HCM.

This blog talks about basic steps involved in Replication configuration BIB on SAP HCM side so
employee master data flows from EC to SAP HCM on premise system.

To define customer-specific settings, you use the Customizing activities and Business Add-Ins (BAdIs)
in the integration of SAP ERP HCM and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (PA_SE_IN) add-on

This is starting place to define customizing activities. In your SAP ERP HCM system, go to the IMG ->
Personnel Management -> Integration with Success Factors Employee Central -> Business Integration
Builder.
1) Define Employee Central Instance - First we have to define an ID in the SAP ERP HCM system,
which represents your EC system for configuration and all metadata so data transfer between SAP ERP
HCM and Employee Central can be done.

Configuration Path: IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings->Specify Employee Central Instance ID

2) Maintain Constant values - Next is to maintain Constant Values or define certain basic setting to
inform how this data transfer shall happen. For example – Filter data based on employment status,
fallback action type for Hire, Filter foreign address, allow replication in Correction phase of payroll etc.

Configuration Path: IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings-> Maintain the Constant Values

3) Importing Metadata from EC - We need to import the metadata from EC to make Employee
Central fields available in the SAP ERP HCM system. so that can be used for field mappings.
We can use this program ECPAO_ECTMPL_METADATA_WRITER in HCM system to import metadata.

Configuration Path : IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings-> Import Metadata from Employee Central -
>Import Metadata for Web Service-Based Data Transfer from Employee Central

4) Import Picklists from Employee Central - You can import picklists and picklist values from
Employee Central to the SAP ERP HCM system to use them in Customizing when mapping Employee
Central field values to values of SAP ERP HCM fields. Picklist values are like dropdown values in EC.

To import picklists, you use the Import of Picklists from Employee Central (ECPAO_PICKLIST_WRITER)
program.

Configuration Path: IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings-> Define Value Mapping->Import Picklists
from Employee Central
5) Define Value mapping entity. Value mapping means that EC field values are mapped to values
of SAP ERP HCM fields. The data replication programs during integration replace the EC keys by the
corresponding SAP ERP HCM keys if a value mapping is defined for the corresponding field mapping.
Example Gender of Personal Information portlet from EC will be mapped to Personal information
Infotype 0002 - Gender field (PA0002-GESCH)

Configuration Path : IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings-> Define Value Mapping->Define Value
Mapping Entities
The easiest way to create value mapping entities is to copy the sample entities by choosing the Copy
Sample Value Mapping

If you want to check first which sample value mapping entities are available, choose the Show Sample
Value Mapping. You will get a list of all standard entities provided for the integration, which you can
adjust to your needs.

6) Define Value Mapping Details - In this Customizing activity, you define the detailed settings for
the custom value mapping entities that you have created in earlier step to map SAP (EC) field values
to values of ERP fields. Example Gender can have multiple values – Male Female in EC will be mapped
to Male, Female in SAP HCM system.

Configuration Path : IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Basic Settings-> Define Value Mapping->Define Value
Mapping Details

7) Define Employee Data Settings for Employee Central Instance - In this Customizing activity,
you make employee data-related detailed settings for the EC instance like create new employment
transfer, how user name, User ID to be mapped from EC to SAP HCM

Configuration Path: IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Employee Data Integration->Define Employee Data Settings
for Employee Central Instance
8) Restrict Employee Master Data Replication to Certain Countries - In this Customizing
activity, you can restrict the employee replication to certain countries. If you want to replicate
employee master records for certain countries only like say Germany, then you must define these
countries in this Customizing activity.

Configuration Path: IMG-> Personnel Management -> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee
Central -> Business Integration Builder -> Employee Data Integration->Restrict Employee Master Data
Replication to Certain Countries

9) Creating a Transformation Template Group for Employee Data - A template group bundles
all field mappings that you want to use when transferring data from Employee Central to SAP ERP
HCM.

Configuration Path: Personnel Management-> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central ->
Business Integration Builder-> Employee Data Integration-> Define Field Mapping for Employee Data.
10) Defining Templates to Map Employee Data Fields

The transformation template is the counterpart of the Employee Central entity. You can map fields
from the transformation template to fields from the assigned Employee Central entity. All
transformation templates belong to one transformation template group.

Configuration Path: Personnel Management-> Integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central ->
Business Integration Builder-> Employee Data Integration-> Define Field Mapping for Employee Data.

Note : For easy start up, you can click on Copy Sample content which will copy Sample Transformation
template setting, which then can be adjusted according to customer requirement.

Below are basic transformation templates to be available in system

WS_2 (Biographical Info), WS_3(Employment Info), WS_4 (Job Info ), WS_5(Personal Info),
WS_10(Address Info), WS_11(Compensation Info), WS_12 (Pay Component Recurring), WS_15 (Pay
Component Non Recurring)

11) Defining the Primary / Secondary Field Mapping for Employee Data - You can choose
Employee Central fields from the Employee Central metadata that you’ve uploaded to the SAP ERP
HCM system, and you map suitable SAP ERP HCM fields to these Employee Central fields and define
additional transformations if needed. This we define for each template created in earlier step.

Enhancements to incorporate custom

requirement –
Requirements which are not possible through standard BIB configuration where you write custom
logic, can be done using any one of below BADIs. The Change info type BADI is the place where
majority of customizations are done.
This BADI will be called for each info type. It will bring the Info type data retrieved from EC after
filtering through all the customization setup in BIB. Here we can modify the data and write custom
logic.

Troubleshooting of replication from EC

to SAP ERP HCM system -
We have various transactions to analyse the replication error : SLG1, SRT_UTIL,
ECPAO_RESET_QRY_ADM

Using SLG1 / SLGD, we can check tatus of replication of employee or Organisation object.

During employee replication, enable verbose logging. Then you can see more information like what all
info types are updated for the employee , what are old values and new values updated post replication
along with Time segment information. This gives useful information for analysing these errors.
To analyse the error further, first put External breakpoint (for communication user) in BADI or you can
also put it in main processing logic for BIB starts from the method CL_ECPAO_IN_PROCESS_MSG_BIB-
>CALL_EMPLOYEE_REPLICATION. Then trigger the Query program ECPAO_EE_ORG_QUERY as below.

The same replication logs are also available in Data Replication Monitor in EC.

Troubleshooting related to SOA MANAGER or web services can be done in SRT_UTIL. Here we can see
what data we receive from Employee Central which is delivered in xml response, if any web service
call with CPI middleware is stuck so accordingly corrective actions can be taken.

If data replication query is stuck and that can be reset using transaction ECPAO_RESET_QRY_ADM for
Employee replication.