Newsletter January 2008

Useful tips for your work with SAP® HCM

Today you’ll find in our newsletter:

• OM: how to create logs of infotype changes
• Performance Management: individual adjustment of evaluation documents and where to find the best BAdI overview
• Administration: Start of the week - Sunday or Monday?
• Query: user parameter are not always effective
• Office 2007: how to open docx files
• HR2008: meet AdManus in Orlando
• Payroll: 10 Tips for Your SAP HR Payroll Rollout to Germany
• Book: 'HR-Reporting with SAP®' - free download of chapter 2

"If you can see the path ahead of you, it is not your path but someone else’s - unless you are going round in circles"
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1 Tips in SAP® HCM

Logging of infotype changes in the Organizational Management
Beginning with release ECC 5.0, info type data modifications may be logged in the organizational management and may be evaluated with the report RHCDOC_DISPLAY (Display Change Documents). To create logs of standard infotype changes you only need to take one customizing step. In order to set up the creation of change documents for customer-specific infotypes, a series of further steps is necessary. Find here a description how to set up the creation of change documents.

Performance Management - individual adjustment
The evaluation documents used for Performance Management may be flexibly adjusted to suit individual requirements. Customizing allows for setting what needs to be evaluated, who evaluates whom, and the specific evaluation sequence.
Furthermore, it is possible to modify evaluation documents to fit individual employees. Read this to find out more about your options.

Performance Management: BAdI overview
SAP provides an overview of the BAdIs relevant for performance management via transaction PHAP_ADMIN (from there follow the menu path "Utilities (M) - BAdI Overview). This report divides the BAdIs into several areas. Note that the BAdI area "Add-on Application" comprises those BAdIs, which are not meant to be used by the customer but by SAP only.
However this overview fails to show all relevant BAdIs (e.g. the BAdIs HRHAP00_BC_ELEMENT and HRHAP00_TMPL_RESTR are missing). To get a complete overview goto transaction SE18 and search for BAdIs beginning with "HRHAP*".

Start of the week: Sunday or Monday?
Feature LDAYW (Transaction PE03) decides about the last day of the week - generally per MOLGA (country). If you set "6" there for the US (MOLGA 10), the week begins Sunday and ends Saturday for all employees belonging to this MOLGA. Reports (e.g. RPTEDT00) and Transactions (e.g. PA30) use this information.
However: Transactions PA20 and PA30 only consider this once you’ve opened an infotype full screen or list screen for an employee belonging to the respective MOLGA. This means: if you select a US employee, click on "current week" and press "enter", the dates shown above still start Monday. Only if you select, say, infotype 2001 and go to the list screen, the system shows all occurrences of this infotypes from Sunday to Saturday and the dates shown on top of the list go Sunday to Saturday as well. When you go back to PA20 start screen, the system remembers this and the dates shown are correct.
This means: if Feature LDAYW is correct, transactions PA20 and PA30 always get the correct dates, when it matters. They only seem to get it wrong, when you try to test it quickly by just hitting "enter" and looking at the dates.
If you work with a global system and feature LDAYW produces different results for different countries, make sure that any custom developments dealing with 'weeks' consider this feature. Ideally, you agree to harmonize the start of the week, when designing your global template.

User parameter for Query
The following user parameter (transaction code SU3) can fill the query area, the user group and the query with proposed values while starting SAP Query or Ad-hoc Query:

• AQW = Query area (blank = Standard area, client-specific)
• AQB = User group (e.g. TEAMLEADER)
• AQQ = Query (name of Query)

Attention: These user parameters are only effective if you start transaction SQ01 or S_PH0_48000513, in SAP Menu under Human Resources > Information system > Reporting-Tools. Transaction S_PH0_48000510 (SAP Menu: Human Resources > Personnel Management > Administration > Info System) fully ignores them. As authorization administrator please pay attention when you create the user menu and also use the described user parameters.

2 What’s new in Human Resources?

Open Office 2007 file formats with older office versions
Not everybody has already got the latest office version 2007. Problems can occur when receiving a file with the new format (ending with ...x, e.g. pptx, docx etc.).
The installation of a simple patch will solve the problem for users of older Microsoft Office programs. The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats can be downloaded under the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

3 Events in SAP® HCM

Meet AdManus at the HR2008 conference



The SAP HR 2008 conference in Orlando, 10 - 13 March 2008 is produced and conducted by WIS, publisher of SAP insider and HR Expert. iProCon Director Sven Ringling speaks on two sessions:

• How and when to use BADIs to customize SAP HCM Performance Management templates
• A process-oriented approach to aligning your SAP HCM investment with your business strategy and stakeholders

If you want to meet him at the conference, drop him a line: sr@iprocon.co.uk

4 Publications from AdManus

10 Tips for Your SAP HR Payroll Rollout to Germany
Payroll is often the most challenging part of any international rollout. This is particularly true for Germany with its well-structured, but very complex tax and social security legislation. Many people make false assumptions and run into brick walls. iProCon Director Sven Ringling is going to take you through the fun parts of German payroll and help you avoid the most common mistakes that are likely to happen if you approach German payroll with little or no special expertise. To be fair, even people who know German payroll walk into some of these traps occasionally. (The article can be accessed by HR-Expert subscribers via www.hrexpertonline.com)

5 Book recommendations

HR-Reporting with SAP®
Richard Haßmann, Hans-Jürgen Figaj, Anja Junold
The SAP PRESS book of our AdManus Experts 'HR-Reporting with SAP®' is just translated into English. The authors describe various reporting tools, including Standard SAP Report, Queries, SAP NetWeaver BI, and Customer Report. You'll also learn how to use them, what options they provide, their strengths and weaknesses, and more. This book covers the area menu, the Human Resource Information System, the Manager's Desktop, and the SAP NetWeaver Portal in great detail. It also discusses how to resolve authorization problems and much more. Based on SAP ER ERP 6.0, this book can be used with R/3 Enterprise or more recent releases.
>>> For free download of chapter 2 Basics of Reporting in SAP ERP HCM and appendix B Standard Reports in the SAP HCM Modules, the table of content and where to order HR-Reporting with SAP®, please click here.

6 German Language Lesson

We invite you to practice your German language skills as our German subscribers do it reverse. In this issue we choose some vocabulary from the article "Performance Management". You find the lesson via this link.