Creating solutions for customers is always the fun part of being a Techie. SAP are providing both customers and partners with the tools required to build out their own Intelligent Enterprise. In this blog post, we use features within SuccessFactors and a flexible reporting tool called Business Intelligence Reporting Tool, which is more commonly known as BIRT Reporting.
Customer Request:
Recently we had a customer request: to design and print a License card containing the Equipment an employee is licensed to operate, along with the expiry date for each license. Employment Information would need to be easily displayed on the card, including a photo.
Investigation and Acknowledgment:
PPTC and BIRT have both been available for a long time. Finding helpful material to implement PPTC and BIRT was a challenge. Special thanks to Ee Chee Seng for getting me on track with BIRT. Sharon Jorgenson for sparking the PPTC idea!
Design:
Using Employee Profile, PPTC, and BIRT, we were able to create a custom-sized card, small enough to fit in an employee’s top pocket or attached to a lanyard.
License and Expiry Date are to be stored in the Employee Profile. A License portlet was created with the required fields used in the card. PPTC consumes the data from the portlet to generate the license card. Updates made to the license portlet are automatically updated when creating a new PPTC. The new PPTC is created from the Employee Profile.
Implement:
Here are the implementations steps to create the solution. We start by enabling settings in Provisioning and permission the features needed to configure the solution.
1. Enable the below settings in Provisioning:
- BI Publisher Scorecard Integration
- BI Publisher Export Scorecard XML
- Export Scorecard Xml with additional Information
2. Enable the below permissions in Role Based Permissions:
- Pixel Perfect Talent Card
- Pixel Perfect Talent Card Publishing Tab Access
- Pixel Perfect Talent Card Template(s)for the required template.
- Pixel Perfect Talent Card Export XML, to publish XML output of the talent card.
3. Navigate to Admin Center -> Configure People Profile General Settings -> Selected PPTC Section.
Note: The PPTC Section selected should contain all the fields you want available in your PPTC/Report.
For more information and a list of sections available, click the SAP Help Portal link: https://help.sap.com/viewer/deb510367ec844b4bc84b8c52442f5e5/2111/en-US/31d710acda5d40a3bb2b6213da7902e3.html
4. Generate the PPTC XML
Navigate to the Employee Profile. Click the Actions button -> Create Talent Card
5. Use the dropdown to select the xml Template and click Create.
6. The xml file is downloaded to your local machine. The xml will be used to create the report/license card.
7. In this example, BIRT Report Designer was used.
Note: If you already have Eclipse IDE installed on your machine – that works well!
BIRT Report Designer is a 3rd party application and was used for the PPTC design.
BIRT Report Designer can be downloaded from the Eclipse Foundation website using the link below. Version 4.3.2 worked perfectly for me.
https://download.eclipse.org/birt/downloads/drops/
8. The downloaded xml in BIRT Report Designer is selected as the Data Source. The layout, data sets and field mappings are created.
9. Once the report is complete, the RPTDESIGN file is imported into Provisioning.
Template Name: The name when generating the card in SuccessFactors
Template Type: BIRT Template
File to Import: File created from BIRT (RPTDESIGN file)
Output Format: Card format in SuccessFactors
Click Import
10. Your report has been uploaded and can be created in SuccessFactors. Navigate to the Employee Profile. Click the Actions button -> Create Talent Card and Select the Template Name
11. The License card is displayed and can be printed.
It was a great solution for our customer and felt super excited to show the ability to extend SuccessFactors. Leveraging existing features and system capability – almost an Intelligent Enterprise solution! 😊
