xP&A HXM Workforce Planning - Write back plan positions to SAP SuccessFactors

Log on to your SAP Analytics Cloud tenant and navigate to
System -> Administration -> App Integration.

In section OAuth Clients, take a note of the Token URL.
It should be https://<your-sac-tenant>/oauth/token

Take a note of the Token URL as you will need it later.

In this step you will need to enable the Data Export Service and create the OAuth client credentials to be able to connect against this service of SAP Analytics Cloud. In section Configured Clients click on the + Add a New OAuth Client link.

• Provide a name for your client, e.g. SACExportClient
• in dropdown Purpose select option Interactive Usage and API Access
• in dropdown Access check option Data Export Service

Finish the creation of the OAuth Client credentials by hitting the Add button at the bottom of the popup.

Once the client credentials have been created, take a note of the

• OAuth Client ID
• the Secret (click on Show secret to display it)

as you will need it in the next step.

You can click on button Done now to close the popup and move over to the next step.

For authentication from SAP Cloud Integration to SAP Analytics Cloud you will need to setup a user credential artifact in SAP Cloud Integration.
The artifact will then be used in the write back integration flow.

Let’s head over and logon to SAP Cloud Integration.

In SAP Cloud Integration click on the Eye icon to get to the overview page and then scroll down to Manage Security and click on the Security Material tile.

Click on button Create on top of the Security Material list and choose User Credentials.

• Provide a name for this security material; default name referenced in the integration flow is SAC_OAUTH_TOKEN_CREDS.
• Provide a description (optional).
• Leave the Type as User Credentials
• In field User enter the OAuth Client ID that has been created in the previous step.
• In field Password/ Repeat Password enter the Secret that has been created in the previous step.

Click on Deploy to save the user credential artifact.

You can now see the created item in your list of security materials

For setting up connectivity between SAP Cloud Integration and SAP SuccessFactors, you first need to create a custom key pair in the keystore that can be used in the SuccessFactors connection security artifact.
For this head back to the Overview page, click Eye icon, scroll down to section Manage Security and click on the Keystore tile.

Click on the Create Button on top of the keystore list and choose Key Pair.

Please provide your input for the following fields:

All other fields are optional.

Take a note of the Alias name, as you will need it in a later step.

Hit the Create button to have your key pair created. You will now see it in entity list.

As a next step, download the certificate as you need the certificate key for the SAP SuccessFactors OAuth Client Application entry.

To download the certificate, click on the Actions Icon next to your key store entry and choose the option Download Certificate.

Save the certificate to your local disk and open it with your preferred text editor. You will need the key value (everything between the —–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—– and —–END CERTIFICATE—– tag) in the upcoming step, so keep the file open.

Now it is time to log on to the SAP SuccessFactors tenant with an Admin user for your company for setting up the SAP SuccessFactors OAuth Client Application entry.

Once logged in, start searching for Manage OAuth in the search field and click on the proposed result Manage OAuth2 Client Applications.

In this application you can register client applications for SAP SuccessFactors API usage authenticating via OAuth.

Hit the Register Client Application button to create a new entry for the integration flow.

The field Company will be filled automatically based on your company login.

Take a note of your Company Id as you will need it in the next step.

Please provide the following inputs:

Hit the Register Button. As a result you can see your client application entry in the table. Now click on the View button for your entry, so you can find out the API Key for registering your client application.

Take a note of your API Key as you will need it in the next step.

Now that you have a client application entry registered and you have an API Key for it, head back into your SAP Cloud Integration tenant for making use of it.

Being back in SAP Cloud Integration again, click on the Eye icon to get to the Overview page and scroll down to section Manage Security and click on the Security Material tile. You will now create the credential artifact, being used in the integration flow to authenticate against SAP SuccessFactors.

On the top right click on Create and choose entry OAuth2 SAML Bearer Assertion

Please provide the following inputs:

Hit the Deploy Button to save your credential artifact and to return to the list of security materials.

You can now see your two credential artifacts,

• SAC_OAUTH_TOKEN_CREDS to connect to SAP Analytics Cloud for fetching newly planned positions
• SFPositionWriteBack to connect to SAP SuccessFactors to push these newly planned positions

Now that you have taken care of the connection/authentication artifacts, let’s get the integration flow ready.

To copy the integration flow into your Design area in SAP Cloud Integration tenant, click on the Discover Icon in the left upper corner. In the search field search for SuccessFactors and click on the entry called SAP Analytics Cloud Integration with SAP SuccessFactors Position Write Back Outbound Flow leading you to the overview of said integration flow.
Click on the Copy link in the upper right corner of the screen to copy the integration flow into your Design area.

You will now need to configure the integration flow with the security materials created. Once it is available in the Design area, click on the Artifacts tab of the integration flow and click on the Actions link for it and choose option Configure

On tab Timer leave the option Run Once, as we will manually trigger the run.

Move on to tab Receiver in which you configure the three receivers of the flow:

• SAC_Export will retrieve the newly planned position data from SAP Analytics cloud
• SAC_OAuth_Token will take care of the authentication against SAP Analytics Cloud
• Insert_SF_Position will insert the newly planned positions to SAP SuccessFactors

Let’s start with receiver SAC_Export

For field Address, maintain the export path to the fact data of your workforce planning model as described in the SAP Analytics Cloud Documentation.

When using the default model of the HXM Workforce Planning content, the path will be:

https://<your SAC tenant>/api/v1/dataexport/providers/sac/Caovcf79lrt4lemzdv5643rzls/FactData

You can leave all other parameters as they are. Press the Save button

Authentication is set to None as this will be taken care by the SAC_OAuth_Token, you need to configure next. In the Receiver dropdown, select entry SAC_OAuth_Token.

• in field Address put the SAP Analytics Cloud Token URL from Step 1.
• in field Credential Name put the credential artifact name you had created in step 3 (default name SAC_OAUTH_TOKEN_CREDS)

Leave all other field entries as they are and hit the Save button.

One receiver to go… the Insert_SF_Position receiver. In the Receiver dropdown, select entry Insert_SF_Position.

• in field SF_API_BASE_URL enter the API Server of you SAP SuccessFactors instance
• in field Credential Name enter the credential artifact name you had created in step 6
  (default name used SFPositionWriteBack)

Hit the Save Button.

On the More tab you can do some more customizing of the integration flow. For example restrict the scope of execution using the filter fields for company code, position and job classification.

You can set the MPI_Log_Switch to ON for detailed analysis of the integration flow execution.

Once you are done, press the Close Button. Congratulations, now the integration flow is set up! However before you can run it, you will need to do some customizing in SAP SuccessFactors.

You will now create a custom position type called Workforce Planning (technical C1), so you will be able to differentiate between regular positions in SAP SuccessFactors and planned positions coming from SAP Analytics Cloud. Based on a potential approval work flow, the position type of a planned position could be edited into Regular Position (technical R), once the position has been approved.

Secondly you will make sure the creationSource of a position is editable, so it can be set to Workforce Plan to identify all plan positions.

But let’s start with the customer position type. Log on to your SAP SuccessFactors tenant and search for Manage Data in the search field and click on the Manage Data result to start the application.

In the Manage Data application search for Position Type in the Create New search field on the right hand side and click on the resulting entry.

For field Code choose the value Custom Position 1 from the drop down values.

Please maintain the other fields as listed in the table below and press Save to save your newly created position type.

Once you have saved, you will see a green Successfully Saved confirm message.

Now let’s take care of the creationSource field of the Position object itself.

In the search field enter Manage Configuration UI and pick the result entry

Enter Position in the search dialogue and choose result Position UI3 (PositionUI3) from the result list.

Depending on the configuration of your tenant, you might be using a different UI for displaying positions, but for this example we stick to Position UI3 (PositionUI3).

Click on the Edit Icon next to field Source of Creation

In the properties list for data object Source of Creation make sure

• property Editable is set to Yes
• property visible is set to Yes

Then click on the OK button to close the property window.

Depending on the configuration of your tenant, these settings might already be in place. In this case, you don’t need to change them.

In case you had to change the property settings of field Source of Creation, make sure to click the Save button to save your changes now to the Position UI3.

Congratulations, now you are done with all customizing and can get started to do some planning!

Let’s get ready to plan a new position in the HXM Workforce Planning. Logon to your SAC tenant and head over to the HXM Overview Page. Click on the link for the Detailed Internal FTE Plan

When the plan application has finished loading, click on the New Hires button, so you will be able to plan for a new position.

Click on the Create Position button.

In the opening dialogue, switch on the template function and pick an existing position to serve as a template for you new plan position. Change any of the attribute fields if you like and click on the Create button and your new plan position will be created in the SAP Analytics Cloud data model.

After your plan position has been created, you will see it in the FTE table. Make sure to click on the Confirm button now to publish you plan version, otherwise your plan position will not be visible in the Data Export API.

Now your new plan position is ready to be transferred to SAP SuccessFactors.

Let’s head back to the integration flow in SAP Cloud Integration.

Open the integration flow again and press the Deploy button to run it.

Confirm the Deployment.

You will get a message that the integration flow is deployed. Let’s head over to the logs to find out the newly created position Id.

Click on the Eye Icon to return to the Overview page again and in section Manage Message Processing click on the All Integration Flows Past Hour tile to enter the Monitor view.

On the left hand side, click on monitor entry for your flow execution. On the right hand side you will see two logs:

• SAC OData Main Query Filter for fetching the position data from planning
• SF Position Insert Response for inserting the planned positions into SuccessFactors position management

Click on SF Position Insert Response to open the log file.
If your position has been created successfully it will look like this:

Take a note of the position Id ( Code ), this is the position Id generated in SAP SuccessFactors

Now let’s verify your newly created position in SAP SuccessFactors. Log on to your SAP SuccessFactors tenant again and go to the Manage Positions application by typing Manage Posit… into the search field.

In the Manage Positions application, select the Position option in the Search dropdown.

To be able to find your position, you will need to pick an effective as-of-date equals or later than the start period of your plan position (in the example case this was equal to 1st of January 2023).

Now you can search for the position Id that you have noted down in the previous step, select the position found and hit Enter.

Congratulations, your plan position has successfully been transferred to SAP SuccessFactors. Note the custom position type Workforce Planning. You can check through the various attributes that have been transferred with the position.

This has just been a basic example on how to do the transfer for one position, but it should get you going to take this to the next level. You can embed this into a seamless end-to-end planning process adding

• orchestration of your planning in SAP Analytics Cloud using the calendar
• exposing the Cloud Integration Flow for external API calls
• using scheduling features for the transfer
• creating notifications in SAP SuccessFactors for finalizing the created position with all needed attributes

Interested in more xP&A topics and related business content packages? Visit our community page Extended Planning & Analysis Business Content.