All you need to know about SAP SuccessFactors Integration with SAP ERP

SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) software application that offers tools for recruiting, performance management, talent management, and various other employee-centric solutions. It also provides core employee management capabilities in the Employee Central module.

In most cases, when companies intend to move parts of their HCM Procedures to the cloud, a phased strategy might be the solution of choice. Either the company moves only parts of the HCM procedures to the cloud (e.g., recruitment) and maintains the core functions located in the on-premise landscape, or they favor to migrate their HCM solution successively to the cloud, based on specific locations. In any case, seamless and tight integration between the process running in the cloud and in the on-premise environment is critical.

As an example of the separation of the process between the on-premise landscape and the cloud, a company may want to run its recruitment processes using SAP SuccessFactors in the cloud, whereas core employee management functions are kept in the on-premise SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) application. The following figure shows the involved components at a high level.

SAP SuccessFactors integration with SAP ERP is cloud-to-on-premise.

In the Integration Content Catalog, you can find different Integration packages that facilitate the integration of SAP ERP-based processes with the cloud-based HCM processes of SAP SuccessFactors.

Technical Landscape

The below figure shows a common configuration of an SAP SuccessFactors and SAP ERP integration scenario.

An obvious option to connect the SAP ERP with SAP Cloud Platform Integration is using web services communication (via the SOAP adapter).

For the other side of the communication, SAP SuccessFactors offers various API options to technically integrate with and link to other systems, including the following:

SFAPI: This is a SOAP API  designed to import or export data to and from SAP SuccessFactors. It allows you to create, read, upgrade, delete (CRUD) operations on SAP SuccessFactors entities.

OData API: This API allows you to access SAP SuccessFactors content using OData.

SAP Cloud Platform Integration: This provides an option to use these APIs in an intuitive and convenient way: the SAP SuccessFactors adapter, which becomes part of the SAP Cloud Platform Integration standard adapter offer.

SAP SuccessFactors Adapter

The SAP SuccessFactors adapter is available in a number of versions, depending upon which API you want to connect to the SAP SuccessFactors system with (and the communication direction). Below is a list of these variants.

Each SAP SuccessFactors adapter type provides a dedicated configuration UI to access to SAP SuccessFactors entities intuitively. After you have specified an SAP SuccessFactors system to connect to, through the configuration UI of the adapter, you can easily select the entities and define specific operations on them without the need to write any type of line of code. When you include an SAP SuccessFactors adapter to integration flow, you’ll select the corresponding variant by choosing a Message Protocol, as shown below, for an SAP SuccessFactors receiver adapter.

The detailed properties of the adapter’s configuration UI depend upon the chosen message protocol. The following figure shows an example for an SAP SuccessFactors adapter configuration UI for a receiver adapter when you’ve picked SOAP as the Message Protocol. Some key properties are indicated and discussed next.

Note that the example shown is retrieved from the Integration content Catalog and reflects the component version 1.1 of the SAP SuccessFactors adapter. In the meantime, updates to this adapter type have been provided so that, when you create a new SAP SuccessFactors receiver adapter (with the SOAP message protocol), you’ll get a slightly different UI (with the settings now spread on two different tabs Connection and Processing).

When you configure an SAP SuccessFactors sender adapter (to connect to an SAP SuccessFactors sender system), you can define only query operations. This is because the SAP SuccessFactors adapter serves as a polling adapter, reading information at scheduled intervals from the SAP SuccessFactors system.

For receiver adapters, all standard CRUD operations of SFAPI (query, insert, upsert, update) are supported and can be configured, as shown above. To configure a secure connection between SAP Cloud Platform Integration and an SAP SuccessFactors sender or receiver system, you’ll use the User Credentials artifact type, which consists of a username, password, and, specific to SAP SuccessFactors, a company ID (to indicate the SAP SuccessFactors system you’re connecting to).

When configuring the connection, you initially specify a User Credentials artifact and deploy it on the tenant, and, second, refer to the alias of the artifact (in the Credential Name field) in the SAP SuccessFactors adapter. The below image shows the properties of the User Credentials artifact to be deployed on the tenant to configure a secure connection between the tenant and an SAP SuccessFactors system.

For SAP SuccessFactors sender adapters, you can also, for example, select a scheduler to define that the adapter reads data from the SAP SuccessFactors (sender) system at certain time intervals.

Conclusion

SAP SuccessFactors integration doesn’t require to be tough. For those wanting to use this cloud solution with an existing on-premise SAP ERP HCM system, this blog must show useful as it provides a look at the technical landscape of integration and the adapters used to view the SAP SuccessFactors UI.

In the Integration Content Catalog, you can find different Integration packages that facilitate the integration of SAP ERP-based processes with the cloud-based HCM processes of SAP SuccessFactors.

If you are planning to boost your skills, choose our best online training platform, and learn from industry experts. So what are you waiting for? Click here, to skyrocket your career with the unique learning needs because Learning Never Exhausts The Mind.