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aasthamalik
Participant

This is in reference to my first blog that I wrote over SCN on Apprentice Management. As I did not mention my experiences with my client I thought to include them this time. So here I go again :wink:


Apprentice Management is a new born baby in the world of Employee Central hence many of the customers are still to be made aware of this new feature.


I would like to highlight few interesting areas of Apprentice Management which impressed my Client. I can illustrate this with the fact that they started this feature with 20 apprentices but after knowing its facts they decided to enrol every apprentice.


  1. Apprentice Management has the capability to make our UI colourful and attractive by giving us different colours for different event types for highlighting the Apprentice’s Plan which has fascinated the Client, as they could easily identify the Plans on the Calendar.

        You can have the standard colour coding for following four standard Event types. The long lines against each event type explains how my client has used them.

      On-the-Job Training – For defining the Department wise Events/Training/Plans. For Example: IT Induction, Tour of HR Processes, etc,.

      School – This is used for highlighting in case an apprentice has been sent to an institute for education/training. For Example: Diploma Courses, etc.

      Internal Training – For organising the Events within the organisation/company to share the knowledge among colleagues to enhance their capabilities/skills. For Example: Communication Skills, E-Mail Writing, etc,.

      Holiday Calendar – This would highlight the holidays or when the apprentice is on leave.


    2. The system displays the fields based on the Event Type selected which helps to capture the relevant data. I found it interesting as we can have the Event relevant fields instead the same fields in all Event Types.


    3. ‘Apprentice Groups’ is another feature which helped my client to group the Apprentices with similar Plans. You need to follow below steps  for creating an Apprentice Group and assigning the Events:

  • Navigate to Apprentice Management.
  • Click on Take Action.
  • Create Apprentice Group.
  • Create Apprentice and assign the relevant Group.
  • On the Home page of Apprentice Management, select the Apprentice Group, which would list out all the Apprentices contained.
  • Select the Apprentices (you may select single / multiple or all Apprentices) and create an Event.


        This gave my client ease of defining an event based on business requirements.


    4. Another good feature of sharing date wise Events or complete Plan to Apprentice, On-site Supervisor and Apprentice Supervisor is highly appreciated. We can create all the events at once and then can be shared as and when required which proved to be a benefit for my client.

    5. In case of On the Job Event Type, Supervisor’s pic gets displayed beside the Apprentice Plan.

    6. Also once shared, you may update the Apprentice Plan and share it again. This has given flexibility to the Admin for re-sharing the modified plans.

    7. The feature to view Apprentice Plan and Department Plan is admired. This gives an ease to the Admin, Supervisors or HODs to view the Plans both ways.

    8. The Supervisor can see their Apprentices on a tile on the Home page. This helps in quick access to Apprentice’s Plan group wise or individually.

    9. Another feature of viewing the calendar with the option of a week, two months or an year gave the flexibility to view the Plans. You may also scroll through the calendar backward or ahead. This gave a smile on my client’s face :smile:

    10. The Apprentices can be searched in the Apprentice Management by their names (it follows the pattern of Last Name, First Name).

  

    11. In the Apprentice Departments, we maintain a field : Max. Apprentices. If in case you exceed the limit the system shows the warning message for exceeding the limit of max apprentices but would allow you to save the Apprentice in the same department. This scenario exists most of the times as part of business requirement.


    12. The view for Apprentice's Plan to an Apprentice, Supervisors, HOD is available only if People Profile is active.


I would also like to share the requirements that I got from my client but couldn't be fulfilled as of now due to some limitations of Apprentice Management which will surely be rectified in the coming releases (and in my next blog :wink: )


Business Requirement 1: To add an attachment field in all Event Categories namely, On-the-Job Training, Other Internal Events & School.

Business Reason: To upload extra information related to events, which should be accessible to relevant Apprentices, Apprentice Supervisors and Onsite Supervisors.

Business Requirement 2: There is a field named ‘Mentor’ which is maintained as part of Apprentice Details, so where will Mentor be participating or getting involved in Apprentice Activities? What is the relevance of Mentor?

Business Reason: To send notifications or share updates or take feedback from the Mentor for their respective Apprentices.

Business Requirement 3: While sharing the Apprentice Plan, the e-mail notifications go to Apprentice and Supervisors. In same way, the notifications should also go to Mentor and HOD (in case of On-the-Job Training - Event Type).

Business Reason: To keep the Mentor and HOD updated on Apprentice Plans.

Business Requirement 4: Apprentice Plan should be visible to Apprentice in the homepage as a tile.

Business Reason: Apprentices should have quick access to Apprentice Plan directly from home page.

Business Requirement 5: On the Calendar, the Onsite Supervisor photo should be visible along with its name on mouse hover.

Business Reason: Quick access of Onsite Supervisor without going inside the Event.

Business Requirement 6: Apprentice Search works when searched with Last Name of the Apprentice. It should be searchable with First Name.

Business Reason: Usual search begins with First Name. Apprentice search with First Name is preferred because at times Last Name is not known.

Business Requirement 7: To map Mentor from Job Relationship of an employee to the same employee when added as an Apprentice.

Business Reason: To auto-populate the Mentor into Apprentice Details.

Business Requirement 8: Renaming the Label of School (maintained as part of Apprentice) to Institute.

  Business Reason: Terminology adopted is Institute. Thus, label change was expected.



I would like to recommend this new feature in Employee Central for your clients to help manage their apprentices in a better way. The initiative of managing Apprentices within Successfactors is highly praised as it reduces a lot of paper work and employees can be completely managed in a single system.

Although, there is a big scope of improvement but I would say that the product is easy, user-friendly and good to use.

For further details please refer to Implementation Guide & User Guide for Apprentice Management.


I have shared my experience along with my client and hope you like this. More experiences are warmly welcomed.


If you liked this post, I’d be grateful if you help sharing this across SuccessFactors Consultants.

Happy to help! :smile:

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