Introduction
Supervisors are entitled to vacation too. Isn’t it? So who does the work of supervisor in his absence? Some companies have a policy of acting supervisor solution wherein a subordinate takes up the role of acting supervisor to perform some of the day to day activities of the supervisor in his absence.
Client Situation
Client had implemented both negative and positive time solutions. It had also implemented ESS and MSS solutions which were to be used by supervisors, superintendents and managers. The line of reporting for this client was as shown below:
Blue Collar Workers => Supervisor => Superintendent => Manager
From SAP perspective, Supervisors, Superintendents and Managers had manager’s role and they would be managing their teams. To enable the supervisors in time data maintenance of their blue collar workers, Personnel Time Manager’s Workplace (PTMW) solution was implemented.
Blue collar workers didn’t have access to ESS or SAP R/3. The entire time data maintenance in SAP for blue collar workers was done by their supervisors.
Whenever a supervisor went on leave, he would appoint one of his subordinates as acting supervisor to perform day to day activities of the supervisor in his absence. These activities were mainly related to time data maintenance of the subordinates. A computer will be assigned to acting supervisor with SAP R/3 installed on it. The acting supervisor will login into SAP R/3 using his SAP user id and password and access PTMW for time data maintenance of his subordinates.
However, the acting supervisor shouldn’t be able to view data of his supervisor in PTMW. Also, he should be able to view but not maintain his own time data in PTMW. Time data maintenance of acting supervisors would be done by HR.
The time data maintenance activities that the supervisor and acting supervisor were expected to perform in PTMW are as mentioned below:
- Maintain absences
- Maintain attendances and overtime
- Maintain shift substitution
- Maintain time events
- Process time evaluation messages
Solution Approach
The requirement of acting supervisor can be achieved by a combination of general and structural authorizations. We copied supervisor role to create acting supervisor role and modified the acting supervisor role to remove ESS access, MSS access and restricted access to time data maintenance activities of the supervisor.
Since the acting supervisor’s role was created by copying and modifying it from supervisor’s role, the acting supervisor role will have access to all time data maintenance activities that were given through general authorization objects – P_ORGIN: HR Master Data and P_PERNR: Personnel Number Check.
Also, since the supervisor role didn’t have access to maintain own data, the acting supervisor also won’t have access to maintain own data.
The above activities ensured that the acting supervisor role had access to time data maintenance activities through general authorizations. However, the crucial question of who were acting supervisor’s subordinates and for what period the acting supervisor had access to maintain time data for his subordinates remain unanswered.
To clearly define the acting supervisor’s subordinates, we utilized the concept of structural authorizations in SAP HCM. However, before we go to acting supervisor functionality, let me explain how a manager is able to view and maintain data only for his reportees.
In standard SAP, the organizational unit for which a supervisor, superintendent or manager is responsible, gets identified by relationship 012 which is maintained between his position and organizational unit.
SAP provides a standard function module RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT. This function module determines the root object of the organizational unit to which the user is assigned by the A012 relationship (= manages). The function module works on the basis of a key date and can determine only the organizational units assigned to the user as manager on the key date or within the specified period.
Function module RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT uses two standard evaluation paths for the purpose of identifying the root organizational unit. These evaluation paths are hard coded in the standard function module. The evaluation paths are shown in the screenshots below:
The standard function module RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT is used in structural authorization profile – “Manager” - to determine the organizational units, positions and persons the manager is responsible for. Please refer the below screenshot for structural authorization profile “Manager”.
Function Module RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT determines the root organizational unit based on A012 relationship between manager’s position and organizational unit.
Once the root organizational unit is determined, the standard evaluation path O-S-P in structural authorization profile “Manager” determines the organizational units, positions and persons the manager is responsible for.
The object Id is blank because the object id is determined dynamically by the function module RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT.
The structural authorization profile “MANAGER” is assigned to the SAP USER Id of the manager in TCODE OOSB. Below is a sample screenshot from TCode OOSB.
The manager role is assigned to the SAP USER ID and the user id is maintained in infotype 0105 subtype 0001 for the manager. This ensures that a manager has authorizations to maintain data for employees reporting to him.
Let us now look into acting supervisor solution. For acting supervisor, we created a custom relationship Z12 by copying it from 012. One must ensure that all the dependent entries are copied too. This will ensure that time constraints for the custom relationship Z12 also gets copied from relationship 012.
Whenever a subordinate is appointed as acting supervisor, a relationship AZ12 would need to be maintained between acting supervisor’s position and the organizational unit (supervisor’s organizational unit) the acting supervisor is supposed to manage. This relationship would need to be maintained for the duration the subordinate is required to act as acting supervisor.
A custom function module ”ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT” (Determine Organizational Unit for Acting Supervisor) was created by copying it from standard function module ”RH_GET_MANAGER_ASSIGNMENT” (Determine Organizational Unit for Manager).
We created custom evaluation paths Z_MANAS and Z_MANASS by copying from standard evaluation paths MANAS and MANASS respectively and replaced A012 with AZ12 relationship in them. Please find below the screenshots for the same.
The custom evaluation paths Z_MANAS and Z_MANASS were used in the custom function module ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT. Please refer the below screenshot.
The custom function module ”ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT” will determine the root organizational unit for which the acting supervisor will be responsible using custom relationship AZ12 between acting supervisor’s position and supervisor’s organizational unit.
A custom structural authorization profile ZHR_ACTSUPV is created and the custom function module ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT is called in it. Please refer the below screenshot.
Once the root organizational unit is determined by function module ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT, the standard evaluation path O-S-P in structural authorization profile “ZHR_ACTSUPV” determines the organizational units, positions and persons the acting supervisor is responsible for. This also includes the supervisor’s personnel number because the relationship AZ12 has been maintained between acting supervisor’s position and supervisor’s organizational unit.
However, the requirement is that the acting supervisor shouldn’t have access to supervisor’s data. To achieve this, we created another structural authorization profile ZHR_EXCL_SUP as shown below. The structural authorization profile ZHR_EXCL_SUP will restrict access of acting supervisor to the supervisor’s personnel number.
The structural authorization profile ZHR_EXCL_SUP uses standard evaluation path BOSSONLY which is used to determine the organizational unit, position and personnel number of the supervisor. Please find below the screenshot of the evaluation path BOSSONLY.
The custom function module ”ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT” will determine the root organizational unit for which the acting supervisor is responsible using custom relationship AZ12 between acting supervisor’s position and supervisor’s organizational unit.
Once the root organizational unit is determined by function module ZHR_GET_ACTSUPV_ASSIGNMENT, the standard evaluation path BOSSONLY in structural authorization profile “ZHR_EXCL_SUP” determines the organizational unit, position and personnel number of supervisor.
Now, the structural authorization profiles – ZHR_ACTSUPV and ZHR_EXCL_SUP – are assigned to the SAP User Id of the acting supervisor in TCode OOSB for the given period.
Please refer a sample screenshot below. Kindly note the exclusion checkbox (highlighted in red box) which is checked. This ensures that the supervisor’s personnel number is excluded from the access of acting supervisor.
Solution Testing
Let us now test this solution to see if the acting supervisor has access to all his subordinates and doesn’t have access to his supervisor.
Please find below screenshot of an organizational unit from TCode PPOSE. Patrick Gomes (PERNR 28001426) is the supervisor of Maintenance Team (Org Unit 50083511). He will be on leave from 01-Dec-13 till 31-Jan-14. Patrick would like to appoint David Joyce (PERNR 28001366) occupying position 50084078 as an Acting Supervisor for the above period so that David can maintain time data for his subordinates in PTMW.
To achieve this, a relationship AZ12 is maintained between supervisor’s organizational unit 50083511 and acting supervisor’s position 50084078 for the period 01-Dec-13 to 31-Jan-14. Please refer the below screenshot from TCode PP01.
We have assigned SAP User Id TESTTM5 to the acting supervisor David Joyce. Please refer the below screenshot of IT0105. Also, the acting supervisor role is assigned to the SAP User Id TESTTM5.
The SAP User Id is assigned the structural authorization profiles – ZHR_ACTSUPV and ZHR_EXCL_SUP – using TCode OOSB as shown below:
When we click on the information icon in the above screenshot, it displays the below screen:
The supervisor’s personnel number 28001426 has been excluded from the above list.
Let us now login into SAP R/3 using the SAP User Id TESTTM5 and access PTMW. We first maintained an employee list in PTMW using supervisor’s organizational unit 50083511.
The below screenshot shows the employee list being saved.
The below screenshot shows the employee list being saved with Selection ID – “Z_ActSupvTeam” and Selection Text – “Acting Supervisor’s Team”.
Below is the screenshot of PTMW for the acting supervisor with his employee list – Acting Supervisor’s Team. The supervisor’s name – Patrick Gomes – is not present in the acting supervisor’s team.
Thus, the acting supervisor – David Joyce – will be able to maintain time data for team members – Michael Clarke, Tom Hanks and Shane Warne.
However, David Joyce won’t be able to view or maintain time data for his supervisor – Patrick Gomes since he is not in the list. Also, David Joyce will be able to view his own data in PTMW. But he won’t be able to maintain his own data because of authorization object – P_PERNR which has been maintained for acting supervisor role.
Here, I come to the end of this knowledge artifact. Thanks for your patience to go through this and I hope this has been helpful for you.
Thanks and regards,
Vivek Barnwal
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