SAP HCM + ABAP Interview question & answer

[ruchatodankar]

HI,

   I have 3 years experience in SAP ABAP & SAP HR Module can you provide me interview question & answer of this module

[Former Member]

  What is Infotype and how it is different from tables ?

Infotypes is special way to store the HR data rather than using standard tables. Infotypes will have three structures PAKEY, PSHD1, PSnnnn [nnnn is Infotype number]. PAKEY (Key fields) and PSHD1(Control Fields) is same for all the Infotypes. Fields in the PSnnnn structure depends on the Infotype uses, like 0000- Actions will the fields specific to action of an employee 0002-Personal Data will have fields specific to the personal data fields(name, DOB, etc..) of an employee.

   The following concepts are defined in ABAP HR which is different with other modules ?

• Use of Infotypes
• The use of Logical Database
• Use of Macros and Provide statement
• Storage and Access of data
• Authorization checks
• There is nothing much difference between abap and hr abap. The way we retrieve the data from data base is deferent.
• In general ABAP data is stored in Tables, but coming to HR ABAP employee data is sorted through Infotypes. The way we retrieve the data from infotypes is deferent in hr abap.
• In general ABAP we use Logical data base very rare, as in HR ABAP most of the programs use Logical data base to select data from Infotypes by using Get event.
• In ABAP we use read statement to read particular record, still in HR ABAP we do use read statement apart from that we have Macros and provide statement.
• Macro is pre defined code (like function module) which reads data from internal table (internal infotype) based on dates.
• Provide statement is like Select statement but selects data from internal table
• Storage and access of data in hr abap is completely deferent in hr abap comparing with ABAP. We use transaction code PA20 and PA30 to maintain data in infotypes.
• PA20 is display mode and PA30 is change mode. We can create, change, display, copy, and delete in infotypes with PA30 transaction.
• For Infotypes authorizations can be maintained infotype and subtype (field) level as HR data is more sensitive and secrete.

    What is PAKEY structure, PSHD1 structure and what type of fields it contains ?

• PAKEY is the key field's structure and it is same for all the PA Infotypes. It has different fields as below
• PERNR - Employee Number
• SUBTY - Subtypes are subdivisions of Infotypes.
• OBJPS - The object identification indicator is used to differentiate records with the same Infotype, subtype, lock indicator, valid from date, and valid to date. For example: Child number in Infotype 0021 Family Member/Dependents.
• SPRPS - The lock indicator for HR master data can be used to lock and unlock data records. It can be used to guarantee double control, that is, at least two users are involved in writing an active data record to the database. One of the users creates a locked infotype record. Another user unlocks this record by activating it.
• ENDDA - Valid to date
• BEGDA - Valid from date
• SEQNR -The sequential number differentiates Infotype records with the same key and the time constraint '3'. Unlike the personnel object identification, it is automatically assigned by the system.
• PSHD1 is another basic structure that is the same for all Personnel Administration Infotypes. It includes the date the record was changed (AEDTM), the name of the person making the change (UNAME), and information on whether the administrator created plain text for this infotype (ITXEX).

    Why do we require Infotypes for HR module ?

As all other modules uses standard SAP tables concept to store the data. HR module uses the new and different concept to store the data i.e., Infotypes. Data is scattered b/n Infotypes by depending above the type of data and this makes to easily access similar data of all employees at one stretch by minimizing the retrieval time. As HR data is totally time dependant and have more number records to save and retrieve for a particular purpose.

What are the transaction codes to create the Infotypes ?

PM01

What is the process to enhance the Infotype ?

Go to PM01, enhance IT tab and provide the Infotype number for which you require to enhance, click on create all button(you can create individually structure, module pool program also). It will take you to the CI_nnnn structure, provide the fields you want to add - activate.

    Importance of PA20, PA30 and PA40 ?

• PA20 - Display HR Master Data
• PA30 - Maintain HR Master Data
• PA40 - Personnel Actions

    How can we decide whether we can enhance the standard Infotype or not ?

You can enhance all the Infotypes provide CI_nnnn is there in the structure.

   What is PS structure ?

• PS Structures have basic data fields of an employee in every Infotype. These data fields will vary for every Infotype and included in respective Infotype to hold the data.
• Infotype 0002 - PS0002 will have personal data fields
• Infotype 0008 - PS0008 will have pay related data fields etc...

  What are the payroll related Infotypes ?

The basic Infotypes used for payroll are 0, 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 580, 591, 45, 41, 57, 267 and others.

   What are the time related Infotypes ?

All the 2 series Infotypes.

   What are the personnel administration related Infotypes ?

All Infotypes 0000 to 0999

   What are the organizational related Infotypes ?

1000 to 1999 Infotypes

   What is Macro ?

Macro is a set of reusable statements which can be used several times in programs.

   What is PNP-SW-FOUND ?

PNP-SW-FOUND will be initial if the macros rp_provide_from_last or first is successful else it will be 1.

   What is the difference between select statements and provide statement ?

• SELECT statements are used to fetch the data from DATABASE tables.
• PROVIDE is used to fetch the data from Internal Tables (multiple IT by joining).

    Which function module reads the data for particular Infotype ?

• HR_READ_INFOTYPE - to retrieve data from PA tables
• RH_READ_INFTY - to retrieve data from OM Infotypes

    What is repetitive structure and for which Infotype do we have ?

Repetitive structure is same sequence for fields varying by numeric digits. We do have repetitive structure in IT 8 [Basic Pay] and IT 41[Date Specifications].

To retrieve the data from repetitive structures we use DO... VARYING command as below
DATA: BEGIN OF WAGETYPES,
LGA LIKE P0008-LGA01,
BET LIKE P0008-BET01,
ANZ LIKE P0008-ANZ01,
EIN LIKE P0008-EIN01,
OPK LIKE P0008-OPK01,
END OF WAGETYPES.
GET PERNR.
RP_PROVIDE_FROM_LAST P0008 SPACE PN-BEGDA PN-ENDDA.
DO 20 TIMES VARYING WAGETYPES
FROM P0008-LGA01
NEXT P0008-LGA02.
IF WAGETYPES-LGA IS INITIAL.
EXIT.
ELSE.
WRITE: / WAGETYPES-LGA, WAGETYPES-BET.
ENDIF.
ENDDO.

What is the difference between ABAP and HR ABAP?

ABAP – It is a programming language used in all the modules of SAP like MM/SD/FI … even HR

ABAP-HR – It is an extension used to program the logic in HR module extensively. The logic/pattern used to write code in HR is different than in normal ABAP, as it uses LDBs, Macros and Many FM to retrieve the data rather using SELECT queries as in ABAP.

What is logical data base?

Logical data bases are special programs used to read the data and make it available in the programs. Other than retrieving the data authorization checks are handled, can be able to retrieve data from multiple tables. Specify LDB in the program attributes and use the GET event to retrieve the data. One best use is there will be a default selection screen.

What are logical data bases used in hr module?

PNP, PNPCE, PAP, PCH …

What is the difference between PNP and PNPCE?

                PNP is old LDB used to retrieve the data for HR Master Data.

               PNPCE is also used for Master Data but it is capable for Concurrent Employees.

Explain GET PERNR concept when we use logical data base?

You need to use LDB PNP to use the GET PERNR event, once GET PERNR event triggers all the Infotypes declared by using INFOTYPES statement will be fetched data    to the respective internal tables. If you specify Infotypes by INFOTYPES statement then internal tables are created with Pnnnn structure.   

Ex:- INFOTYPES: 0001, 0002, 0006.

Internal tables p0001, p0002, p0003 are created and can be used in the program.

Explain the program flow when we use logical database PNP or PNPCE?

If you use any of the LDBs, the program flow is as below

Report XXXXXX.

Data declaration

START_OF_SELECTION.

GET PERNR.

retrieve the data from internal tables to output internal tables 

END_OF_SELECTION.   

Display the data retrieved above.

From GET PERNR to  END_OF_SELECTION ; it will loop with the employee numbers selected from the selection screen.

What are the program names for logical database PNP and PNPCE?

SAPDBPNP and SAPDBPNPCE

What is report category and for what purpose do we use report category?

Report Category describes the default selection screen for LDBs. As per the user requirement you can customize the selection screen using z report category. Once after you define the LDB, you can change the default report category. 

SAP HR

Explain the uses of the simple maintenance interface?

Simple Maintenance is used when Staff assignments and reporting structure are to be changed. There are three main areas in Simple Maintenance. Each area contains particular maintenance functions, depending on whether you want to edit organizational structure, staff assignments or task profiles. For Organizational Management users, Simple Maintenance is best used to establish the basic framework in organizational plan development. For complete, detailed editing of individual organizational objects in your organizational plan (editing particular positions or organizational units, for example), we recommend that you switch to Info-type Maintenance. Simple maintenance uses a tree structure, which allows you to create a basic framework for organizational plans, using streamlined procedures. In this way, we can create an organizational and reporting structures step by step.

What is the use of INFOGROUPS?

The infotype group (commonly known as infogroup) guarantees that during the personnel action, all information needed for the business processes is stored. The infogroup is processed when you perform a personnel action. – An infogroup exists in the standard system for every personnel action type. – In Customizing for Personnel Administration, you can tailor the make-up of the various infogroups to the requirements of your company. – You can define infogroups as user-group dependent. Infogroups are used in Personnel Actions to define a set of sequencial infotypes that you would be using while performing an action. For example, when you hire, you would want to use IT0000,0001,0002,0006,0007,0008 etc in a sequence- in a particular order. So define an Infogroup for this purpose which contains all these infotypes, their order of execution and the user groups it is applicable for. Then you assign this infogroup to the action that you had defined.

What is PROCESSING CLASS, where we do them and why?

Wage type characteristic that determines how processing is conducted during the payroll run.

What is EVALUTION PATH, where do we do it and why?

A chain of relationships between objects in a hierarchical structure. for eg. O-S-P(Organization->Position->Person).

What is INTERNAL PAYROLL PROCESS?

Payroll process(program) is run at a specific point in time, not only to calculate an employee’s basic remuneration but also any special payments, overtime payments or bonuses that must be effected for the period in question.

What is meant by payscale structure? How did you configure payscale structure? (I said I created various payroll areas and defaulted them using the feature ABKRS. Seemed he was expecting more than this from me.)

Pay Scale Structure means creation of Payroll area , Pay scale type,area, group and levels with EmpSub group grouping for PCR & CAP’s.

How do you import payscale data from non SAP to SAP? (Somebody told me that there’s a tool called LEGACY to transfer non SAP data to SAP. I said the same. Is it the same for payroll also? He wanted a clearer explanation of how I did it.

Yes you have to say from which transaction code you are transfeing data from Non SAP in to sap.

How to assign a person two different pers no.s and allocate him two different comp. codes and generate a single invoice? Suppose for a person I have to pers no.s A and B. I want to send him to one company in the morning and the other in the noon. How should I do this. (I only know one person can be given more than one position by giving percentage in OM. I said that this process is concurrent employment.)

No, even with Concurrent employment also it is not possible to assign two personnel numbers for one person. You can assign him to work wih two Personnel ID Numbers with the same number and make invoice.

What is meant by a schema? (I said I’m only aware that it is a set of rules which is copied and renamed, but never worked on that.)

No, you have to say him that schema is a set of instructions ( Programs )  madified as per requirements and its process is to collect the data as from all the defined instuctutions with sub schemas and PCR’s. As I was not authorised to work on them I know just the process of schemas only, (you should have said like this.)

How do you restrict the data to be entered in payroll area?

No, data is entered in a payroll area , but the employees are defined depending on their payscale structure. If you are restricting any data to be entered for pay strcs this is for indirectly for payroll area.

What is meant by authorization? Did you ever work on it?

Authorisations are the transactions given to the end users or the developers for only some areas to work, infotyopes, transaction codes, org units and others depending on the requirement of the client or the develping enterprise.  Check this at PFCG tcode.

What is the difference between Indian and US Payroll. (I said each of them have their own ITs and the taxation differs.)

Yes it correct and even you have to say about the Benefits which are more important in US. In US unemployment tax will come. Garnishments will come, Residence taxation, Work tax and others, you have to say it in broad way then only they can know that you are working, or confident enough.

How do you differentiate Tax for different countries?

Taxation has so many use exits to be created which means it all happens only from  the new versions which SAP Releases.

What is meant by slab? How is Indian slab and US slab? (He was talking about some %ages. I don’t know what they are. )

Grouping of employees depending on their allowances and PERKS is nothing but Slab system and it also even comes  for Professonal Tax.    

What are Dynamic Actions? Give a few examples. What are the IT’s you used in them. (I know only Birth of Child action, and the IT’s used in it are Personal Data, Additional Payments)


Dynamic actions which are triggered by the system. They are result of some personnel action.  If you make a change (personnel action) to the personnel data of an info type that then has an effect on the data of a second info type, the system automatically displays the info type.  One of the main purpose of the dynamic action (of the system) is to have a consistent and coherent data.  These actions are started automatically by the system, unlike the Personnel actions which you start by yourself.  The best example is when you carry out  an action lets say hiring, you need to populate a set of info types. Your initial entry of details in infotype 0000 is personnel action. When you do this system automatically displays next infotpes- which is result of dynamic action

What is Recruitment Cycle?

Its is the complete process of  recruitment right from identifying the vacancies displaying the same, notifying them, inviting the applicants, screening the applicants, interviewing them, selecting them, and recruiting them and appointing them(giving an organizational position in the organization— all theses processes constitute the recruitment cycles

What is Qualification Deficiency? How will you come to know that a Person does not have certain skills/qualificatio ns? (This was posed after I said that I worked on Training and Events also).

  

Generally the required qualifications are stored in Required Qualifications (Infotype 5129).  So any deficient qualifications can be viewed in this infotype.

What is IT 41 used for? How do I default IT 41?

  

Date Specifications (Info type 0041).  The following information is recorded in the Date Specifications info type (0041). The Date type specifies the type of information.  A concrete Date type (specified by the user) is used in a series of reports, for example to evaluate an entry date that cannot be derived from the organizational assignment history but which is stored in the Date Specifications info type(0041).   This info type can be used in payroll as well as for the leave program.  The standard system contains twelve combinations of Date type and Date. If you require more than twelve date specifications for an employee at the same time, you can use time constraint 3.

 

Suppose the client wants me the vacancy to be displayed on a website as well as ESS. How should I do it? (I only know ESS means Employee Self Service, please explain about ESS also).

  

Employee Self-Serviceenables employees to create, display, and change their own HR-related data in the Enterprise Portal generally related to.  Benefits and Payments,, Working Time, Career and Job, Employee Search, Personal Data, Travel Management, Corporate Information and Life and Work Events.  So the kind of data the employees can edit, change or delete depending upon the authorizations the employees (users and roles) have.  The authorization to have access to the vacancies by employees is given, generally the vacancies will be displayed for all the employees i.e all the employees will have authorizations.  

What is internal recruitment ?

Internal recruitment is search for internal applicants. when you integrate with personal development, you can use profile match up which help to search for resources internally.

Also  In recruitment it is represented by ‘P’ as Person and ‘AP” as external person.

What are problems generally faced while posting result to FICO ?

Normally mismatching of amount get posted.

What is controlling area, what does it do, and how were is it assigned ?

Controlling area is under of FI person which helps to set for costing purposes also based on thses fiscal variant is set.

What is the purpose of creating symbolic a/c, what is transaction code for same ? Can we assign one symbolic a/c to multiple wage types ?

It depends upon your payrol requirement to create salary head like expense account etc.

What is REPORT VARIANT FOR OFF CYCLE ACTIVITIES, what do we do in this step ?

Variant is to save all input field parameters.  once you saved as a variant , you can use the same for future purposes.

If we have to create multiple positions, what method OR tool we can use to avoid errors due to creating them manually.

You can create muliple position by LSMW or batch programs for the Tcode PP01 or PPOCE

What do is LANDSCAPE in SAP Project, I think its related to no. of servers used, Pls correct me if I am wrong, Or what it is ?

It is related to Basis

What is the role of a administrator in PA ?

To restrict access to Personnel administration based on PA/PSA.

Administrator: we come across for Personnel admininstration, Time management, and Payroll in sap .

Each admiinistrator is reponsible for each individual activity.  You can get the name of the administrator in the pay slip so the employee for any clarification he can meet the responsible administrator  (accessed through payslip)

This administrtor (is created in PA of PM) is responsible for recruitment.

What is golive actually ? What is the role of a functional consultant in it ?

Go live is transfering of data from Development server to Production server.

  Development —–>  Quality server

In Quality you need to Unit, Integration testing, Once it is OK in Qulaity server,

  Then you need

  Development —-> Production                                 

How to group employees for their allowances in payroll?

Go to basic salary of india in Payroll india and group the employee first depending on the allowances to be paid and this is 
applied for even differantiating the employees into groups depending on their pay structures.

In OM, how to get the details for group of employees (ex.) group of Drivers in the organisation?

Drivers can be identified depending on their position at which they are working and you can have a different job codes for them who do you want to look into.

How is Time managment and payroll is integrated?

TM MGMT and Payroll are integrated in ways are time data is collected from the info type 0007 and these hours are taken in basic as Number of hours worked  or utilizwed, and even with time evaluation and last with schemas integration.

X000 schema carries xt00 and these data can be transfered between other modlues.

What are the other modules integrated with OM?

OM contains all the modules to be integrated, depending client requirement it is done. As OM-PA, OM -RECT, OM-BENEFITS, OM-TRAINING & EVENT MGMT, OM – PD AND OTHERS.

CHECK THIS BY GOING TO IMG –> CTRL F AND GIVE INTEGRATION WITH OM ) 
CHECK ALL OF THEM , GO FOR PROGRAM

RHINTE00 PHINTE10 , PRHINTE20 , PHINTE30 AND 40 ALSO.

In TM, if group of employees get 10 days of annual leave, what will be the time evaluation status?

TIME evaluation shows the exact details maintained over to the employee through his 2006 and 2001. if they are all allowed to take leave it shows leave as paid or unpaid depending on the configuration done by the consultant for these situation. in 
processing time data in payroll or even Time evaluation ( Valuation of absences )  also.

Find the scenario and give the result : A,B,C are employees, where  A,B will get basic,HRA,DA. C gets Basic and DA. How to group for the allowances?.

Allowances are paid depending on his gradation and even wages are also paid on this criteria, if AB are paid bas, hra and DA then take three wage types ans assign to the ES Grouping and don’t give HRA wage type to C.

Check basic salary of inda and ALlowances in indian payroll thorougly, bcos first of all v have to undestand this first and
then you have to decide the emp sub gtroupings.