ERC - is there a chance of fields getting deleted?

[ashwinipingle]

Hi All,

I am new to SAP HCM/ERC etc.

My question is for E-recruitment Portal - Is there a chance of fields getting deleted from the system? How soon can we add them back? Is it very difficult to enable/activate the lost fields? Is there any document from SAP (e.g. Service Market Place) which provides a list of all standard available fields for ERC?

Sorry if the question is silly but I need to verify the activities of our vendor.

Ashwini Pingle

[romanweise · Accepted solution]

Hello Ashwini,

in the default setup of eRecruiting all available fields are visible. This was a bit different in a previous release but this is a topic of the past. While your question leaves some room for interpretation on the specific issue, I'll try my best to cover a wider set of aspcts when it comes to UI changes of eRec.

If a customer does not require a certain field there are different configuration options. In most cases you use web dynpro configuration to remove the field from the recruiter, manager or candidate user interface. Some elements of the application have own dedicated configurations. To remove a workset (aka query) from the recruiter dashboard you use the POWL customizing. To remove a column from a workset of the dashboard you change the feeder class of the workset. The columns of the candidate selection list is configured in a customizing table via IMG. The number of adresses and phone numbers is configuration in a customizing table as well. Candidate startpage and Roadmaps are a mixture of customizing table entries and web dynpro configuration. In some cases you will use portal content development to define your own portal role if you do not want to have certain applications available. So it depends on the field / function you remove what is the correct approach to remove and reactivate it.

Unfortunately I also had to take over systems into maintenance in which the implementation guys did not use the correct solution for changing the ui. So I found modificated or enhanced web dynpro components where a web dynpro configuration would have done the job without the long term maintenance issue involved with modifying / enhancing standard sap objects. So if you were not part of the implementation it is not sure that the things are as expected and more detailed analysis is required.

From the time perspective it is usually a matter of minutes or an hour or two to remove or reactivate a field if you are experienced in this kind of things and know the approach used. If you start learning the topic you should plan at least a week. Some dependencies are not documented well. Especially for the recruiter and recruiting administrator ui which is using the floor plan manager with its multiple layers of web dynpro application and tripwires involed web dynpro configuration takes some time to master. (as a general guideline: do not use administrator mode for configuration, this is horrible to maintain over the system lifecycle)

As far as I know there is no list of all eRec standard fields. I never encountered one during my years doing eRec projects. But as I am quite confident in my knowledge of the system I do not need one so I have to admit that I did not invest a lot of time in looking for it. You can check the eRec infotype tables HRP51## for an initial information on the fields but be aware that there are more fields in the infotypes than in the UI. This is due to historic reasons. SAP reworked the user interface of eRecruiting with the change from release 200 to 300 (over ten years ago) and from 300 to 600 (for candidate) and 600 EhP3 to EhP4 (recruiter and recruiting administrator). With these changes some fields got obsolete and remain as artefacts in the tables. On the other hand eRec is using the business partner and the central address service to store data. So not all fields are in the infotype tables. In the end you can only check the web dynpro componend views to be sure. All eRec ui for the current release can be find in packages PAOC_RCF_UI_SELF_SERVICES (candidate and manager) and PAOC_RCF_WD_UI (recruiter and recruiting admin). remember that you can always righ click the user interface in the portal and the technical help will show which component it is.

If your issue is restricted to a certain user, a removed field could also be an issue of personalization. If activated users can remove fields / elements from the user interface. The fields can usually be reactivated by the user itself but it sometimes requires to right click on the correct spot of the user interface. This can be quite tricky. So it is usually the easier to simply delete the user personalization using ICF service wd_analyze_config_user for web dynpro configuration, report powl_d01 for dashboard personalization ot the portal maintenance in case of portal element personalization.  

Hope that helps for your issue.

Kind regards

Roman

[ashwinipingle · Accepted solution]

Hi Roman,

Thanks so very much for the elaborate reply. Much appreciated !!

Regards,

Ashwini