Twice a year, SuccessFactors sends us a care package full of interesting release features and updates to the solution. After looking at this spring release, I selected a few interesting items that are sure to pique your interest.

In this release, collaboration and employee experience are really emphasized by a series of native integrations with Microsoft Teams. These integrations are available for multiple aspects and modules of the system and are sure to increase engagement and adoption of SuccessFactors. For this blog post, I decided to highlight a few of these new features & MS Teams integrations that will drive us forward (and hopefully lower the number of emails we receive every day!)

1. Receive reminders of Learning Assignments in Microsoft Teams

After enabling this feature and the MS Teams integration, you will be able to leverage the following automated reminders messages:

• Employees can now receive an automated message in Teams when they have learning due within the next 30 days. 
• Managers can now receive an automated message in Teams when a learning assignment is pending their approval.

Instead of sending email notifications that tend to get lost in our inbox, this latest feature offers a new way of engaging with users!

Reference number: WRK-233
Type: New
Lifecycle: General Availability

2. Use Continuous Feedback in the SAP SuccessFactors App in Microsoft Teams

Every time you remove friction to share and request feedback about your work, the amount and quality of that feedback increases. It is now possible to request and give feedback directly from MS Teams when using the Continuous Feedback feature from Continuous Performance Management (CPM).

When giving feedback, for example, users will simply receive a form directly in a Teams chat.

Source: What's New Viewer on the help.sap.com

The feedback can then be viewed and will be synched to SAP SuccessFactors CPM.

Reference number: WRK-271
Type: New
Lifecycle: General Availability

3. Start Microsoft Teams Chat from Quickcard and People Profile Header

It is now possible to link MS Teams with SuccessFactors to allow a quick link to initiate a chat in Teams from the employee Quickcard.

This will be useful in so many ways. Think of a new employee looking at the org chart. They will now be able to simply click at the Teams link to start talking with their new coworker, or an HR Manager looking at the data of an employee who just requested a long term leave of absence and wants to talk to him or her. Maybe a Payroll Administrator is validating a data issue on the profile of an employee and has a question to ask them. These are simply a few of many examples to showcase the benefits of this new feature.

When it comes down to it, this only removes a few clicks (changing applications from SF to Teams, click on the search, type the name, etc.), but these small tasks that add no value do accumulate, and being able to simply click on the Teams link will remove friction and also help ensure to send the Teams message to the appropriate John Smith (or Simon Tremblay if you are from Quebec) in your organization!

Reference number: WRK-113
Type: New
Lifecycle: General Availability

The 1H 2023 Release includes many new features other than these Microsoft integrations with SuccessFactors, but these stood out for me, and I'm really excited to start using these daily. So, if you're like me and prefer using Teams over getting bombarded with tons emails making your inbox look daunting, I think these new features can make a great impact in your organization.

The IN-RGY SuccessFactors team also did a great job looking at the 416 items of the release to identify what they think matters the most for our customers. If you are interested in learning more about them and how our Application Management Support services team can help you put them in place, contact us!