ThoughtAsylum

Recently I was working on processing a file of data and in order to deduplicate and sort it, I decided to employ Windows’ PowerShell scripting functionality. It’s a very powerful tool-set and perfectly suited to what I needed to do, but I ran afoul of a small detail that caused me some confusion at first but that I resolved in the end. Just in case anyone else comes upon such an issue I thought it might be useful to write up the problem and the simple solution.

Every quarter SAP update their SuccessFactors product line and here is my review for the updates to the Employee Central Service Centre module.

Every quarter SAP update their SuccessFactors product line and here is my review for the updates to the platform and underlying technologies.

Every quarter SAP update their SuccessFactors product line and here is my review for the updates to the reporting functionality.

Every quarter SAP update their SuccessFactors product line and here is my review for the updates to the Jam (collaboration) module and the platform’s mobile functionality.

I’ve been on Twitter a while now, but since starting in my current business role I’ve had a separate account for my work posts. I’ve been posting non-work things to @sylumer and work items to @SAP_Stephen. However last month I changed my work Twitter account and in this post I’m going to talk a little about the reason and approach.

Recently I was using an Excel spreadsheet to prepare some data and I had a constraint to work to in the number of lines of data the target system could display. Unfortunately rather than rows of data in Excel this was to match against rows of data in a single Excel cell. So the question is, how can you count the number of rows in an Excel cell?

Something I find I need to do quite regularly is take a snap shot of a folder. For the purposes of saving space (and often for passing on the folder to someone else) I like to compress the folder into a ZIP archive and prefix the current time stamp to the file name. This little activity was perfect for a bit of automation and so I created a little script in XYplorer (my Windows file manager of choice) to make this as easy as clicking a button.

2017 has passed into history and so I’m taking my annual look back at what’s been getting the page hits on thoughtasylum.com and a personal look at the past year.

Today I’m going to share an XYplorer script for combining files through concatenation - i.e. merging them together by appending the files to one another in order to create a new combined file. Whilst it isn’t the sort of script I use everyday it does speed up the occasions when I need to combine plain text based files into a single file; in my case often for post-test data loading.

Whilst I’m not a presenter on radio or podcast show, I do actually spend a fair amount of time speaking to people via my computers. I join conference calls, webinars and everything in between. For this I have my trusty Blue Yeti microphone. Not a top of the line microphone, but a notable improvement over the USB Jabra Speakerphone I used previously; though I still use this as my speaker and as my travel microphone.

Another quick but useful script for the Windows file manager XYplorer today when using it alongside my favourite screenshot application on Windows, Greenshot.

In my work, I work with PDFs on a daily basis. Typically I’m generating them as documentation, or reading documentation. But I also occasionally work with PDFs in different ways. Pulling out pages, replacing them with others, or building entirely new ones. When I’m doing that on my work laptop running windows, I fall back to using the PDF Toolkit utility. Whilst there are visual interfaces to use this tool I most often identify a need to do something with a PDF when I’m working with the file itself. For that reason I’ve created some XYplorer scripts that make accessing common PDF manipulations even easier.

Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC) is an unusual SuccessFactors solution in that it isn’t really a single module. Rather it is a combination of modules that integrate with SuccessFactors to provide an HR service desk with self-service functionality as well as the usual incident* management functionality. * If ‘incidents’ seems an unfamiliar term, it may be that they are known simply as ‘tickets’ or ‘cases’ in your organisation. As a result, there are different stages at which updates are applied to different systems and in turn, ECSC can receive updated functionality in a staggered manner. However, by the time this post is released all of the details should be applicable to production ECSC systems. Whilst there are many integrations, hooks and instances of building on top of other systems involved in deploying and running ECSC I’ll be specifically covering the following areas in this review of the Q1 2018 releases. Ask HR – the employee’s interface to ECSC. C4C (SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer, Service) – the HR service agent’s interface to ECSC. Languages – a brief not on updated language support. Product News - A new ECSC offering from SAP.

Do you use SAP SuccessFactors? Well if you do and you haven’t already read through the quarterly release review articles from Zalaris, then you really should. The team go in depth on a module by module basis picking out the key things that customers need to know about. Find out what the impact will be on you and your organisation. Get tips on what features and options to use and what you might want to steer clear of or simply ignore at this point.

The BBC Micro:Bit (or MicroBit) is a great, cheap piece of kit for budding coders. It isn’t Raspberry Pi Zero, but it is geared around helping develop coding skills in visual blocks, JavaScript, or Python that you can see interacting on the device without the need to have lots of additional hardware. It has LEDs, GPIO pins, buttons, a gyroscope, some rudimentary options for measuring temperatures and light levels. It’s just a solid little gadget that can be found in many UK schools today. I’ve been using them as an option for my children for coding and experimenting for some time, and there are some rough edges - particularly around streamlining the process of getting the compiled code onto the device.

With the second release of 2018, SAP SuccessFactors is releasing a handful of notable updates for Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC). Data Protection and Privacy – some key info for everyone with interest in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Machine Learning – new functionality to automate some ticket related decisions. Ask HR Enhancements – some good news for global implementations and service agents. Responsive User Interface News – an update on the Fiori based user interface for Cloud for Customer.

My colleagues and I at Zalaris have been hard at work once again analysing the information from SAP in relation to the SAP SuccessFactors update that dropped into production environments this last weekend (3 June 2018). We try to distil the wealth of information available into the core aspects that we feel customers and those with an interest in keeping up to date with SuccessFactors can really benefit from. We share our thoughts and insights alongside the news of what’s new and what’s changing in order to ensure you understand the benefits and impact each release brings.

A lot of my work revolves around documentation and in business, Microsoft Word documents still rule. Word of course comes with it’s own built-in version tracking feature, but by default this feature is enabled. It has to be purposefully enabled as it can make documents confusing and cumbersome for those who don’t fully understand how to use it. Unfortunately from time to time, people send me document revisions where they have neglected to enable track changes, and it is important to identify what has actually changed. In these scenarios, we can fall back to Word’s document compare feature to identify the changes. Normally, you would open Word, navigate to each file in turn and trigger the compare. This is all fine and good, but as someone who is usually working with the files directly in XYplorer (my Windows file manager of choice), I figured it was more efficient to trigger it from within the app.

Occasionally, I have a need to know the precise version of the OS of the Mac I’m using. This is particularly true when I get involved with beta testing software for developers. Whilst I can get the information manually each time, this was something that was ripe for automation. To that end I put together a shell script-based TextExpander snippet to output the information for me.

Drafts is an iOS app that’s been around for quite some time. In it’s fifth iteration it has become a veritable power house of an app with advanced automation features and a pro subscription option to match; though there’s also now a free tier too. For many, Drafts is a bit of a conundrum. Not fitting neatly into categorisation as a text editor, an automation tool, or anything else. It is quite distinct, yet overlaps many traditional app areas. But today I thought I’d give you some reasons as to why you should use Drafts.

Whereas many of the specific modules in this release are receiving low volumes, small updates, or a combination of the two, the underlying platform functionality for SuccessFactors is receiving a wide array of updates including many significant ones. Normally we’d go deep on just the key ones, but this time around, it’s going to be a wider whirlwind tour.

We’re over halfway through 2018 and in this release, we see SAP pull back a little and work on stability and tweaks rather than lots of new features. But while there’s no game-changing functionality in this Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC) release, we do see some notable incremental changes and some important news for the future. Let’s dive straight in with a look at what’s new for employees in Ask HR.

The Q3 2018 release certainly brings one of the more unusual updates around reporting and analytics in SuccessFactors. To begin with, SAP is releasing a set of updates around the report tool, known as BIRT (Business Intelligent and Reporting Tool), and considered by most SuccessFactors users as a legacy reporting tool. Alongside this, they are also applying some updates to Report Centre and setting up some important changes for the Q4 2018 release. It is certainly quite unusual, so what’s going on?

It’s that time again. SAP have put another quarterly release of their HCM suite (SAP SuccessFactors) into preview environments. As always, my colleagues and I at Zalaris have been digging into the updates to figure out what’s important and what has the greatest potential. With GDPR now live, this quarter does not disappoint as it branches out in numerous ways, though you’ll still see some security and data related updates for some of the modules.

I occasionally get mentions on my favourite podcasts, and it was a lovely surprise to hear my name mentioned on Episode 7 of the relatively new Automators podcast.

With the move from Workflow to Shortcuts, I’ve come a little unstuck with a new issue around sharing them on iOS. Previously, if I wanted to get the name of a workflow and it’s URL in a Markdown link format, I could use a workflow to grab the title of the download page of the URL, which would match to the name of the workflow. After that it was just a case of wrapping the details in some Markdown syntax and we were done. Unfortunately that approach doesn’t work any more, but I have come up with a workaround utilising Scriptable.

As 2018 draws to a close, SAP is set to release a good range of feature updates to Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC) users. While information on Ask HR is oddly scarce, there’s plenty of Cloud for Customer updates to keep everyone very happy.

We’re fast approaching the end of the year and so it’s time for SAP to roll-out the last of their SAP SuccessFactors HCM product suite quarterly updates for the period. In Preview systems at the moment it seems SAP have been pushing as hard as ever to get some great updates out to clients. As ever, my colleagues and I at Zalaris have been taking apart the information about the release and figuring out what’s actually important, and what has the greatest benefit potential for the customers. There’s certainly been a lot of new and interesting updates to pick through, so it’s a pretty jam packed review overall.

Shortcuts on iOS is a wonderfully versatile tool and I use it for a wide variety of things. Sometimes I even use it hands free as Shortcuts support Siri trigger words. Unfortunately, the shortcut’s subsequent interaction tends to be rather one way unless you are able to access your device’s keyboard. But it is just a tendency. Shortcuts can still interact with you on basic decision making operations and I use this in a number of shortcuts, including, most notably, a briefing routine that not only varies by time of day, but allows me to customise the content as it runs. In this post I’m going to show you the basic building blocks for how this works.