Additional details can be found 
Continuing the trend of last year, I am excited to share the innovations and changes in 2021 for the Framework area. Hope this helps you to get a quick recap and get all ready for 2022!
SAP Task Center
SAP Task Center is the central inbox for tasks in the Intelligent Enterprise. It supports approvals from several lines of business like SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba and SAP Concur. SAP Task Center is supported as a Web Inbox as well as on the SAP Start mobile app.
SAP Task center is now generally available, We now support the majority of SuccessFactors Todo task types. Details on task types from SuccessFactors supported in SAP Task Center can be found here.
Business Rules
Additional option for Effective-Dated Objects in the lookup function: We now provide a third option in the Effective Date dropdown in the Lookup function. It allows customers/partners to specify the effective date or period in the expressions of the Lookup collection filter. This new option is available for effective dated MDF objects.
Instance Refresh
Latest home page support: The Instance Refresh tool now supports copying of the latest home page cards and configurations from a source instance to a target instance.
New validation check: To ensure data consistency, we have introduced a new validation. If the instance refresh request for HXM Suite, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, or a combination of both products fails, then the next refresh will be blocked until the failed application is restored to its original state. Please refer to this link for further details.
Admin Alerts
Email Notifications:We are excited to provide a long-awaited feature to send email notifications for Admin Alerts. The notifications can be configured by alert type. You can also define frequency (daily, weekly) to specify how often an email notification will be sent. All this can be customized at a user level providing a personalised experience.This blog in the customer community describes the new functionality and how to set it up in detail.
Additional Fields:You can now add custom fields to alert objects to display more information in alerts. You can fill the custom fields with values from application objects. Currently, supported alerts are: Time Management Alerts, Time Data Collision, Time Valuation Alert.
All details on prerequisites and supported alert types can be found here.
Mass Actions: The mass selection for an admin alerts type will now apply to all alerts of this type. So far, only the alerts which were visible on the screen were selected, which potentially led to the need for multiple scrolling and selecting.
The details of this enhancement to the user experience can be found here.
Security Center
Security Center is now made available as an independent tool in Admin Center outside of Integration Center. We have added certain key capabilities to make the integrations more secure.
Integration Center
Secure communication: To enable secure communication with external systems, we have provided Certificate-Based authentication support for SOAP / REST-based Outbound integrations. The certificates can be managed in the Security center.
Read Access Logging support: Read Access Logging (RAL) for sensitive personal data fields is now supported in Integration Center for outbound integrations. To perform RAL, enable Read Access Logging from the Options page in Integration Center.
Execute with Exceptions for REST outbound integrations: For REST outbound integrations, we have introduced an option to continue the execution even with exceptions. This functionality can be enabled using the ‘Execute with exceptions’ checkbox in Destination Settings. Execution will continue for all exceptions (such as 500 Internal Server Error or 503 Service Unavailable error). However, execution STOPS for ‘401 Unauthorized’ or ‘403 Forbidden’ exceptions even if the checkbox is selected.
3rd Party Integrations
Middleware based integrations: Certificate-based authentication is now supported for standard third-party integration packages on SAP Cloud Integration and DELL Boomi. Certificate based authentication provides a more secure form of authentication option to its users. Compared to HTTP Basic Authentication, Certificate-based Authentication is more secure as it doesn't require users to provide their passwords during authentication.
Metadata Framework (MDF)
MDF Workflow Tasks on Latest Home Page and in SAP Task Center: All workflows based on MDF objects (pre-delivered as well as custom objects) are now available and can be approved on the latest Home Page as well as in SAP Task Center.
You can execute quick approvals on a Home Page card and add comments to the approval. Both, the latest Home Page as well as SAP Task Center allow approvals on the Web as well as on Mobile.More information can be found here.
Introduction of Object Categories - Since the 1H 2021 release MDF allows to categorize generic objects to determine the type of data an object represents (e.g. configuration, transactional, technical, uncategorized). In future releases, object categories will help define the default behaviour and apply certain restrictions to the objects based on the type of data they represent. For pre-delivered objects, the object category is predefined and cannot be changed. For custom objects, it can be set by the customer.More information can be found here and a demo of configuring object categories can be seen here.
Deprecation-Todo category configuration: The configuration of Todo categories on MDF objects is deprecated with the 2H 2021 release and will no longer be available with the 1H 2022 release.
In this context four MDF Todo Categories are deprecated with the 2H 2021 release and will be removed with the 1H 2022 release.For more information please see the Blog on our Customer Community.
Guardrails for Object Definition Configuration of Picklist and Picklist Value: Picklists are central object and are used by all applications. Incorrect object definitions can lead to unexpected behaviour and errors. With guardrails described below, this shall be prevented. Since the 2H 2021 release the following guardrails apply when you make changes to the object definition of GO Picklist and its composite Picklist Value:
Furtherinformation can be found here.
MDF Best Practices webinar: narendra.lahoti along with the MDF team recently conducted a superb session on MDF best practices, this will help customers and consultants to use MDF optimally and get the maximum value! In case you have missed the session, please refer to the recording here
Configuration Center
In 1H’ 2021 we have announced the General Availability (GA) of Configuration Center. This tool offers a categorized view and download of configurations based on SuccessFactors product offering. This will help admins to troubleshoot issues easily and compare configurations across different tenants in their landscape. The tool also offers transport capability, that allows admins to pick and choose and bundle different configurations and transport those across tenants. Further details are available here
Execution Manager
Revised log retention period: Execution Manager logs are now retained for 15 days by default. This is applicable to all the logs from Integration Center, Scheduled Jobs, Middleware Integrations and Pre-delivered Integrations.
The purpose of the Execution Manager is to monitor exceptions. If the integration, process or event has failed then logs in execution manager could be used to troubleshoot the issue and fix it based on the root cause analysis. Usually, such failures are/should be addressed quickly. Keeping these logs for months causes accumulation of unreferenced data increasing the maintenance cost, cause performance issues and sometimes data center stability issues.
These are few of the many innovation we have release in 2021.I hope that these enhancements will improve the administration and implementation experience for our customers. Thanks a lot for your time to read this blog.
SAP Task Center
SAP Task Center is the central inbox for tasks in the Intelligent Enterprise. It supports approvals from several lines of business like SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba and SAP Concur. SAP Task Center is supported as a Web Inbox as well as on the SAP Start mobile app.
SAP Task center is now generally available, We now support the majority of SuccessFactors Todo task types. Details on task types from SuccessFactors supported in SAP Task Center can be found here.
Business Rules
Additional option for Effective-Dated Objects in the lookup function: We now provide a third option in the Effective Date dropdown in the Lookup function. It allows customers/partners to specify the effective date or period in the expressions of the Lookup collection filter. This new option is available for effective dated MDF objects.
Instance Refresh
Latest home page support: The Instance Refresh tool now supports copying of the latest home page cards and configurations from a source instance to a target instance.
New validation check: To ensure data consistency, we have introduced a new validation. If the instance refresh request for HXM Suite, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, or a combination of both products fails, then the next refresh will be blocked until the failed application is restored to its original state. Please refer to this link for further details.
Admin Alerts
Email Notifications:We are excited to provide a long-awaited feature to send email notifications for Admin Alerts. The notifications can be configured by alert type. You can also define frequency (daily, weekly) to specify how often an email notification will be sent. All this can be customized at a user level providing a personalised experience.This blog in the customer community describes the new functionality and how to set it up in detail.
Additional Fields:You can now add custom fields to alert objects to display more information in alerts. You can fill the custom fields with values from application objects. Currently, supported alerts are: Time Management Alerts, Time Data Collision, Time Valuation Alert.
All details on prerequisites and supported alert types can be found here.
Mass Actions: The mass selection for an admin alerts type will now apply to all alerts of this type. So far, only the alerts which were visible on the screen were selected, which potentially led to the need for multiple scrolling and selecting.
The details of this enhancement to the user experience can be found here.
Security Center
Security Center is now made available as an independent tool in Admin Center outside of Integration Center. We have added certain key capabilities to make the integrations more secure.
- Permission enhancement
- Tile Level Permission: View, Create, Edit & Delete Permission per tile
- Security Center can be accessed from Admin Center after enabling permissions for at least one tile
- Navigation: Manage Permission Roles > Admin Permission > Manage Security Center
Note: By default, all existing Integration Center users will have these permissions enabled.
- Harmonized user experience - Security Center tiles have been harmonized to provide an identical look and feel to improve user experience. Icons to notify expiry status and mandatory fields have been added.
- Import of External CA-signed certificates is now allowed (X509 Certificates)
- Import of Root CA certificate is allowed (HTTPS Trust Certificates)
- Key edit capability and decryption key generation for Scheduled jobs are supported (Other Keys)
Integration Center
Secure communication: To enable secure communication with external systems, we have provided Certificate-Based authentication support for SOAP / REST-based Outbound integrations. The certificates can be managed in the Security center.
Read Access Logging support: Read Access Logging (RAL) for sensitive personal data fields is now supported in Integration Center for outbound integrations. To perform RAL, enable Read Access Logging from the Options page in Integration Center.
Execute with Exceptions for REST outbound integrations: For REST outbound integrations, we have introduced an option to continue the execution even with exceptions. This functionality can be enabled using the ‘Execute with exceptions’ checkbox in Destination Settings. Execution will continue for all exceptions (such as 500 Internal Server Error or 503 Service Unavailable error). However, execution STOPS for ‘401 Unauthorized’ or ‘403 Forbidden’ exceptions even if the checkbox is selected.
3rd Party Integrations
Middleware based integrations: Certificate-based authentication is now supported for standard third-party integration packages on SAP Cloud Integration and DELL Boomi. Certificate based authentication provides a more secure form of authentication option to its users. Compared to HTTP Basic Authentication, Certificate-based Authentication is more secure as it doesn't require users to provide their passwords during authentication.
Metadata Framework (MDF)
MDF Workflow Tasks on Latest Home Page and in SAP Task Center: All workflows based on MDF objects (pre-delivered as well as custom objects) are now available and can be approved on the latest Home Page as well as in SAP Task Center.
You can execute quick approvals on a Home Page card and add comments to the approval. Both, the latest Home Page as well as SAP Task Center allow approvals on the Web as well as on Mobile.More information can be found here.
Introduction of Object Categories - Since the 1H 2021 release MDF allows to categorize generic objects to determine the type of data an object represents (e.g. configuration, transactional, technical, uncategorized). In future releases, object categories will help define the default behaviour and apply certain restrictions to the objects based on the type of data they represent. For pre-delivered objects, the object category is predefined and cannot be changed. For custom objects, it can be set by the customer.More information can be found here and a demo of configuring object categories can be seen here.
Deprecation-Todo category configuration: The configuration of Todo categories on MDF objects is deprecated with the 2H 2021 release and will no longer be available with the 1H 2022 release.
In this context four MDF Todo Categories are deprecated with the 2H 2021 release and will be removed with the 1H 2022 release.For more information please see the Blog on our Customer Community.
Guardrails for Object Definition Configuration of Picklist and Picklist Value: Picklists are central object and are used by all applications. Incorrect object definitions can lead to unexpected behaviour and errors. With guardrails described below, this shall be prevented. Since the 2H 2021 release the following guardrails apply when you make changes to the object definition of GO Picklist and its composite Picklist Value:
- If the visibility of a field is changed to a disallowed value, an error message will be raised. Such changes made in earlier releases will be overwritten.
- Custom extensions such as custom fields or business rules are no longer allowed for these objects. Existing extensions are allowed but are recommended to be removed.
Furtherinformation can be found here.
MDF Best Practices webinar: narendra.lahoti along with the MDF team recently conducted a superb session on MDF best practices, this will help customers and consultants to use MDF optimally and get the maximum value! In case you have missed the session, please refer to the recording here
Configuration Center
In 1H’ 2021 we have announced the General Availability (GA) of Configuration Center. This tool offers a categorized view and download of configurations based on SuccessFactors product offering. This will help admins to troubleshoot issues easily and compare configurations across different tenants in their landscape. The tool also offers transport capability, that allows admins to pick and choose and bundle different configurations and transport those across tenants. Further details are available here
Execution Manager
Revised log retention period: Execution Manager logs are now retained for 15 days by default. This is applicable to all the logs from Integration Center, Scheduled Jobs, Middleware Integrations and Pre-delivered Integrations.
The purpose of the Execution Manager is to monitor exceptions. If the integration, process or event has failed then logs in execution manager could be used to troubleshoot the issue and fix it based on the root cause analysis. Usually, such failures are/should be addressed quickly. Keeping these logs for months causes accumulation of unreferenced data increasing the maintenance cost, cause performance issues and sometimes data center stability issues.
These are few of the many innovation we have release in 2021.I hope that these enhancements will improve the administration and implementation experience for our customers. Thanks a lot for your time to read this blog.
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