-------------------------------------------------------------------------------SAP HR or SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) is one of the largest modules in the SAP R/3 system which

consists of many submodules like 1.Organizational Management 2.Personnel Administration 3.Recruitment 4.Time Management 5.Payroll 6.Benefits 7.Compensation Management 8.Personnel Cost Planning 9.Budget Management 10.Personnel Development 11.Training & Event Management 12.Travel Management 13.Environmental Health & Safety (under the SAP HR node in SAP Easy Access) Many of these sub modules are further sub divided into many components for eg Time Management is further divided into Time Administration, Shift Planning, Incentive Wages and Time Sheet. Environment Health & Safety is further divided into Occupational Health & Industrial Hygiene & Safety. With the advent of mySAP, SAP HR was then called mySAP HR. What got added with "mySAP" (mark this word) was the web services like ESS (Employee Self-Service) and the MSS (Manager's Self Service) which gave empowerment to the employees and managers employees to better manage their own data and managers to better manage their own departments/divisions. This became the turning point for SAP HR to shift from being a data repository to a strategic tool where the HR departments now focused more of strategic tasks than administrative ones which were now offloaded to the employees and managers using these self services. Looking back at the earlier days, when the HR Head required a headcount report from all his divisions, it would mean asking for each division to provide data and than receiving this data at the HR Headquarters. Compiling the same and providing it to the management could possibly take a few days to maybe weeks where the data accuracy could be questioned, data could be redundant etc. This was due to the fact that the HR data would be sitting across in different systems in different locations and the IT practices being followed differently (if not HR) at these different locations.If one could not get an accurate HR report one could wonder trying to get information of HR integrated to other functions like Logistics etc would have made life so difficult for an HR consultant.

With the advent of SAP , and the SAP HR module , all the HR information for an organization/company got collated at one place in a very structured manner.To find a specific information for an employee (one who is on the payroll of the organization) or applicant(one who intend to be on the payroll of an organization), all one needed to do is use a transaction like "PA20" which is Display HR master data( note this is so important because this is the basis of an SAP system ie it is a transactional system) and enter the 4 digit infotype number to view an infotype. To see the address of an employee use the transaction "PA20" and go the Display HR master data screen, enter the unique 8 digit employee number (this is the primary key to all employee information ), type infotype 0006for that employee and see the current information or history (using the list view)stored there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------[edit]INFOTYPES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Infotypes are also called information types and are pre-defined templates to enter sensible related information for an employee or applicant. for eg an address infotype would have fields like street & house no, city, pin code.This infotype is unique and is represented by an infotype number eg address has infotype no 0006. There other infotypes like 1.0000 - Actions (to capture employee movement info in the orgnization) 2.0001 - Organizational Assignment (to capture employee positioning in the organization) 3.0002 - Personal Data 4.0006 - Address 5.0007 - Planned Working Time (Store planned working hours for the employee.) 6.0008 - Basic Salary 7.0009 - Bank Details 8.0014 - Recurring Payment 9.0015 - Additional payment 10.0016 - Contract Elements 11.2006 - Absence Quotas I hope this gives you some idea of what an infotype is. This must have raised a question in many minds that "Hey ! I got the offer during my recruitment so how come this is being referred to after hiring?" Well thats simple - this is because all your relevant data that was captured during recruitment was transferred to the the master (called HR master data)during the hiring process. So how was it captured in recruitment?

Well, this was captured using recruitment actions like shortlist candidate, for interview, make offer, offer accepted till you join the organization and sign the joining letter when your data actually gets transferred from the Recruitment module to the Personnel Administration module.Again this data was captured in recruitment infotypes. So we can now get an idea that in SAP HR ,all data is captured in infotypes. [edit]INFOTYPES CATEGORISED Infotype 0000-0999 - Personal Administration Infotype 1000-1999 - PD objects (for OM) Infotype 2000-2999 - Time Management Infotype 4000-4999 - Recruitment Infotype 9000-9999 - For Custom Development If you closely observe that many of the recruitment infotypes are clones of personnel administration infotypes.I hope this gives you some idea of what an infotype is. Lets look at what we mean by subtypes. A subtype is sub-categorization of an infotype. Not all infotypes are sub-categorized and hence only some required infotypes would have subtypes. Lets take the case of Address Infotype (IT 0006). Now we would like to use the same screen template to store different types of addresses like Permanent, Temporary, Office etc.This is because we would be capturing the same type of information which would require the same fields like Street No, City, Country, Pin Code etc to capture different address types information.SAP handles this by using subtypes for the Address Infotype (IT 0006). So to store any Address Information we would need to specify both the infotype and subtype. Certain other infotypes with subtypes are Dependents (0021), ID Data (0185) etc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------[edit]QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------[edit]INFOTYPES I have decided to answer all the questions directly to begin with now that you have some fundamentals explained and then go ahead with more discussions 1.What are info types ? Infotypes, known as information types are units of human resources information formed by grouping related data fields together. These are represented in the sap hr system by a unique 4 digit number eg. Personal Data (0002), Address (0006) etc. All customer infotypes fall in the number range from 9000 to 9999. The fields in the infotype would vary based on the country grouping for eg. if any employee belongs to country grouping 10 then

he would have the SSN no field in the Personal Data infotype which would not be seen in same infotype for country grouping 99. *Infotype no SAP HR sub module 1.0000-0999 Personal Administration (HR Master Data) 2.1000-1999 PD Infotypes ( OM etc) 3.2000-2999 Time Infotypes 4.4000-4999 Recruitment Infotypes [edit]PERSONNEL ACTIONS& HIRING ACTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------2.What are personnel actions? What is the transaction for executing personnel actions? Personnel Actions are the events of an employees employment history within the organization beginning from hiring an employee to termination of the employee.Each of these events need specific information to be captured. This is achieved in sap hr by grouping together infotypes called as infogroup which appear one after another in sequence to capture/change information in the infotypes whenever the personnel action is executed. Personnel Actions are executed by transaction pa40. 3.What are the important info types for a hiring action? The important infotypes for executing a hiring action are. 1.0000- Actions 2.0001- Organizational Assignment 3.0002- Personal Data 4.0003- Payroll Status ( this is automatically maintained by the sap system and not required to be maintained in the info group for hiring) 5.0006-Address 6.0007-Planned Working Time ( This should always be maintained before infotype 0008 Basic Pay) 7.0008- Basic Pay 8.0009- Bank Details 9.0016-Contract Elements 10.0041- Date Specifications 11.2006- ( For annual leave & sick leave) Note that it is the hiring action that allows you to assign an employee to the hr structures. [edit]ENTERPRISE & PERSONNEL STRUCTURE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------5.What is an enterprise structure?

The enterprise structure is one of the HR structures. The HR enterprise structure composition depends upon the hr administrative, time and payroll functions for that company. It comprises the client, company code, personal area, personnel subarea and the organization key. The hiring action assign an employee via infotype 0001- Organizational Assignment to the enterprise structure. The enterprise structure is the enterprise perspective of an employee. 6.What is a personnel structure? The organizational personnel structure describes how the employee is positioned in the organization. This is an individual perspective of an employee in an organization. It comprises of the employee group, the employee sub group and the organization plan (org unit, position, job) for that employee. The hiring action assigns an employee via infotype 0001- Organizational Assignment to the personnel structure. 7.What is the highest level of the enterprise structure? The client is the highest level of the enterprise structure. 8.What is company code? Is it defined in HR? If not where is it defined? The company code is an organization unit(this is different from the hr organization unit. Different modules like SD, MM, etc have their own organization structures with their own organization units) which has its own balance sheet and profit and loss account and is defined in the FI module. 9.What are personnel areas and its functions? Personnel (( Please note the spelling -> its Personnel (group of people)and not Personal(Individual)) Area is the sub division (understand these two words) of the company code and can represent a functional area or geographical location.These play a very important role in the time and payroll configurations. Each personnel area is unique to a company code (mark these words) and is represented by a 4 character code. 10.What are personnel sub areas and its functions? The further divisions (understand this word) of a personnel area are defined as personnel subareas. The functions are similar to the personnel area. Each personnel subarea too is unique to a personal area (mark these words) and is represented by a 4 character code. 14.How do you categorize the employee groups? Employee groups are categorized based on employee/staff regulations of work and pay such as

1.Active 2.Retiree/Pensioner .. and so on. These are also used to limit HR authorizations. 15.What are employee subgroups and what are the indicators set up using employee subgroups? Further division of the employee groups are called the employee subgroups such as under employee group 1-Active you could have employee subgroups such as AAHourly wage earner, AHSalaried Employee . And so on.The indicators are all employee sub area groupings for hr, time, payroll which are very critical to the sap hr implementation. They are also used to limit HR authorizations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------[edit]HR MASTER DATA & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------19.What are the various objects in an organizational plan?. How does any company use an organizational plan? 1.Tasks 2.Job 3.Position 4.Organizational unit 5.Cost Center etc The company organization structure and reporting structure is represented through the organization plan. The active plan version is the current plan version and the other plan versions are considered as various planning stages.Used for manpower planning. Normally plan version"01" is always made the active plan version.

24.What is the infotype to store personal data for an employee? Infotype 0002 Personal Data is used to store personal information of an employee. In some countries you could use infotype 0077- Additional Personal Data. 25.Where are the default values for working hours per period taken from in IT 0008? Taken from Infotype 0007- Planned Working Time. (Try and answer from which field???) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[edit]PAYROLL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wage types are payroll objects used to store payroll components which include the amount, number and rate. SAP has standard model wage types for different country versions and depending upon your payroll implementation you should copy model wage types from the correct country versions only.

[edit]INFOTYPE ATTRIBUTES Hello once again.Moving to the next question on infotype attributes. 44.What are the info type attributes? The attributes of the infotype are The Text describing the infotype The fields that make up the infotype The subtype for the infotype whether mandatory when creating the infotype The time constraint for the infotype The retroactive accounting triggers for time and payroll Entries in the payroll past are permissible or not Org assignment(IT0001) check for the employee required or not. Date settings for creation and selection of the infotype e.g. the infotype should always be created with end date equal to 31.12.9999. Technical details of the infotype such as single screen no, list screen no, activate list entry or not, the dialog module, structure and consultant database table connected to the infotype and something which we do not notice and thats the field Applicant (database)TAB which contains the name of a database table for an applicant infotype. Infotype views Country assignment/assignments of infotype These are all defined as per requirements in the standard infotypes provided by SAP but when you are defining custom infotypes in the 9000-9999 series range you need to make sure you correctly define the attributes required for the custom infotype. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------[edit]TIME MANAGEMENT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Time Management in SAP HR/HCM is all about recording all of the employees times, working and non working relevant to the organization , specific union agreements which decide the working hours of the employees, their breaks, their off days , their holidays , their overtimes , their compensatory offs, their leave entitlements and leaves etc. In a

typical factory environment which has thousands of employees, you can picture employees coming in shifts, swiping their smart cards or punching buttons into sophisticated electronic clock systems or the older clock systems with punch cards to record their every movement when they enter the plant or leave it. You got a time office which monitors these times and analyzes these times to make sure that the employees follow the time rules and regulations as per their union agreements or contracts. In many countries time records are stored as archives for a decade or more to settle labour disputes when these records need to be produced in the labour department or the law office so make sure that you have a correct archive strategy for all old time records and dont dispose them away. Before i end for today , i would like to comment that SAP Time Management is an ocean in itself and i do not think that there could possibly exist any time management package that could deliver so much that this does with its seamless integration to almost all areas of sap. It is absolutely flexible and meets the requirements of all possible scenarios that exist with organizations which is why i am fascinated with this sub module of sap hcm/hr. Before i get into more details of sap time management i wanted to describe the todays scenario of time management.Picture a Maintenance Engineer working in a service organization and performing maintenance tasks for different customers carrying a PDA or a mobile phone. Once he or she completes the task immediately charges the working times through these modern devices with he click of a few buttons. These times are integrated with the invoices/orders charged to the customers for payment in sap . If the work in done for another department in the same organization to which the maintenance engineer belongs, then through internal orders etc. He/she is has a dentists appointment which they have managed to get with great difficulty for 2 hours. The leave is applied again through this device, reaches the bosses PDA or computer for approval, which once done get recorded into the sap hr system as an absence. Yes times are changing fast, so is the technology so you better change too. Today devices like mobiles etc with newer versions and technology are coming into the market at the speed of at least one per year per manufacturer. Like i said before and i repeat HR/HCM consultants cannot claim not to be techno savvy anymore. HR/HCM needs to be tightly integrated to other verticals. In fact they should actually push for more and more integration once the base HR/HCM systems are up, settled and running and take note that the technologies for integration are becoming more sophisticated, better and faster. Make sure you spend time keeping abreast of which new technology is becoming a part of sap, at least what can be applicable to the HR/HCM module. You however, do not need to worry about the technical specifications of these devices unless you get into a project using these. Before I come back to to this discussion I would like to explain the basic info types used in Time Management which are

Planned Employee Times 0007-Planned Working Time ( The most important info type) Actual Employee Times 2002-Attendances 2011-Time Events 2012- Time Transfer Specifications 2013 -Quota Corrections Deviations to Employee Times 2001- Absences 2002-Attendances 2003-Substitution 2004-Availibility 2005-Overtime Entitlements 2006-Absence Quotas 2007-Attendance Quotas Time Related Payments 0416- Time Quota Compensation 2010- Employee Remuneration Info Just try and read about these info types and the next time I will explain thats so special about info type 0007 (Planned Working Time).