Symptom
There are many different IDs that we need to consider when it comes to employee data. How do I know what each one means?
Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.
Environment
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central - All Versions
Resolution
The following terms are often present in Employee Central at a minimum, and clearly knowing their differences can save a lot of time and facilitate the understanding of many functionalities not only in Employee Central but in the whole SuccessFactors suite.
- person-id-external
- username
- user account
- user id
- payroll id
The scenario can get more complex if you have any of the additional EC employment solutions enabled, like Global Assignments or Concurrent Employment.
In order to clarify this broad "ID" landscape, the following diagrams explain what role each ID plays in the system:
ID Landscape without additional employment solutions
The above diagram splits the picture into certain understandable elements:
- The Person - Think of this as the Human Being - this is comparable to the person-id-external in EC.
- The User - Think of this as an invisible account for the user that is set up in the background - this is comparable to the useraccountinfo in the back-end.
- The Log In - Think of this as the key to the user account - this is comparable to the username in SF.
- The Employment - Think of this as a distinct employment for a person - this is comparable to the userid in SF.
The above diagram explains how these elements are assigned (see blue boxes), the padlocks are meant to represent whether the ID can be changed or a least whether it should be changed or not.
ID Landscape with additional employment solutions (Global Assignment, Concurrent Employment or Rehire On New Employment)
The above diagram includes additional information where the following occurs:
- The person (and therefore the person_id_external) stays the same.
- A new username in the background in the format person_id_external-n (where "n" is an incremented number representative of how many employments the person has). This, however, is not used as a user-facing ID.
- The userid - comparable to employment, it is assigned based on the latest number at the point in time when the user is hired from the Company Setting counter.
Payroll ID is separated from this as it is in effect independent from the core ID structure and is a configurable field in EC.
See Also
Keywords
person-id-external, username, user account,user id, payroll id, Next Person ID Assigned, Company System and Logo Settings , KBA , LOD-SF-EC-PER , Person Data (All Person Data Types) , How To