2072202 - Metric Lookup Tables - Goal Management

This Knowledge Base Article explains the Metric Lookup Tables in Goal Management, to include the follwing:

• How to use the Metric Lookup Table Display
• How to configure the Metric Lookup Table (MLT)
• What is the "use-min-target-as-rating" and how is it used to control upper and lower bound ratings?

SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management

You can use metric lookup table to calculate ratings of a goal. A basic metric lookup table consists four items:

• Target Levels to achieve
• Ratings associated to those Target Levels
• A place to enter in the actual achieved value
• The calculated rating that results from mapping the actual achievement in the metric lookup table.

For a sample use case, please refer to the Goal Management Implementation Guide. Please Note: As a customer, you do not have access to Provisioning to configure this feature. To complete tasks in Provisioning, contact your Implementation Partner. For our list of supported configuration changes, please refer to this article 2250190 - SCR Form: XML Software Change Request for Goal Plans and what is an Implementation Request in Goal Management.

To Partners, please refer to the Goal Management Implementation Guide. For Configuration or Implementation assistance, please direct your questions to Partner Delivery Community.

There are three types of fields required to enable the rating calculation:

• The Rating type "number" - stores the rating calculated by comparing the actual-achievement with the target achievement values. This is the standard type. While the display can be set to "text," the field length remains the same.
• The Metric-lookup-table type "table" – used to store the target achievement values.
• The Actual-achievement type "number" or actual-achievement-text ("type text"), – used to store the achievement value.

The Metric Lookup Table Display will always be in an "edit" or a "display mode". To move back and forth between modes click on the "set scale" or "edit scale" link.

There are four columns that can be displayed with the calculated ratings table:

1. Column with ID "achievement". It will always have a data type of "number" This column is optional.
2. Column with ID "achievement-text". It will always have a data type of "text". This column is optional.
3. Column with ID "rating". It will always have a data type of "number". This column is mandatory.
4. Column with ID "description". It will always have a data type of "text". This column is optional. 

Note: A minimum of two columns are required but all four columns can be made available to employees.

• One column must be the rating column and the second column will either be the achievement or the achievement-text column.
• It is important to know that configuration for the metric lookup table (like the other goal configurations referenced) applies at the goal plan level and not at the goal level.
• This does not mean every goal in a goal plan needs to have a calculated rating, but it does mean you can't have one goal calculate a rating using step and another goal calculated using interpolation.

There are several additional configuration options that go above and beyond this as well. These configuration options are described below:

• Actual-achievement:
• Can negative numbers be prevented from being entered?
• The actual-achievement field will support both postive and negative numbers.
• It is not possible to prevent negative numbers from being entered.
• Calculation Types:
• The goal plan can be configured with one of two calculation types, Step or Interpolation.
• This configuration is defined in the field-definition for metric lookup table. Accepted values are "interpolate" or "step".
• See the example below:

<field-definition id="metric-lookup-table" type="table" required="false" detail="true" viewdefault="on" showlabel="true" default-calc-type="interpolate" display="text" field-show-coaching-advisor="false">

• Interpolation:
• When the rating is interpolated from the target values above and below the actual achievement.
• Note: Interpolation does not work with text achievement. If the calculated ratings feature is configured to use interpolation and the employee enters character based values, a step based calculate will be performed.

Interpolated rating example:

Target rating table:
Target	Rating
20	1
30	2
40	3
50	4
70	5
Actual achievement calculations:
Actual	Calculated rating
20	1
25	1.5
55	4.25
80	5

• Step:
• When the target achievement values are treated as thresholds and the amount by which the actual achievement exceeds them does not matter.

Step rating example:

Target rating table:
Target	Rating
20	1
30	2
40	3
50	4
70	5
Actual achievement calculations:
Actual	Calculated rating
20	1
25	1
55	4
80	5

Out of Bounds Calculations - Using "use-min-target-as-rating"

This section defines what the system does when the actual achievement falls outside of the range defined in the target level rows. Let's take the following example:

Target	Rating
20	1
30	2
40	3
50	4
70	5

• Upper Bound: The system will always give the highest rating value when the actual achievement is above the highest target level. An actual rating of 71 will give a 5.
• Lower Bound: There are two options for how the system handles actual achievements below the lowest target level. This option is configured through the attribute "use-min-target-as-rating" defined in the field-definition for the metric-lookup-table. Accepted values are "true" and "false".
• "true" – When the actual achievement falls below the lowest target level, then provide the rating associated to the lowest target level. In the example above an actual achievement of 18 would result in a rating of 1.
• "false" – When the actual achievement falls below the lowest target level, then provide a rating of 0. In the example above and actual achievement of 18 would result in a rating of 0.

Note: When the attribute is set to "true", the rating is a value of 1 and the rating scale range is 1-5. When the attribute is set to "false" and the rating is 0, then the rating scale range has to change to 0-5 (what's a 0 in a 1-5 rating?).

Why this is important? This can cause confusion when time to normalize ratings on a PM form. For example: the goal plan has two goals on it. One goal has a rating of 1 with a scale of 1-5 and the other goal has a rating of 0 with a scale of 0-5. If the PM form has a rating scale of 1-5, both goals will be treated as a "1". If the attribute is set to "false", it is recommended that all rating scales also have a "0" entry.

The system does support various Custom Calculation Support options. Please see KBA 2072192 - Metric Lookup Tables Custom Calculations for Goal Score - Goal Management

Display Configurations:

• Description Column – The metric lookup table supports an additional column which represents the description of the rating value (similar to how rating scales are configured under Admin in the application). This column can be included through the table column id "description" in the metric lookup table field definition.

<table-column id="description" type="text" required="false">
<column-label>Description</column-label>
<column-description>Description</column-description>
</table-column>

•  Calculated Rating – The calculated rating field can be configured to display in one of the following formats:
• Numeric – Only shows the numeric value
• Text – Only the description is displayed
• Number-Text – Both numeric value and description are displayed

This configuration is controlled through the "display" attribute on the rating field definition. Accepted values are: (number | number-text | text). Interpolation calculation type will always display numeric only regardless of the configuration option. The calculated goal rating will display on a PM form however it was configured in the goal plan. The rating will appear the same way it does on the goal plan as it does on the PM form.

Column Ordering – Controls the ascending or descending order required for numeric target levels and ratings columns in the metric lookup table. This configuration is controlled through the table-column attribute "order". The system will check and require that values placed in those columns are in the correct order. This only applies to table-column id of "achievement" and "rating". Accepted values are (asc | desc | both).

The default is to allow the achievement column to be either ascending or descending and to force the rating scale to be ascending. This is because some achievements will result in a better rating as the achievement decreases (i. e.- the number of errors should be per 1000. Fewer defects is good and therefore resulting in a better rating).

The Automatic Rating Scale Population. Customers can enable calculated ratings with or without a rating scale. This basically pre-populates the rating column with values defined from a system rating scale.

If a default rating scale is configured, the rating scale will be displayed in the 'create goal' and 'edit goal' screen rather than as a button as shown in other sub-goals. By deleting all the rating scale rows, the metric lookup table will be closed showing a green + button.
To configure a rating scale with the calculated ratings feature, add the 'rating-scale' field to identify the rating scale you wish to use inside the field-definition for a metric-lookup-table field. An optional default attribute can be used to specify what rating scale is the default rating scale. Possible options are "true" and "false". The default is true (for backwards compatibility reasons) but only the last "true" rating scale will be the default rating scale.

An example of this is below:

<rating-scale default ="true">
<rating-scale-id>Metric Lookup Scale</rating-scale-id>
</rating-scale>

Customers can define more than one rating scale for the calculated ratings feature. When this occurs, employees will see a dropdown which will allow the employee to select the rating scales to be copied into the metric lookup table.

Note: The default rating scale is used to normalize goal ratings with Performance Management ratings. If there is no default rating scale, the calculated rating cannot be copied across to a performance management form.

The Automatic Target and Rating Scale Populations. This feature primarily serves to auto populate the target levels based on configurations defined in the goal plan. The sample use case would be:

• A user selects from a drop-down the rating scale/type to be used for this goal.
• The user also enters a target baseline value.

Based on these two selections the system will populate the metric lookup table. The requirements to enable this feature are:

• Define a field-definition for the target baseline
• Configure target-to-rating mappings in the goal plan so values can be pre-populated

Note: Localization for the field "metric-lookup-table-target-auto-population" is not supported.

The use case would be the following:

% of Target Baseline	Rating
80%	60
90%	80
100%	100
110%	120
125%	140

Target Baseline:

Mapping XML:

The system calculates the target levels based on percentage of the target baseline and populates the target level column. The system accepts multiple mappings and that will result in additional entries in the Rating Scale drop-down in the UI.

Numeric vs. Text Target Levels. While not a commonly used configuration, the system supports the ability to enter text target achievement levels. A goal plan can be configured to support either or both achievement types. So a single goal plan can have two goals which use different target achievement types. The text achievement only works with the calculation type "step" and is an exact match between actual text achievement and text target level. The table-column ID for text achievement is "achievement-text" and the actual text achievement field-definition is "actual-achievement-text". When both text and numeric achievement are configured, the user has an option to select between the two types.

Non-Linear Step Warning.This feature lets customers choose to display a warning message in MLT if the achievement and rating levels are non-linear (i.e. if the slope changes between the achievement / rating values in the table)

Configuration: In the objective plan template the below configuration needs to be added for enabling this feature.

Note: This configuration will support only for “metric-lookup-table”:

Detailed Miscellaneous Behaviors. The rating is calculated when the goal is saved after any changes. If the goal plan includes the metric-lookup-table field, validation will ensure the user does not enter only the number "1" for the row, which would result in a rating calculation error. However the user may opt to enter "0" rows, bypassing the automatic calculation. The logic that the application follows when determining whether to calculate a rating is as follows:

• If two or more rows are entered in the lookup table (with the actual achievement being entered) calculate the rating.
• If no rows are entered in the lookup table and actual achievement is "0", the rating is not calculated and the goal can be rated on the form just like a regular goal.

As with any fields in the TGM template, all 3 fields must be permissioned appropriately and included on the plan and form layouts if desired. The rating field, however, will always be read-only, even if write permission is granted. Typically, you will want to limit write permission for the metric lookup table and actual achievement to managers, otherwise employees could essentially set their own ratings of record.

Note: to edit goals with this configuration on a form, you must set obj-edit="popup" in the form objective section. (The metric lookup table cannot be edited in on-form editing mode.)

A rating scale does not need to be specified in the TGM template or goal. The maximum & minimum for the rating (stored in the system to determine normalized ratings) is determined by the possible ratings in the lookup table.

Rules about the rating calculation:

• The field definition flag "use-min-target-as-rating" determines the behavior of the minimum rating value.
• If use-min-target-as-rating="false" for the calculated rating field, the calculated rating will be "0" if the value goes below the minimum rating value.
• If the use-min-target-as-rating="true" then the minimum possible rating value will always be the minimum rating.
• The example above shows use-min-target-as-rating="false".
• If use-min-target-as-rating="true" then the actual achievement of 10 would show a calculated rating of 1.
• The calculated rating can never exceed the maximum rating possible in the lookup table.
• If a rating scale is associated to the calculated rating feature, the rating scale will be automatically displayed.

The example of the XML is as follows:

Auto-Create Target Entries for Metric (Achievement) Lookup. To ease setup in such scenarios a new feature has been included which will enable the system to auto-calculate the different levels of target achievement based on the levels of percent achievement that will be paid out for. Goals can have a direct or inverse correlation of achievement to percent payout, thus supporting sales and savings based goals.
Through appropriate configuration of the goal plan, a user can now select a merit guideline (a rule which defines scores based on percentage achievement of the target along with a textual descriptor) and then enter in the target achievement level (target baseline). Based on this information, the system will automatically calculate all the appropriate target achievements for the different levels of merit as defined in the merit guideline.

An example of this for a generic "SALES" Merit Guideline could be:

• 80% Achievement Pays
• 60% of Bonus WORST
• 90% Achievement Pays
• 80% of Bonus BAD
• 100% Achievement Pays
• 100% of Bonus OK
• 110% Achievement Pays
• 120% of Bonus GOOD
• 20% Achievement Pays
• 140% of Bonus BEST

So when the goal is created, and the Target Baseline and Merit Guideline are set, the system automatically generates the Achievement Levels as follows: Target Baseline = $50,000 (entered)

Note: This new feature supports multiple "Merit Guidelines" in both ascending and descending scale formats and appears to support both interpolated and step achievement lookups. Any automatically calculated level or score can be overridden using the "edit scale" option displayed directly under the "Rating Scale" drop-down. As of B1009 100 maximum rows (prior limit was 5 rows).

Configuration. Configuration is done in the goal template XML (with no associated admin or provisioning switches) and requires the following settings:

• Set default-calc-type=" Interpolation" or "Step".
• Set use-min-target-as-rating=false E.G.: <field-definition id="metric-lookup-table" type="table" required="false" detail="false" viewdefault="on" showlabel="false" default-calc-type="interpolate" field-show-coaching-advisor="false" use-min-target-as-rating="false">
• Set achievement/rating as numeric by setting: E.G.: <table-column id="achievement" type="number" required="true">
• Set order="both" in the template for Target and Rating. E.G.: <table-column id="rating" type="number" required="true" order="both">
• Add a Target Baseline field in the Goal Template.

• Set Up to autopopulate target values from the Goal template: E.G.:

<metric-lookup-table-target-auto-population id="sales" >
<scale-name>sales name</scale-name>
<mapping baseline-percent="80" rating="60">
<mapping-description>Worst</mapping-description>
</mapping>
<mapping baseline-percent="90" rating="80">
<mapping-description>Bad</mapping-description>
</mapping>
&

Goal Management, GM v12, Metric Lookup Tables, MLT, calculation, rating, score, achievement, baseline, target, calculate, configuration, display, PMGM, PM, Success Factors, SF , KBA , LOD-SF-GM-TMP , Template Management , LOD-SF-GM , Goal Management , How To

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