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Can you do leave requests in HR without portal?

Former Member
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my client is upgrading from 4.7 to 604 and is investigating whether they need the portal or not.

The portal is only really used for leave requests. They also use the portal for entering times and expenses. Both these activities can be completed in SAP directly throught transaction cat2 and pr05.
Can leave requests or something equiliviant be done in ECC6 directly without the need for the portal?

Any help / ideas would be greatly appreciated,

thanks

clive

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Answers (2)

Answers (2)

former_member25156
Active Participant
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Hi -

Late response to this, but have you not considered Netweaver Business Client?

regards,
Ronald Meyer

Former Member
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Hi Clive

The activities you mention, i.e. leave requests, time recording and expenses all tend to be high volume transactions. For this reason and of course depending on your number of users & their computer access, etc, self-services would typically be the way to go. The back-end transactions you mention are generally only used by HR or Time professional users, entering data on behalf of employees and managers. Whilst they still exist up to the latest software releases, ESS and MSS are designed to enable casual users to enter data of the type you mention themselves. These front-end user processes are also supported by workflows.

I'm not sure what has prompted your client's decision to upgrade to ERP 6.0 with EhP4 at this point? From EhP5 (and with the MSS Add-on) & onwards, self service functionality was converted to Web Dynpro ABAP. This functionality continues to be developed at subsequent releases. For this reason, it would probably not be the best approach to implement self services now at a lower release. In addition, from EhP5 onwards, your client would have the option of deploying self-services in a 'portal agnostic' landscape if there are reasons why they do not want to implement via the SAP Enterprise Portal. If you want to research more about these options, go to SAP Service Marketplace and review self-service options, including SAP NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC).

Best regards

Former Member
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thanks for that, and sorry for confusion on 604. My client will of course go to the latest enhancement pack, which is currently EhP6.

They want to reduce the cost of running SAP, one of the ways to do is to remove ESS/MSS from the landscape. In 4.7, it requires it owns servers and takes up a lot of space and cost for no real beneift to the customer.

As I stated earlier, they only really use time entry, expenses and leave requests.

As the functionality of ESS / MSS can mostly be done in SAP, the only issue i have is that of the leave requests.

Is there any standard way of doing this in SAP (simple workflow request from employee to manager as per org structure and then updating Infotype 2001 Absence with the necessary absence entered).

thanks

clive

rajasekhar_reddy3
Active Contributor
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Hi,

You can create the leave request & approve the leave request through T-code PTARQ please check.

Regards,

Raja Sekhar

Former Member
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If the issue is the cost of maintaining the portal, it may well be worth your client investigating the option of NWBC as I mentioned earlier. There is a lot of information about this on the market place, but of course it would need to be fully evaluated as an option by both technical and functional people.

The only way via back-end to enter leave is either via PA30/PA60 (which doesn't have a standard EE > Mgr workflow because this is delivered via ESS!), or alternatively it could be possible to enter annual leave as an absence type via the timesheet, but again I wouldn't personally recommend this as a means of end user time entry outside the self-service framework.

If it is intended employees and/or managers would use the back end to enter data as opposed to the front end, this could well have licence implications that would need to be checked with the customer's SAP Account Manager. Generally back-end user licences are likely to be more expensive than front-end casual users.

In addition, from a usability perspective, at EhP5, the ESS leave functionality provides a one-stop shop for checking quota balances, requesting leave and reviewing their team calendar prior to requesting leave, to check for possible conflicts with their colleagues' plans. Likewise, MSS provides easy to use applications for timesheet and leave request approvals, supported by delivered workflow templates. The process you describe above would need to be developed as completely bespoke & I believe the development could actually turn out to be quite complex. As your employees are also doing time recording via the system, you would need to take into account all the touch points between the two area, e.g. collisions, etc.

As I'm sure you appreciate, an upgrade from your client's current level would require a reimplementation of ESS/MSS as the technology has completely changed. SAP has developed an RDS (Rapid Deployment Solution) for ESS/MSS that you might wish to consider as a way of reducing costs & fast-tracking the deployment. Again, information on this can be found at SAP Marketplace.

I hope the above has been of help.

Regards

Former Member
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The transaction PTARQ launches the "Test Environment for Leave Request". Its purpose is to test / troubleshoot the leave request as part of your ESS/MSS implementation & is not designed for productive use. In fact, on the initial screen when you launch the transaction, you will see the following text : "These programs have not been released and should be used in a production system only with the utomost caution. Improper use may result in inconsistent data". Therefore, it would not be safe to recommend this as an alternative, back-end solution for employees and managers to use directly -at least that is my personal view!

Alison

Former Member
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Hi Clive,

Since you are going to use SAP EHP 6 system in that case you can directly launch "Leave Request , timesheet application and workflow processes" from SAP R3.. As a part of EHP 6 you don't need portal. Also you do want to take advantages of  SAP EHP5/6  eg.  "leave request" has integrated  with "Timesheet" & many more. I don't recommend you to use SAP old traditional transactions when you have already very robust and user friendly application available with portal or any other server investment.

Regards,

Arpit

Former Member
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How do you directly launch leave requests for SAP EHP 6

Former Member
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Clive

I would assume Arpit is referring to the fact that from EhP5 onwards, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, SAP does not require customers to have deployed SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal in order to implement self-services. Altnerative portal agnostic solutions such as the possibility to use NWBC, SharePoint, etc can now be utilised. Depending on a customer's particularl landscape, such options may prove to be more cost effective for them, or may fit better with their overall IT strategy, etc. Nevertheless, this still assumes casual users such as employees and managers would access services such as the ones you mention, via self-service rather than a back-end role. I repeat what I said before that ESS and/or MSS are the standard methods of accessing such transactions, regardless of the front-end interface.

Best regards

Former Member
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Alison,

when you mention sharepoint, i came across application DUET enterprise. this is a product jointly developed by SAP and Microsoft. Here is there link.

http://www.duet.com/index.aspx

i don't know the cost of it or anything and need to investigate more but it looks like you can enter times and leave requests from Outlook based on their demos.

thanks

clive

Former Member
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Hi Clive

Yes, indeed Duet is another option. I didn't think of mentioning it as an alternative before because it would involve additional cost - I imagine both at an implementation and licence levels. If you are interested in finding out more, the best way is probably to make an enquiry via your SAP account executive.

From what I know, Duet also has some travel management (expenses) functionality which was another area you mentioned. However, it doesn't cover all aspects of ESS/MSS, so you would need to consider if it would compliment your self-service offerings if it doesn't fully meet your existing requirements and have a think about how it might align with any future plans for extending self services. Of course, the other deciding factor would be cost, but I'm afraid I can't help you with details on that.

If you need to know more on functions/set-up, etc, you can find documentation on the SAP Help portal.

Kind regards,

Alison