8.2 Importing New Employees and Updating Employee Data by Import

8.2 Importing New Employees and Updating Employee Data by Import

Quick Answer: Import Employee Data creates and updates Employee Central records from CSV templates. Always include the entity's business keys. New employees are imported in the order Basic Import → Biographical Information → Employment Details → Job Information → Compensation Information → Personal Information. Updates can be partial with &&NO_OVERWRITE&&, and records are removed with DELETE or DELIMIT, depending on the entity.

Ways to Add Employees

Employees can be added through the Add New Employee wizard, Manage Pending Hires, FTP, connectors, and Import Employee Data, which you reach through Action Search. Imports suit data migration and bulk changes. SAP's Employee Central Mass Changes guide describes each import file.

Business Keys

Each record is identified by a unique combination of business keys:

• the person ID (person_id_external) for person objects, or the user ID (user_id) for employment objects
• sometimes a record type for the entity
• for effective-dated entities, the start date and possibly a sequence number

Examples: Addresses are person-level, effective-dated, and typed (home, mailing), so the keys are person_id_external + effective_start_date + address_type. Biographical Information is not effective-dated and has one record per person, so the key is just person_id_external. Always include the business key fields and values in the import file.

Import Permissions

1. In RBP, enable Employee Central Import Settings > Import Employee Data.
2. Grant import rights for the chosen entities in Employee Central Import Entities.

Imports are also limited to the importing user's target population.

Importing New Employees

THR81's exercise imports three employees with six templates, each downloaded from Import Employee Data (Download Template, choose the entity, select all fields, Generate Template):

1. Basic Import: status, user ID, username, names, gender, e-mail, manager, HR, job code, business unit, division
2. Biographical Information: date of birth
3. Employment Details: hire date
4. Job Information: event reason (New Hire, HIRNEW), company, job code, business unit, division, manager
5. Compensation Information: pay group
6. Personal Information: first and last name

New employees must be imported in exactly that order. Changes to existing records can be imported without regard to sequence.

Other practical rules:

• Use codes and IDs, not names or labels. The system cannot read labels. People are referenced by USERID, for example the manager.
• Download a fresh template so it contains the latest configured fields, and confirm your columns match it.
• Use Employee Export to look up user IDs.
• Validate first, then import. Check each job in Scheduled Job Manager. There may be a delay before new employees are searchable or appear in the Org Chart.

Tips to Prevent Failed Imports

• Enter all required fields and confirm each value is valid.
• Make sure every field enabled for an HRIS element is valid (see the Data Object Tables handbook).
• Check field configuration. A picklist or object field must have its picklist or object configured on the HRIS field.
• If a failed row has an End Date that does not match the end date in the system, the import errors. The system calculates end dates from the event start dates, so remove the value and import again.
• When importing batches in parallel, keep all effective-dated records of an employee in one CSV file.

Updating Existing Data

Purge Types

When updating, choose Incremental Load (add or change the rows in the file) or Full Purge (replace the entity's data for the employees in the file). THR81's e-mail exercise uses Full Purge for Email Information, and its Job History update uses Incremental Load. For a small number of records, incremental load is usually the right choice.

Partial Imports with &&NO_OVERWRITE&&

A partial import is an incremental load that updates only some fields. Put &&NO_OVERWRITE&& in every field that should keep its stored value, except business keys.

• Fields with &&NO_OVERWRITE&& keep the value in the database.
• Empty fields are replaced with null. This is the classic mistake.

Entities that do not support partial import: Work Permit Info, Job Relationships, Dynamic Role, and Workflow.

After THR81's partial Job History import, the newest record in the employee's history shows Source: Import.

Deleting Data by Import

In an incremental load, choose the operation type DELETE or DELIMIT, depending on the entity:

For MDF records, Delete removes parent object records, Delimit removes a specific child record from a parent, and Clear removes all records of a child object from the parent.

Imports and Business Rules

To have event reasons derived during imports, enable the permission Enable Business Rules for selected entities for imports. If the import file contains an event reason, it takes precedence over derivation. If the column is empty, the onSave derivation rule sets it (Section 9.4). Cross-entity rules run on import only if they are onSave rules (Section 5.4).

Centralized Services

THR81's summary notes that Centralized Services regulate how data is processed in Employee Central. They apply consistent validations and follow-up processing to saves from the UI, History, and imports. The Diagnostic Tool can trace Centralized Services transactions (Section 10.2).