Introducing the Stream Deck

03 Jan 2020

Last year, Keyboard Maestro 9 was released, and with it, official support for a piece of hardware called a Stream Deck. Stream Decks are made by Elgato, and are a special type of keyboard with programmable buttons that can display updatable icons. This Keyboard Maestro release finally tipped me to the point of purchasing a Stream Deck.

Shortcuts Collection

16 Dec 2019

The Workflow app was an amazing gateway app for automation on iOS when it first appeared, and I’ve been using it since its very first release. It built on x-callback URLs and revolutionised the way people can interact with their handheld Apple devices. After it’s acquisition by Apple, the app eveolved into Shortcuts, and in 2019 underwent major developments with the introduction of third party donations through actions and advanced intents as well as automation and parameters.

Now that the ThoughtAsylum web site update is in place, I’ve turned what attention I can spare to some addtional projects; one of which is a new and ongoing collection of shortcuts.

Q4 2019 : SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Centre - Quarterly Review

03 Dec 2019

In the final release of 2019, SAP are bringing quite a few useful updates to their SuccessFactors HR helpdesk solution. These range from speed and efficiency improvements through to significant enhancements of existing functionality. It’s a release that introduces something for every Employee Central Service Centre user, be they a service agent, a service manager, or an employee.

As usual I’ll split things up into updates around the service agent facing part of the solution (Cloud for Customer, C4C), and the employee facing part of the solution (Ask HR).

Site Update

26 Nov 2019

If you have visited thoughtasylum.com much in the past, you may have noticed a change recently. The site has been rebuilt. It isn’t just a makeover, it’s actually a rebuild from the ground-up. In this post I’m going to givealittle bit of background to the what, why and how.

Shortcuts and Modulo Calculations

28 Oct 2019

The i*OS Shortcuts application has a surprising amount of numerical functions tucked away within its calculation actions. These include not only statistical functions, but also some arithmetic functions familiar to many programmers. One of these is the modulus function. Many of you may have used this in your mathematical studies at school. It is frequently used as the basis for time calculations on 12 and 24 hour clocks. But there’s more than one way to apply a modulus.

Shortcuts: Extract Contact's Mobile Phone Number

10 Sep 2019

Recently there was a query on the Automators podcast forum, where someone wanted to know how to retrieve a mobile phone number from a contact using Shortcuts. This isn’t something that Shortcuts supports “out-of-the-box”, but it is something that Shortcuts can do with a bit of cajoling. In this post I’ll explain some of the details about one way of doing it.

SAP SuccessFactors Q3 2019: The Zalaris Review

06 Sep 2019

The weekend prior to 9 September 2019. Updates are currently available in customer test systems, but what are those updates?

With each release, SuccessFactors release a flood of information in the form of webinars and documents that most customers simply don’t have time to process. This makes it difficult at best for customers to get the best value from the solutions and partners to keep on top of all of the key aspects.

To that end, every quarter for the past four years, my colleagues and I have been analysing and summarising the changes, and drawing upon our SuccessFactors consulting experience to provide additional insight into the impact, uses and benefits these changes can have for an organisation who have implemented, or are currently implementing, SuccessFactors modules.

Q3 2019 : SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Centre - Quarterly Review

03 Sep 2019

After a packed second-quarter release of features and improvements for Employee Central Service Centre, quarter three eases off a little and to my mind focuses on maturing some of the existing aspects of the solution. Nevertheless, the updates this month are important and will almost certainly have significant impact. For example, I can see many of the user interface enhancements making a real difference to the efficiency of agents – freeing up more of their time to deal with requests versus spending it on data maintenance and system navigation. Likewise, administrators will find useful options introduced that could open up some new opportunities.

Q3 2019 : SuccessFactors Learning - Quarterly Review

02 Sep 2019

Once again, we’re experiencing a very quiet quarter for SuccessFactors Learning, with the administrator user interface refresh being such a large piece of redevelopment work and consuming the development team’s time. Learning is set to receive some updates via the mobile app and through some updates to system integrations.

But what SAP did choose to do this quarter, was to share some details as to what is coming up for Learning. How People Analytics is going to impact Learning, a peek at the administrator user interface redevelopment and a ‘heads-up’ on some changes due next year where affected customers will need to act.

Q3 2019 : SuccessFactors Mobile - Quarterly Review

30 Aug 2019

SuccessFactors mobile holds a special place in our quarterly reviews as unlike other areas; it isn’t exactly matched to the quarterly release cycle. Instead, the iOS and Android mobile apps are released on a monthly cycle, and so we have a look back at recent updates and forward to pending and upcoming ones. This quarter though we have a mixture as some of the features are ones that happen behind the scenes and will be accessible to apps as soon as the core functionality is updated in the quarterly release.

But before we begin looking at new and updated features, we need to look at some platform-related changes that SAP is introducing.