The Constitution of Your HCM System: A Deep Dive into "Manage Enterprise HCM Information" (Part 1)

The Constitution of Your HCM System (Part 1)

In our previous articles, we've explored the concepts of our HCM system—the blueprints for our organization, our security, and our data. Now, it's time to stop talking and start building.

We are going to walk through the single most important setup task you will perform as a functional consultant: Manage Enterprise HCM Information.

You can find this task in the Setup and Maintenance work area. Think of this page as writing the constitution for your entire HCM world. The choices you make here are fundamental, they apply to every single employee, and many of them cannot be changed after your system goes live.

Because this page is so critical, we are going to do a deep dive, using real screenshots from a demo instance. Let's get started.

1. Enterprise Information: The Core Identity

The very first section you'll see is "Enterprise Information." This is where you define the most basic rules of identity for your people.

Let's break down the key fields from this screenshot:

• Worker Number Generation: You'll see this is set to Automatic. This is a best practice. It means that every time a new employee is hired, the system will automatically generate the next available "Worker Number" (or Employee ID). The other option, "Manual," would force your HR team to invent a new ID every time, which is a recipe for errors and duplicates.
• Person Number Generation: You'll notice this is also set to Automatic Upon Final Save. This is a core Fusion concept. A Person is the unique human (Parvez), while a Worker is their employment record. A person might leave and come back, giving them two Worker records, but they will always be one Person. This setting ensures the unique Person ID is created automatically.
• Person Creation Duplicate Check: This is a simple but powerful tool to keep your data clean. Our screenshot shows it's set to check for "Last Name, First Initial, Date of Birth, Gender or National ID." If an HR user tries to hire a new person who matches these values, the system will raise a flag, asking, "Are you sure this person doesn't already exist?"
• Employment Model: This is the big one. Our screenshot shows 2 Tier. The main choice here is between a 2-Tier and a 3-Tier model.
  • 2-Tier Model: This is the standard for 95% of companies. It means an employee has a Work Relationship (their legal link to the company) and an Assignment (their specific job, department, and manager).
  • 3-Tier Model: This adds a middle layer called Employment Terms. This is used for very complex environments, like the public sector or strong union-based workplaces, where a person's contract is separate from their job.

The choice you make here is fundamental. You cannot easily change it later.

2. Position Synchronization: The Magic Switch

The next section we'll look at is "Position Synchronization Configuration." This is one of the most powerful and time-saving features in Fusion, and you set the rules for it here.

• Enable Position Synchronization: In our example, this is CHECKED. This is the "magic switch." When it's on, it means the employee's assignment is "synchronized" with their Position.
• What does that mean? Let's say you have a "Senior Analyst" position in the Finance department. If you move that Position to the IT department, what happens to the employee in that seat?
• Because sync is enabled, the employee's assignment automatically moves to the IT department with it. Their Department, Manager (note it's set to "Use position manager"), Location, and Job are all updated automatically. The list of checkboxes (Department, Job, Location, Grade, etc.) shows you exactly what data will flow down from the Position to the person. This is a massive time-saver for reorganizations.

3. User and Role Provisioning: The "Who Gets Keys?" Rules

Next, we have "User and Role Provisioning Information." This section defines the automatic rules for who gets a user account and what happens when they leave.

Let's look at the interesting settings here:

• User Account Creation for Terminated Workers: This is set to Yes. This might seem strange—why would a terminated worker need a user account? The answer is often for self-service. This allows a terminated employee to still log in for a set period (e.g., 30 days) to view their final payslip or download their year-end tax documents.
• Keep External User Roles On Termination: This is set to No, and this is a critical security control. "External" roles are often for contractors or partners. When their contract is terminated, this setting ensures their access is automatically removed. You almost always want this to be "No."

4. Employment Configuration: The "Rules of the Road"

Finally, let's look at "Employment Configuration Options." This section handles many of the day-to-day user experience and processing rules for your HR team.

Here are two key settings to understand:

• Guided Flows: Future-Dated Records Validation: This is set to Warning. This is a user-friendliness setting. It means if an HR user tries to hire someone with a start date in the future, the system will show a pop-up saying, "Warning: This is a future-dated transaction," but it will still allow them to do it. The other option, "Error," would block them completely. "Warning" is usually the preferred, more flexible choice.
• Automatically Convert Pending Workers: This is set to N (No). A "Pending Worker" is someone who has been hired but has not reached their start date yet. This setting controls what happens on their first day. Because it's set to "No," an HR administrator must manually run a process to convert them from "Pending" to "Active." If this were set to "Yes," a scheduled process would automatically "activate" them on their start date. This is a major process decision you must make with your client.

To Be Continued...

This is just the first part of this incredibly important setup page. We've covered the core identity rules, the power of position synchronization, and the basics of user provisioning and employment rules.

By understanding just these few sections, you can see how the decisions made on this one page will impact every single HR process you build later.

In Part 2, we will explore the rest of this page, looking at even more of the foundational settings that complete our HCM constitution.