Position

From a technical and business perspective, the position of the component Personnel & Organization corresponds to the position of the component Organizational Management.

You use positions to represent existing or required personnel capacity in an organizational unit. To do so, you create positions for an organizational unit according to the current status and the foreseeable requirement. A position is typically staffed by one employee. However, you can also assign more than one employee to a position.

Processing

For information about processing positions, see Processes and Organizational Data (Infotypes).

Structure

Basic Data

The system stores the properties of the positions in the infotypes of the component Organizational Management. The basic data (and thereby the existence of an object) is determined by a corresponding entry in the infotype Object (1000):

Object type/data storage
From a technical perspective, positions are represented in the system as instances of the object type S.
Object ID
An object of the type position is uniquely identified using an object ID in the infotype Object (1000). The assignment of all other object properties is made using this object ID. When an object is created, it receives this ID that cannot be changed. In Customizing, you can determine which number range intervals are to be available and whether the number assignment is to be made automatically by the system or through a user decision.
Validity period
When an object is created, it receives a validity period in addition to the object ID. The system also uses the infotype Object (1000) to represent the validity period. Since it possible for more than one infotype record to exist for an object (due to changes to the object name), the system automatically ensures that there is always a chain of records for this infotype that is without time gaps. The start date of the first infotype record of an object and the end of the last infotype record determine the entire validity of the object. The validity period of an object also determines which validity period all other properties of the object that are stored in infotype records may have. These properties must be within the object validity.

The validity period of the object can be changed according to certain rules.

Short Profile

By default, the short profile of a position displays the following data for the specified date:

Field	Description	Data Source
<Without Field Label>	Long description of the position	Infotype Object (1000), see also Name and Description (Infotype 1000 and 1002)
ID	Unique ID of position
Valid From/To	Validity period of the position (start date of the first infotype record, end date of the last infotype record)
Staffing Status	States whether the position is vacant or obsolete	Infotypes Vacancy (1007) and Obsolete (1014); see also Staffing Status (Infotypes 1007 and 1014)
Holder	Assigned employees	Infotype Relationships (1001), relationship 008, see also Relationships (Infotype 1001)
Job	Assigned job	Infotype Relationships (1001), relationship 007, see also Relationships (Infotype 1001)
Belongs To	Direct higher-level organizational unit	Infotype Relationships (1001), relationship 003, see also Relationships (Infotype 1001)
Is manager of	Organizational unit to which the position is assigned as a manager	Infotype Relationships (1001), relationship 012, see also Relationships (Infotype 1001)

For more information about configuring the short profile, see Customizing for the component Personnel & Organization and choose Start of the navigation path Master Data Application Next navigation step Object Profile Page Short Profiles End of the navigation path .

Other Object Characteristics

Positions can also have characteristics in the following data areas: