Creating Basic Data for a Task

In SAP Portfolio and Project Management, tasks are not only used to represent activities or processing steps within a project. They can also represent milestones that identify important points in the course of a project and are used to track its progress, for example, in project evaluations and the milestone trend analysis.

You can create tasks in the Structure view of a project. You can create a milestone by setting the Milestone indicator on the Basic Data tab page of the corresponding task.

Milestones can be identified by their special icon in the structure tree and the Graphic subview of a project’s Structure view. Depending on your Customizing settings, they are treated like a single point in time, like a task with a fixed duration greater than 0, or like a normal task with a variable duration. For more information, see Dates and Work.

Prerequisites

You have defined task types in Customizing for SAP Portfolio and Project Management under Project Management Structure Define Task Types .
You have created a task (see Creating Project Elements).
You have created a role (see Creating a Role) for the resource that is responsible for your task.

Procedure

In the Structure view of your project, go to the Detail subview and open the Basic Data tab page of the task that you want to edit.
In the Language field above the tab, select the language in which you want to create language-dependent texts (see Multilingual Capabilities).
Enter a name for the task.
The name is language-dependent.
Change the sort number, as required.
When you create a task, the system enters the sort number according to the position of the task. If you want to position a task between two existing tasks, enter a sort number that lies between the sort numbers of the existing tasks.
Select a task type.
You must enter a task type before you can release a task.

Note
If you have assigned task types to project types in Customizing for SAP Portfolio and Project Management under Project Management Structure Define Project Type then you can enter only a task type that is assigned to the project type of your current project.

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Select the process to which the task belongs.
You can use the process in the evaluations. A process is independent of a phase in terms of time and can extend across phase boundaries.
Select the Milestone checkbox if the task is a milestone.
Specify persons responsible (see Persons Responsible for Project Elements).

Note

This person does not have to carry out the task; you can enter a person responsible on an organizational level, for example, while the actual project participants are responsible for completing the task. You assign the project members who have to complete the task on the Roles tab (see Assignment of Roles to Tasks) or in the Resources area on the Tasks tab (see Task Assignment).

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Enter a description, as required.
The description is language-dependent.
Enter a subproject, if applicable.
For more information, see Work with Subprojects.
If you want to release the task for processing, choose Release from the Change Status dropdown box.
The system changes the current status Created to Released. The task is now released for processing (see Editing Project Structures).

Note

Once you have released the task, you can no longer change the task type. You cannot delete the task, if it has been confirmed or transferred to accounting after its release.

For more information about the status and the effects of changing the status, see Status of Tasks.

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More Information

Creation of Data for a Task

Confirming Tasks