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  Data Transfer of Network Activities

Network Activities

Caution Caution

The following is also mainly valid for change transfer, transfer for comparison purposes, and refresh transfer. Where differences arise, these are documented in Change Transfer and Deletion for Project Orders/Networks , Transfer to Compare Project Orders/Networks , and Refresh Transfer to Update Project Order/Network Data .

End of the caution.

Note Note

If the network has already been transferred to SAP APO and has the statuses ‘scheduled by external system’ and ‘dispatched’, you cannot enter the scheduling-relevant fields. To enable these fields, you have to run report PRJ_DEALLOCATE_NETW_ACTIVITIES from transaction code SE38. This report deletes the statuses, and you can enter data in the scheduling-relevant fields and change the dates during scheduling.

End of the note.

Activity elements and subobjects (such as capacity requirements for an activity element) are not transferred to SAP APO.

Activities with a zero duration (such as general cost activities) are transferred with the duration of 1 second.

If a work center is entered in an activity and the duration of the time unit is equal to or larger than ‘day’, the duration is reduced by the factor for the daily working time of the resource divided by the duration of a day and is then transferred to SAP APO. This ensures that the start and end dates and times correspond in SAP R/3 and SAP APO.

Example Example

One week duration on a resource with a daily working time of 12 hours is transferred as 12 / 24 x 7 x 24 = 84 hours duration, even if in SAP R/3 one week = five working days.

End of the example.

If no work center is entered in an activity, the duration is interpreted and transferred as a net duration. The same happens if a work center is entered and the duration is smaller than the time unit ‘day’.

If an activity is finally confirmed, the remaining duration 0 is transferred to SAP APO. The activity can no longer be changed in SAP APO.

If an activity is technically completed, it is sent with the status ‘Finally confirmed’ to SAP APO. This ensures that the activity remains visible in SAP APO. However, it can no longer be changed. Moreover:

  • The capacity records for technically completed activities are deleted in SAP R/3, therefore, the capacity records are not transferred to SAP APO, and the reference from the activity to the resource is no longer visible.

  • If no confirmations existed for the activity when it was technically completed, the planned data is sent to SAP APO as actual data.

  • The activity is shown as ‘Finally confirmed’ in SAP APO, but the network can have the status ‘Partially confirmed’ or ‘Finally confirmed’ only if the corresponding status is set in the network header in SAP R/3.

If an activity in SAP R/3 is assigned to a WBS element, the assignment is transferred to the activity in SAP APO. In transaction /SAPAPO/PRJ1, you can select project orders by means of the WBS element. For more information about this transaction, see Selection of Project Orders in SAP APO .

SAP R/3 activity text is transferred to SAP APO. The activity text is transferred in the default language of the RFC user. If no default language has been specified, the system uses the logon language of the user who triggers the data transfer from SAP R/3 to SAP APO.

Note Note

If more than one language is used in your company, you can implement Business Add-In (BAdI) /SAPAPO/PRJ_INBOUND, method CHANGE_DATA_BEFORE_LC_UPDATE to create copies of texts (parameter CT_OPRTEXT) in other languages. For more information, see Enhancements for the Integration of Project Orders/Networks .

End of the note.

In SAP APO, all network activities are created with the category Processing .

In SAP APO, activities are created as Scheduled by default. If an activity is deallocated in SAP APO, it remains deallocated if the order is transferred again.

The remaining processing time from SAP R/3 is transferred in seconds to the remaining processing time in SAP APO.

If a project order should be scheduled in SAP R/3, which means no capacity requirements are transferred to SAP APO, the activities are created with fixed dates and status Fixed .

In SAP APO, fixed activities remain fixed after subsequent change transfers if the activity duration does not change.

In SAP APO, a partially confirmed activity is fixed if it is not interrupted. However, the activity is not shown as fixed in the activity representation.

Activities Without Capacity Requirements

Activities without capacity requirements (that is, dummy activities) are also saved with the project orders. These are activities:

  • Entered in SAP R/3 without a work center.

  • For which the work center was not transferred to SAP APO (for example, the work center is not contained in an active integration model, meaning that capacity planning should not take place for the work center in SAP APO, or excluded by Business Add-In).

Compared to other order types in SAP APO, dummy activities are necessary, because the relationships in project orders are more complex. When scheduling such an activity, the situation is determined by the relationships to other activities. The activities are scheduled without a calendar, which means the resources are constantly available. You cannot see such activities in the resource chart in the planning board. However, you can see them in the operation chart.

Note Note

If you want to schedule individual or particular dummy activities on a factory calendar or another calendar, and make the dummy activities visible in the planning board, you can create dummy capacity requirements using calendar resources by implementing a Business Add-In (BAdI). You can implement the BAdI in SAP R/3 or in SAP APO. In SAP R/3, you implement BAdI BADI_CIF_PS_NETWORK , method CHANGE_OUTBOUND_DATA . In SAP APO, you implement BAdI /SAPAPO/PRJ_INBOUND , method CHANGE_CIF_DATA .

If you implement one of these BAdIs, the performance of the planning board and other SAP APO applications may be affected, if the same resource is used for a large number of orders. This is caused by a lot of orders in the environment determination of the resource.

For more information about BAdIs, see Enhancements for the Integration of Project Orders/Networks .

End of the note.
Activity Dates

The planned start, planned end, actual start, and actual end are transferred to SAP APO.

Schedule restrictions such as ‘Must start on’ are not transferred to SAP APO. The planned start and planned end dates are filled in SAP R/3 as follows:

  • Planned start/end date = Earliest start/end date, if the indicator ‘Material Latest Date’ is not selected in the scheduling parameters of the network type.

  • Planned start/end date = Latest start/end date, if the indicator ‘Material Latest Date’ is selected in the scheduling parameters of the network type.

If confirmations exist for the activity, the actual start and actual end from the confirmations are transferred to SAP APO. For technically completed activities without confirmations, the planned start and planned end are entered in the fields for the actual start and actual end dates.

In SAP APO:

  • For networks that are scheduled in SAP APO:

    • Activities without confirmation: The planned start date from SAP R/3 is mapped to the start date of the activity in SAP APO. The planned end date from SAP R/3 is copied to the end date of the activity in SAP APO.

    • Partially confirmed activities: The confirmation start date (actual start date) is transferred to the start date of the activity in SAP APO. The confirmation end date (actual end date) is transferred to the confirmation date that is shown as the activity start date (start date of remaining duration for planning) in the activity planning.

    • Finally confirmed activities: The confirmation end date is shown as the start date and the end date of the activity.

    • Interruption in SAP APO: Partially confirmed activities can be manually interrupted in the planning board. If a partially confirmed activity is interrupted in SAP APO and later transferred again from SAP R/3 to SAP APO, SAP APO checks whether the activity from SAP R/3 still has the status ‘partially confirmed’ and whether the planned start/end dates of the activity from SAP R/3 coincide with the start/end dates in SAP APO. If yes, the start/end date and the status is not changed in SAP APO. If not, the interruption is removed. This means that the interruption is removed for an interrupted activity if a confirmation is entered or canceled.

  • For networks that are scheduled in SAP R/3:

    • In SAP APO, for all activities, the start and end dates are copied from the planned start and end dates in SAP R/3.

    • For confirmed activities, the corresponding network is not necessarily rescheduled. As a result, in SAP R/3, the planned start and end dates are not adjusted to the actual dates. In SAP R/3, the component requirements are aligned to the planned start and end dates, therefore in SAP APO, the planned start and end dates determine the start and end dates of the activity.

    • Partially confirmed activities have the status Started in SAP APO.