Organization of Planning Tasks 

Use

You use this function to execute planning in accordance with the definitions determined by the Status and Tracking System for the current planning session within the subplan to be edited.

Prerequisites

You have completed Customizing for the Status and Tracking System for at least one subplan and planning session combination. For more information, see Customizing the Status and Tracking System.

Features

The Status and Tracking System is used as an environment in which you carry out planning and monitor the planning process. As a result, there are different procedures for working with the Status and Tracking System:

Procedure	Owner
Performing planning	People who are assigned to an area of responsibility either directly or as a substitute and who want to perform planning in that area.
Checking planning results	People who are directly responsible for areas in order to check the planning results of those areas of responsibility.
Monitoring the planning process	Planning coordinator

The Status and Tracking System presents the pages that belong to a planning task in an almost identical form, irrespective of whether you want to execute planning or monitor the process. The only difference is that the status you can set for a task depends on the hierarchy level that is assigned to you (whether you are the supervisor or person responsible for executing the particular planning task).

Cascading Status Switch

If you are assigned to a superior level in the organizational hierarchy as a person responsible for a task and you have applied the appropriate settings in Customizing, you can change the status of all tasks that are assigned to you and the employees you are responsible for with one single action. You can perform a cascading status switch of this type along the hierarchy for the following status switches with bottom-up planning sessions:

●     From “new” to “in process”

●     From “in process” to “for approval”

●     From “for approval” to “in process”.

With top-down planning sessions you can perform a cascading status switch for the following status switches:

●     “Completed” and “released”

●     “In process”

If you have defined planning sequences in Customizing that are to be executed automatically upon status switch, the following rule applies with a cascading status switch: The system does not execute the planning sequences; it only sets the status for the areas of responsibility.

Specifying Times in the Monitor

Note that all times specified in the monitor (such as the time at which comments were entered) are given in the time zone that the logged-on user has maintained in user master data. If no time zone has been maintained, the time zone for the system is used.

An exception to this is completion time: If a time zone has not been maintained, the system first checks whether a time zone has been explicitly specified in Customizing for the particular area of responsibility. If this is the case, the system uses this time zone. If this is not the case, the system uses the time zone for the system.