SAP Project System (PS) Reporting Functions for Chatbot Applications

1. Purpose and Applications

The available functions provide selected information from SAP Project System (SAP PS). They are particularly well-suited for a chatbot that supports project management, project controlling, the PMO, purchasing, materials planning, and executives with business-related questions.

The focus is not on the technical retrieval of individual fields or internal keys, but rather on answering management questions such as:

• Which projects and PSP elements are time-critical?
• Where do planned, projected, and actual dates differ from one another?
• Which managers, cost centers, plants, or profit centers are affected by variances?
• Which network activities have unusually high costs or external processing prices?
• What predecessor/successor relationships can affect a critical process?
• For which project materials are there short-term shortages or procurement risks?

The functions can be classified into four technical levels:

1. Project Portfolio and Project Structure: Project definitions and PSP elements form the organizational and hierarchical framework.
2. Network Schedule and Operational Implementation: Network diagrams, activities, and relationships describe scheduling, work steps, costs, and dependencies.
3. Material Requirements and Procurement: Project material components link demand, availability, schedules, and procurement information.
4. Master and Customizing Data: Project types, project profiles, priorities, network profiles, and order types explain key technical and control characteristics.

A chatbot can combine multiple functions. For example, it can first identify delayed projects, then pinpoint critical PSP elements, and finally examine the associated network diagrams, activities, relationships, or materials. This enables both management overviews and targeted root-cause analyses.

Comparative and prioritization-based queries are particularly useful. The chatbot should not only list results but also highlight schedule deviations, outliers, shortfalls, missing procurement information, and potential areas requiring action. When comparing costs, the currency and pricing basis must match. When comparing deadlines, it must be clearly stated which types of deadlines and which reference date were used. Internal keys are primarily used to link the data; the response should preferably use technical terminology.

The interface supports analysis and decision-making. It does not replace posting, approval, or personnel decisions. Results depend on the data status, data quality, and user permissions, and should be verified in the source SAP system for critical matters.

2. List of Functions

2.1 Project Portfolio and Project Structure

Function	Business Benefits and Appropriate Research Questions
Application Interface for Project Details	Provides project definitions, including descriptions, organizational assignments, responsible parties, profiles, status attributes, and planned and projected dates. Suitable for portfolio overviews, responsibility analyses, and identifying projects with negative schedule forecasts.
Application Interface for PSP Element Details	Provides PSP structure, hierarchy, descriptions, baseline, forecast, and actual dates, responsible parties, cost centers, priorities, and flags for planning, account assignment, and settlement. Suitable for analyzing overdue work packages and assigning schedule risks.

Typical business management questions:

• Which projects in the company code or profit center show schedule variances?
• How are ongoing projects assigned to responsible individuals or organizational units?
• Which PSP elements are overdue and do not yet have an actual completion date?
• In which subprojects or hierarchical levels do deviations tend to occur?
• Which PSP elements are relevant for planning, account assignment, or settlement?

The project details provide a good starting point for management and portfolio views. The PSP element details then allow you to drill down to subprojects and work packages. When analyzing the data, the hierarchy must be taken into account so that higher-level summary items are not compared indiscriminately with operational work packages.

2.2 Network Diagram, Activities, and Dependencies

Function	Business Benefits and Appropriate Research Questions
Basic Data for the Project Network Diagram	Provides network headers with project/PSP references, plant, responsible cost center, priority, profile, planned, forecast, and actual dates, as well as scheduling and costing attributes. Suitable for identifying delayed or specially managed networks.
Information About a Network Activity Using an Internal Key	Provides operational activities with a description, PSP reference, work center, cost center, activity type, activity costs, external processing price, vendor, purchasing data, priority, and status. Suitable for cost, procurement, and responsibility analyses at the activity level.
Relationships in the Project Network Diagram	Provides predecessor/successor relationships, including relationship type, time interval, unit, plant, and work center. Suitable for analyzing unusual wait times, buffers, and potential scheduling dependencies.

Typical business management questions:

• Which network schedules exceed their planned or projected completion dates?
• For which network diagrams is automatic scheduling or costing disabled?
• Which processes have the highest costs or external processing prices?
• For which externally processed transactions are purchase requisitions or supplier transactions missing?
• Which predecessor operations affect a critical process?
• Which relationships involve unusually long or short time intervals?

The network header indicates that a deviation exists. Activities and relationships help narrow down possible operational causes. High costs or long time intervals are initial anomalies and must be evaluated in light of the project phase, scope of work, and comparable cases. A complete critical path analysis requires consistent date and relationship data.

2.3 Material Requirements and Procurement

Function	Business Benefits and Appropriate Research Questions
Data on the Project Material Component	Provides material, description, material group, plant, storage location, requirement date, required, confirmed, and received quantities, shortfall, price, purchase requisition, supplier purchase, reservation, as well as network, activity, and WBS assignments. Suitable for bottleneck, availability, and procurement analyses.

Typical business management questions:

• Which materials will be needed in the next 30 days and are currently in short supply?
• In which case is the confirmed quantity less than the required quantity?
• Which shortages do not yet have a purchase requisition or a supplier transaction?
• Which projects or processes are affected by short-term material risks?
• In which plants, storage locations, or material groups do bottlenecks tend to occur?

A sensible prioritization strategy takes into account the time remaining until the required date, the absolute or relative shortfall, and the status of the procurement process. A smaller shortfall with an imminent need may be more critical than a larger shortfall with a long lead time. The chatbot should therefore specify the deadline, the prioritization logic, and the units of measure used.

2.4 Master and Customizing Data

Project Types and Project Profiles

Function	Business Benefits and Appropriate Research Questions
Project Type	Provides or checks project type codes. Supports the differentiation and grouping of different project classes.
Project Type – Text	Adds language-specific labels to project types and makes reports easier to understand without relying solely on code displays.
Project Profile Code	Provides or verifies project profile codes. Supports the structuring of projects according to their governance framework.
Project Profile Code – Text	Adds language-specific labels to project profile codes.

Priorities, Network Profiles, and Order Types

Function	Business Benefits and Appropriate Research Questions
Priority Code Details	Provides detailed information on priority codes and helps determine operational urgency.
Priority Code – Text	Adds language-specific labels to priority codes to create clear rankings and management reports.
Network Diagram Profile Details	Provides detailed and control information about network profiles. Explains the different network control options.
Network Diagram Profile – Text	Adds language-specific labels to network profiles.
Order Type	Provides control features for planning, status, billing, revenue recognition, and other order processes.
Order Type – Text	Adds language-specific labels to order types.

Typical business management questions:

• What types and profiles of projects are used?
• What priority codes are available, and how are they designated?
• Which network profile is assigned to a critical network?
• What control features does a specific order type have?
• How can key technical concepts be presented clearly in a management publication?

The text functions ensure that codes and descriptive labels can be displayed together, for example, „Priority 1 – very high.“ Detail functions provide additional control information. These settings must be interpreted in the context of the specific project or network plan and should not automatically be understood as general business rules.

2.5 Recommended Cross-Functional Analyses

The greatest business benefit comes from combining several functional groups:

• Project and Schedule Dashboard: Link projects and PSP elements; compare planned, forecast, and actual dates, and summarize variances by person in charge, profit center, or cost center.
• Appointment Cause Analysis: Link critical projects or PSP elements to network diagrams, activities, and relationships to identify at-risk processes and potential causes.
• Material Risk Analysis: Link material components to network activities and WBS elements to assign bottlenecks to your project, work step, and area of responsibility.
• Cost and Procurement Analysis: Analyze transaction costs, external processing prices, and supplier and purchase requisition data together.
• Data Quality Monitoring: Systematically identify missing responsible parties, due dates, procurement documents, or unresolved master data keys.

The filters largely follow the selection logic typical of SAP. LOW contains a single value or the lower limit, HIGH the upper bound of an interval, OPTION the comparison operator and SIGN inclusion or exclusion. The chatbot translates natural phrases such as „between January and March“ or „all except Plant 1000“ into the appropriate selection.

3. The Five Most Important Sample Prompts

1. Management Overview of Project and Schedule Risks

Create a management overview of all projects in company code 1000. Compare the planned and projected completion dates, calculate the variance in calendar days, and list the ten biggest schedule risks, including the project ID, description, person in charge, profit center, and status. Group the results by person in charge and flag any missing assignments. Specify the data as of, the filters used, and the number of projects analyzed.

This prompt provides a compact project dashboard, prioritizes schedule risks, and lays the groundwork for a drill-down to the PSP and network level.

2. Overdue PSP Elements and Responsibilities

For Project P-100, display all WBS elements that do not have an actual finish date and whose base finish date is before today's cutoff date. Calculate the number of days overdue and sort in descending order. Include the hierarchy level, person in charge, responsible cost center, priority, and the indicators for planning, account assignment, and settlement. Separate operational work packages from higher-level summary items and summarize the variances by person in charge.

This prompt links schedule control with organizational responsibility and prevents different PSP levels from being compared indiscriminately.

3. Network Diagram and Dependency Analysis

Examine the network diagrams for Project P-100 for schedule risks. Compare planned, projected, and actual start and finish dates. Import the tasks and predecessor/successor relationships for the three most critical network diagrams. Identify the relationships with the largest time gaps, as well as the affected tasks, work centers, and priorities. Explain which dependencies should be reviewed first from a business perspective.

This prompt guides the user from anomalies at the network header level to possible operational causes and supports the preparation of a schedule review.

4. Material Shortages and Procurement Risks

List all project material components for Plant 1000 with a requirement date within the next 30 days and a positive shortfall. Display material, description, network, activity, WBS element, requirement date, requirement quantity, confirmed quantity, received quantity, shortage, purchase requisition, and supplier. Prioritize first by remaining days until the requirement date and then by relative shortage. Flag cases without a purchase requisition or supplier reference, and summarize the risks for each project.

This prompt generates a list of bottlenecks that can be edited immediately for project management, scheduling, and purchasing, and highlights incomplete procurement processes.

5. Costs and External Processing at the Transaction Level

For Project P-100, identify the 15 network activities with the highest activity costs or external processing prices. Display the network, activity, description, WBS element, plant, work center, cost center, and activity type; activity costs; currency; external processing price; vendor; and purchase requisition. Compare only values with the same currency and a compatible price basis. Additionally, group the results by cost center and vendor.

This prompt identifies cost-related activities and supports the preparation of a technical review by Project Controlling and Purchasing.