There are various options for linking projects from Project Management with portfolio items.
First, you can separately create a portfolio item and a Project Management project, then link them later. You can establish this subsequent link from the portfolio item by using the Related Objects tab. This enables you to search for existing Project Management projects and assign these to the portfolio item. After the assignment, some general information about the Project Management project, such as the description or project type, is displayed.
You can also cancel an existing assignment if you want to create an assignment to another Project Management project. However, only one Project Management project can ever be assigned to a portfolio item at one time.
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Second, you can create a portfolio item and a Project Management project, either at the time of creation or at a later time from the portfolio item using a template, and make the link to both objects at the same time. If you want the Project Management project to be created at the same time as the portfolio item, set the indicator Create Project on Saving before you save. You can specify the Project Management template that you want to use as a copy template. If you want the Project Management project to be created and linked at a later stage, do not set the indicator Create Project on Saving when you save the portfolio item. You can set the indicator Create Project on Saving later to create and assign a Project Management project. Depending on synchronization settings, the planned start and end date of the portfolio item is transferred to the definition of the Project Management project. Because templates in Project Management always contain a reference to a project type, you must assign a project type to the item type of the portfolio item in Customizing.
Both the options (discussed so far) for creating and linking Project Management projects are useful if Project Management is the leading system for the operational project management. Other objects, such as internal orders from FI/CO or work breakdown structures from Project System, are useful only for Controlling purposes in the relevant Project Management projects. However, if another project management application, such as Microsoft Project or Project System, is used for operational project management, a Project Management project linked with a portfolio item serves only to evaluate data of the external project management application. In these scenarios, a project definition is created in Project Management when a portfolio item is created, because this is a prerequisite for uploading structure and resource data of external project management applications. The structure of the Project Management project and the corresponding roles are created later when you upload project data from an external project management application.
