Understanding Project Task Types

A Task describes an action that needs to be completed by a particular person at a specified time, such as approving events for publication or completing a document. The Tasks panel lists all of the project tasks, along with any associated documents, the task owner, the due date, and the status. It also identifies which tasks are milestones by the milestone icon.

You can optionally organize tasks in full sourcing projects into Phases. Phases can define and enforce the order in which tasks must be completed and can be scheduled to recur automatically. Phases also appear in the Process panel.

A full sourcing project can contain the following types of tasks:

• To-Do: Use a to-do task to assign and record general project actions, including those completed outside SAP Ariba Sourcing.
• Review: Use a review task to ask users to edit or comment on a project document or event.
• Approval: Use an approval task to request approval for a document or event from relevant stakeholders.
• Notification: Use a notification task to send users a one-time or repeating e-mail reminder.

Template authors can configure tasks to automatically assign users as approvers (or reviewers) based on project field values. For example, you can configure approvers based on a project's Region or Commodity.

Review and approval tasks are always associated with a project document or event, which is the item being reviewed or approved. To-do and notification tasks can optionally be associated with a project document or event.

• To Do: An analyst performs a spend analysis for a specific commodity.
• Document To Do: A category manager fills out a preformatted form listing top suppliers for a specific service.
• Review: An IT director reviews an RFP for IT equipment created by the sourcing consultant and provides feedback.
• Approval: Sourcing Manager must approve the Project Charter.
• Notification: Reminder for the project owner to award sourcing event and notify awarded and non-awarded participants 30 days after the event due date.

The video demonstrates how to complete various to-do tasks within SAP Ariba Guided Sourcing full projects.