3309236 - Wrong Project Task IDs When Creating Project From Older One

The project's task IDs have wrong suffix.

SAP Business ByDesign

1. Go to Project Management work center.
2. Go to Projects view.
3. Search for ABC (ABC is the Project's ID).
4. Click in Edit button.
5. Navigate to Project Plan tab and Gantt Chart subtab.

See the project's task IDs: ABC-12, ABC-13, ABC-14 (and it goes on)...
You expected that the first task would be ABC-1 and not ABC-12.
Also: ABC-12 is an example; 12 could be any number that is not 1.

Project ABC was created based on an existing one. In this case, the system does in principle the following:

1. Create new project ID according to project type. This results in RDCx (x is the next free ID of all projects starting with RD).
2. Try to create new task ID based on original task (for example PQR-40-1 becomes RDx-1).
3. Check if this task ID is already used by any other task. If yes, determine highest existing ID and take the next free one.

When the project ID is then changed on the UI, only the prefixes of the tasks are adjusted, not the determined numbers behind the '-'.

In this case explained in the Symptom we have the following situation (for example):

There exist 2 projects of project type "research and development project" starting with RD: RD1 and RD2. Therefore, the system determines for a new project of type "research and development project" the project ID RD3. There exist the following project tasks: RD3-1 until RD3-11, belonging to project PQR-01234-5678-091011-50 (PQR-01234-5678-091011-50 is an older project).
Therefore, the system determines for the tasks of the new project RD3 the first number that is free, resulting in RD3-12. Changing then the project ID from RD3 to PQR-01234-5678-091011 leads to the project tasks PQR-01234-5678-091011-12, PQR-01234-5678-091011-13...

The reason why project PQR-01234-5678-091011-50 has the tasks RD3-1 until RD3-11, whose IDs don't fit to the project ID, is, that task IDs have a maximum length of 24. PQR-01234-5678-091011-50-1 would exceed this maximum, therefore the system kept the originally determined IDs RD3-1 until RD3-11.

To overcome this situation for the creation of new projects in the future, the user has to create projects RD3 and RD4 in the system, and immediately set them to closed.

When copying then the next time, the system would propose project ID RD5, and task IDs RD5-1, ..., which are not yet in use. When changing the project ID (and by this change, also the task IDs), the user has to keep the maximum length of task IDs in mind.

 Project; Task ID; Suffix , KBA , AP-PRO , Project Processing , How To