2026.2 - Flexible Workflow and Smarter Portfolio Analytics

This release delivers a major step forward for sophisTex PPM Process Package (PPP). With flexible workflow automation, a new analytical app, and several usability and governance enhancements, PPP now helps organizations accelerate approvals, reduce manual coordination effort, and analyze portfolio data with far more clarity.

Flexible Workflow for Approvals and Automation

With release 2026.2, PPP introduces a comprehensive Flexible Workflow framework for approvals and process automation. Built on SAP Standard Workflow and configured through BRF+, it connects SAP standard capabilities with PPP-specific business logic, allowing customers to model approval paths and follow-up actions without hardcoding. This increases transparency, shortens approval cycles, and improves governance in portfolio processes.

Rule-Based Workflow Orchestration with BRF+

Workflow steps are determined dynamically through business rules, so approval processes can adapt to organizational structures, thresholds, and decision scenarios. PPP supports multi-level approvals, sequential or parallel approval paths, automatic deadline calculation, reminder notifications, and escalation handling. Business users can maintain the decision logic in BRF+ and adjust it over time without technical development effort.
The workflow log gives full visibility into the current status and every executed step. This makes audit trails easier to follow and helps teams understand exactly where a decision is waiting or why a process has advanced.

In addition to approvals, workflows can trigger automated follow-up actions such as status changes or object creation. If an automated action runs into an error, PPP creates an exception task for the responsible administrator and retries the step once the issue has been resolved. This reduces manual intervention while keeping the process stable and traceable.

Approvals Where Users Already Work

One of the biggest practical benefits of the new workflow framework is that approvals are no longer tied to a single user interface. Users can approve directly in PPP when working on an item or project, or they can use SAP standard channels such as My Inbox in Fiori or SBWP / SAP Business Workplace in SAP GUI. This improves adoption, reduces context switching, and helps organizations keep approval throughput high across different user groups.

The approval option inside PPP keeps the decision directly in the business context of the object itself.

For users working primarily in SAP standard inbox tools, the same tasks can be processed there as well.

SAP GUI based users are supported in the same way through SAP Business Workplace.

For a full impression of the end-to-end process, the release package also includes a demo video showing an exemplary workflow and the different approval channels:

Pre-Built Standard Workflow Actions

PPP already ships with several ready-to-use workflow actions that can be integrated into any configured process. These actions make it possible to automate common portfolio steps immediately, while still leaving room for customer-specific extensions in future projects.
For documentation and communication scenarios, workflows can automatically create a PDF and attach it to the relevant item or project.

For integration scenarios, workflows can automatically create a linked PS project, helping connect PPP processes with downstream finance or execution activities.

The following screen shows the resulting PS project that was created automatically by the workflow.

Versioning can also be automated. PPP can create item and project versions as part of the workflow, making it easier to preserve decision-relevant snapshots during governance steps.

The created version is then immediately available for further processing and documentation.

Graphical Analytical Overview App

Another major highlight of this release is the new Graphical Analytical Overview App. It provides a centralized and interactive dashboard for analyzing EPPM project or PFM item data together with related financial information. Instead of relying on manually compiled reports, users can now work with live portfolio information, visual filters, KPIs, charts, and detailed table views in one place. This enables faster and better decisions while reducing manual reporting effort and the risk of interpretation errors.
The app combines several analytical building blocks in a single screen and gives decision makers an immediate overview of project performance, cost distributions, and relevant financial relationships.

Visual Filters and KPI-Based Steering

Interactive visual filters make it easy to narrow down the data set directly from the analytical screen. By selecting values in the filters, users can focus on the most relevant subset of projects or items, while related charts, KPIs, and table data update automatically. This supports fast drill-down analysis and helps teams move from a broad portfolio view to a targeted management perspective in just a few clicks.

At the same time, the app provides dynamic KPIs that react immediately to the current filter selection. These indicators can be tailored to customer-specific requirements and help highlight situations such as high cost exposure, moderate deviations, or items that remain within budget. This gives management a quick summary before diving deeper into the detailed data.

Flexible Charts and Detailed Table Analysis

The analytical app also allows users to configure charts dynamically by selecting different dimensions, measures, and chart types. This makes it possible to build analytical views that match specific reporting questions and to identify trends from different angles without leaving the application.

The table area complements the charts with a detailed list view of the underlying business data. It updates automatically with every filter and chart selection and supports sorting, filtering, grouping, aggregation, and export functionality. This makes the app suitable both for high-level management dashboards and for detailed operational follow-up.

Consistent Financial View Across Currencies

For financial analysis across different objects, dynamic currency conversion ensures that amounts can be compared consistently even when the underlying data uses different currencies. This creates a clearer basis for cross-project evaluation and avoids the fragmented view that often occurs when financial values have to be normalized manually outside the system.

Grouping and Aggregation in Overview Lists

In addition to the new analytical app, PPP now also brings analytical behavior into configurable overview lists. By setting an overview to type analytical in BRF+, customers can enable grouping as well as totals and subtotals for numerical fields. This makes standard overviews much more useful for portfolio reporting and quick analysis directly inside the business application.
The BRF+ setting is straightforward and allows analytical capabilities to be activated for the overviews that matter most to the customer.

Once enabled, users can move from a plain list to grouped and aggregated views without exporting data first. This supports faster analysis of financial values by project type, bucket, or any other meaningful grouping criterion.

The grouped view immediately highlights totals and makes patterns easier to spot in large data sets.

For more complex scenarios, PPP also supports multi-level grouping with subtotals across several hierarchy levels.

Item Version Overview

A new Item Version Overview provides a consolidated list of item versions that the current user is authorized to see. This creates better transparency across the portfolio and gives teams a simple way to find and review historical versions without navigating object by object.
The overview is especially useful in governance, audit, and planning scenarios where version traceability matters.

Multi-Assignment Between Tasks and Resources

Staffing management now supports bulk assignment in both directions. Users can assign multiple tasks to one resource or multiple resources to one task in a single step. This reduces the effort required to maintain large staffing plans and makes recurring assignment scenarios significantly faster to handle.
When several tasks should be assigned to one resource, users can start directly from the selected task list.

The subsequent dialog helps select the target resource efficiently.

After confirmation, the result is immediately visible in the staffing data.

The reverse direction is also supported, which is especially useful when one task needs several resources at once.

The assignment dialog then makes it possible to maintain all required resource links in one step.

The release package also contains a short demo video of the mass-assignment workflow:

Aggregated Comments and Attachments Across Subordinate Elements

PPP now offers the option to display comments and attachments from subordinate elements in the project timeline. This gives project leads and reviewers a much more complete picture of recent activity across complex hierarchies and reduces the risk that important discussions remain hidden in lower-level entities.
Users can still keep the timeline focused on the selected entity only when needed.

If broader context is required, the timeline can include subordinate comments and attachments as well.

This behavior can be configured in the settings and also toggled directly in the timeline for quick switching.

Configurable Opacity for Clickable Areas in Creation Scenarios

Clickable areas in creation scenarios can now be configured with different opacity levels in BRF+. This is particularly helpful when the background image already contains visual markings and the overlay should either remain subtle or become completely invisible while still staying clickable.

With 0% opacity, the clickable area remains functional but is not visibly marked.

Intermediate values can be used when some visual guidance is still desired.
Higher opacity values remain available for cases where the clickable region should be clearly emphasized.

Automatic Synchronization of Item and Project Authorizations

To improve security consistency for linked business objects, PPP now provides an option to automatically synchronize ACL authorizations between a project and its linked item. Once activated, newly added permissions are mirrored in both directions, reducing administrative effort and helping avoid authorization mismatches between connected objects.
The synchronization can be enabled with a simple switch in the application.