AI and Project Reporting: Review Before Sharing
AI-assisted project reporting uses an AI tool to turn project information into a narrative summary or status update for a chosen audience. This article explains the available report workflows and how to check generated claims against the underlying plan.
Identify what produced the report
Section titled “Identify what produced the report”Microsoft Project desktop includes customizable reports that display project data in charts and tables. These reports reflect the information in the plan; they are distinct from an AI-generated narrative. For the built-in report options, see Creating Reports in Microsoft Project.
Planner Agent is a separate Planner workflow. It can draft a report from a Planner plan’s structure, progress, deadlines, assignments, and recent activity. You can set a reporting period and report sections, then edit the report in Loop. It uses Planner plan information; it should not be treated as a report generated from a Microsoft Project desktop MPP file. Check that Planner Agent is available in your organization before depending on this workflow.2
Project Plan 365 includes an AI Status Report directly in the app, with no plug-in required. Open a project and choose Report > AI Status Report; Erix AI can summarize progress, delays, completed and active work, and next actions. Choose a reporting period, sections, report length, or optional instructions, then edit and keep or discard the draft in its AI Status Report workflow. The review checks below are useful regardless of which tool produced the report.
Check the report against the plan
Section titled “Check the report against the plan”- Confirm the time window. Check the report’s start and end dates and the schedule’s status date. In Microsoft Project desktop, the status date affects where actual and remaining work are placed when progress is entered, and it is the cutoff for some earned-value calculations. A report’s selected period and the plan’s status date are related but not interchangeable. See Status Dates and Schedule Variance for more on interpreting the status date.3
- Reconcile progress figures. Compare reported completion and work with the current plan. For started tasks, Project’s Work value includes actual and remaining work; for tasks not yet started, it represents the current projection. If the report says work is ahead of or behind the baseline, confirm that a baseline exists and that the comparison uses the intended fields. Updating Task Progress explains the underlying progress values.
- Verify critical-task statements. Check each named critical task against the current schedule. The critical path is the schedule sequence that currently controls the project finish, but verify which tasks Project identifies as critical: configured slack thresholds, certain constraints, and deadlines can affect that designation. A late task and a critical task are not automatically the same thing. See Critical Path and Slack for the related concepts.
- Trace risks and next steps. Check that a claimed delay, blocker, or action is supported by the plan or another reliable record. Distinguish recorded status from an AI interpretation or recommendation, and add important context that the summary may have left out.
Edit before sharing
Section titled “Edit before sharing”Treat AI-generated reports as drafts, not sources of truth: a polished summary can still be incomplete or unsupported. Check that the summary answers the intended audience’s question and that its scope and “as of” date are visible. Correct unsupported numbers or claims, qualify conclusions that depend on assumptions, and remove details the audience does not need. If a material statement cannot be verified, revise it or leave it out. Project Plan 365’s AI Status Report can also be edited and formatted in the app before saving or sharing it. Approve and share the report only after the source facts and context have been checked.1