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Aug

The Dutch Problem in Version 16.1

Categories: Claim Digger, P6 Professional, P6 Version 16.1, Primavera P6 Client

Tags: Claim Digger, P6 Version 16.1, Primavera P6 Professional, Schedule Comparison, Visualizer

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by Bill Pepoon

Anyone who upgrades Primavera P6 Professional to Version 16.1 will most likely encounter the following problem: Visualizer and Schedule Comparison (the new name for Claim Digger) will not run. The problem is an existing P6 bootstrap file that gets corrupted during the installation of Version 16.1 and therefore displays the settings for the Dutch language incorrectly. Dutch was only added as a language in Primavera P6 Professional recently, which explains why this problem did not occur sooner. If nothing else this might prompt you to consider whether Dutch is the primary language of Holland or The Netherlands. I guessed wrong, but then my ability to speak a second language comes down to saying everything in English very loudly.

This is a known bug addressed by Oracle in Doc ID 2074835.1

The easy workaround is to repair the bootstrap file. First, go to Control Panel in Windows and type “folder” in the search box. Then click on “Show hidden files and folders” and choose “Show hidden files, folders and drives”. From there you are looking for the following file path:

Computer > OS(C:) > Users > [username] > AppData > Local > Oracle > Primavera P6 > P6 Professional

This assumes the program has been installed on the “C” drive, which is a pretty typical standalone scenario. You will also need administrative privileges to access the program files.

Locate the PrmBootStrapV2 file and open it with a text editor like Notepad. Scroll down until you see the languages listed. In older versions of Primavera P6 the language name is listed first, followed by the language ID. But in Version 16.1 the language ID is now listed first. During the update process most of the languages are fixed, but not Dutch. In any case, it is important to check all of the languages to make sure the language ID appears first, as seen below:

<internationalizationSettings currentLanguage=”en-us”>
<availableLanguages>
<Language LanguageID=”en-us” LanguageName=”English”/>
<Language LanguageID=”de-de” LanguageName=”German”/>
<Language LanguageID=”fr-fr” LanguageName=”French”/>
<Language LanguageID=”ja-jp” LanguageName=”Japanese”/>
<Language LanguageID=”ru-ru” LanguageName=”Russian”/>
<Language LanguageID=”zh-cn” LanguageName=”Chinese Simplified”/>
<Language LanguageID=”zh-tw” LanguageName=”Chinese Traditional”/>
<Language LanguageID=”es-es” LanguageName=”Spanish”/>
<Language LanguageID=”pt-br” LanguageName=”Brazilian Portuguese”/>
<Language LanguageID=”nl-nl” LanguageName=”Dutch”/>
<Language LanguageID=”it-it” LanguageName=”Italian”/>
<Language LanguageID=”ko-KR” LanguageName=”Korean”/>
</availableLanguages>
</internationalizationSettings>

Make any corrections as necessary, and then save the file. You should then be able to log into Visualizer and Schedule Comparison. And if you feel like it, brush up on your Dutch!

May

Primavera P6 Version 16.1 Released

Categories: Claim Digger, P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, P6 Web, Primavera P6 Client

Tags: Activity Relationships, Claim Digger, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera P6 Professional, Visualizer

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by Bill Pepoon

Spring is in the air, which means another release of Primavera P6 Professional Project Management (PPM) and Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM).

The list of changes to Primavera P6 Professional is short, but sweet. First, after years of begging, Oracle has finally introduced a feature that has long been part of Microsoft Project: the ability to show the relationship type and lag in the Activity Table. Yes! Previously, this information was only available in a tabular Report or by exporting to Microsoft Excel. Now we can finally show this level of detail in a graphical setting. These are new columns called Predecessor Details and Successor Details, as seen below:

Second, Claim Digger has been moved to Visualizer and is now called Schedule Comparison. I suspect this was done to avoid the problem of running Claim Digger with the SQLite database. This type of database does not support third-party applications like Claim Digger, which is an important tool for many Primavera users. Rather than wait for SQLite to change its spots, Oracle apparently decided to take a more proactive stance.

Quite a few enhancements have been added to Primavera P6 EPPM to improve performance and to bring it more into line with Primavera P6 Professional:

Advanced HTML5 Activity and EPS Views
Basic HTML5 Resource Assignment View
Additional copy project options
Daily Timescale in Team Usage View
Additional Global Search & Replace functionality
Streamlined installation and management of the P6 Pro application with the removal of JRE

One of the new copy project options is the ability to copy projects that are linked to other projects but not copy those (external) relationships. Previously, we could only choose to not copy external relationships when copying one or more activities. Now this option can be applied to the entire project.

HTML5 pages load faster than the Java-based applets that were originally used in Primavera P6 EPPM and do not require plugins. The HTML5-based pages are referred to as Basic View, but users have the option of viewing the Java-based pages in Classic View.

Relationship types and lags can also be shown in the Activity Table in Primavera P6 EPPM.

Additional information regarding these enhancements can be found here. In addition, Oracle has created a very nifty app called the Cumulative Feature Overview Tool. It is sort of like Claim Digger for analyzing different versions of Primavera P6. You input which version you are currently using and the tool will tell you what features have been added since then, and when the changes were introduced. Click here to access the Cumulative Feature Overview Tool.

Mar

Software Glitch In P6 V15.2

Categories: P6 Professional, Primavera P6, Primavera P6 Client

Tags: P6 Client, P6 Page Setup, P6 Professional, P6 Variables, P6 Version 15.2

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by Bill Pepoon

If you are thinking of buying Primavera P6 Professional then please be aware of a software glitch in Version 15.2 that is causing a few headaches. Thankfully, you can still download two older versions of Primavera P6 Professional from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud: Versions 8.4 and 15.1 are currently still available. We recommend downloading one of these versions until we are able to confirm whether the next release of Primavera P6 (Version 16.1) fixes this problem. Version 16.1 is scheduled to be released by the end of March 2016. Regular readers of our blog are no doubt aware that Oracle now releases new versions of Primavera P6 twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. This new procedure started in 2015.

Version 15.2 was the first 64-bit release of Primavera P6. Now, when downloading Primavera P6 from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, you can be forgiven for wondering why Oracle always asks if you want to download the 32-bit or the 64-bit version of the program. Prior to Version 15.2 it did not matter which version you chose because they were the same program. Keep in mind, however, that Oracle has hundreds of programs available for downloading so the 32-bit vs. 64-bit question is not confined to Primavera software.

According to Oracle, there are certain advantages to the new 64-bit version of Primavera P6:

Build larger and more complex projects, with faster response times
Work with multiple languages at the same time
Higher memory limits supported for faster performance
Fewer crashes due to memory issues

Sounds great! Unfortunately, the new 64-bit coding in V15.2 is making it impossible to add or modify variables in the header or footer of a layout. A variable is a data field that is filled out by Primavera P6. For example, the project name or the data date. So rather than typing the project name or data date in the header or footer we simply add a variable to do this instead. This way, if we open a different project the current data will be displayed without any manual revisions.

Anyone who has inserted a page number into a Microsoft Word document or Excel spreadsheet has been using what Primavera P6 calls a variable. An example of a Primavera P6 variable appears below. The variable “Layout Name” appears in brackets:

This is a confirmed defect. You can find a few additional details in Doc ID 2096207.1 if you have access to My Oracle Support. Oracle has confirmed that the defect will be addressed in a future release.

I like to display certain information in my page headers and footers so that people understand some of the basic parameters of the schedule. This data includes:

Layout Name
Filter List
Print Date and Time
Page Number and Total Pages
Project Name
Data Date

But since these are variables I have a problem. To be sure, I have some layouts created in older versions of Primavera P6 that already have these variables, so I am not completely out of luck. When upgrading Primavera P6 most of us keep our existing databases so anything stored there is still available. But for new Primavera P6 users who started with Version 15.2 they have not had a chance to create any layouts yet. Therefore, the only options are to use the variables already present in the standard layouts, or manually type this information. (If someone sends you a layout they created you can of course import this into Primavera P6).

So, fingers crossed! Let us hope that P6 Version 16.1 fixes this problem.