dissolve activities | Primavera Scheduling

Feb

P6 Version 20.12 Released

Categories: Activity Relationships, P6 Calendars, P6 Professional, Primavera Resources, Resources, Schedule Options, SQLIte

Tags: dissolve activities, Financial Periods, Primavera P6 Professional, Relationship Lag, schedule options

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by Bill Pepoon

Oracle released Version 20.12 of Primavera Professional Project Management in December 2020. If you have not upgraded P6 recently, here are some of the most salient improvements since 2018:

Dissolve Activities With Or Without Lag: You can choose whether or not to retain lag when dissolving activities using the Retain lag setting in the Calculations tab of the User Preferences Dialog. If you choose to retain lag, the lag from the dissolved activity's predecessor relationship will be added to that of its successor relationship and applied to the new relationship. (Version 19.5)

Improvements to Stored Images Functionality: Multiple images can be uploaded at the same time. (Version 19.7)

Project Code Maximum Length Changed: The maximum length for Project Codes in PPM databases is 60 characters. (Version 19.7)

Scheduling and Leveling Options Can Be Exported to and Imported From Primavera XML: When you export projects to Primavera XML format, scheduling and leveling options are included. When importing the Primavera XML file, you can choose whether to import with the Update Existing or Keep Existing import actions against the scheduling and leveling options. (Version 19.8)

Allow or Restrict Access to Resources From Multiple Parent Resources: You can select up to five resources when defining which resources a user can access. The user can access and use the selected resources and all child resources of the selected resources. (Version 19.9)

Choose to Export Primavera XML Files Into a Compressed File: When you export projects in Primavera XML format you can choose to have the files exported to a single compressed file in .zip format. (Version 19.10)

Add Comments About Relationships: Add the Comments column in the Relationships detail window to add extra information about the relationship, for example to explain the need for lag assigned to the relationship or the need for the relationship itself. Relationship comments are plain text and can be up to 250 characters long. This is my favorite new feature. (Version 20.4)

Categorize and Organize Activities and Assignments Using Role Codes: With potentially hundreds of roles being used across an enterprise of projects, role codes provide another method for filtering the roles you need to access quickly, or for grouping, sorting, and filtering roles and role assignments. (Version 20.6)

Improved Control of Options When Scheduling Multiple Projects: In the Scheduling Options dialog box, you can select which of the open projects options will be used when you schedule multiple projects. In the Level Resources dialog box, you can select which of the open projects leveling options will be used when you level multiple projects. You can generate scheduling and leveling log files as HTML files. (Version 20.6)

Fill Down and Fill Across Quickly in the Resource Assignment Spreadsheet: You can fill data on the Resource Assignment Spreadsheet window from shortcut (right click) menu. (Version 20.8)

Fill Down Multiple Cells in the Resource Usage Spreadsheet of the Activities View: You can fill data on the Resource Usage Spreadsheet pane from several cells simultaneously. Select multiple contiguous cells by holding down shift while clicking the first and last cells in the range, then select the rows to copy to using either shift and click (to select contiguous rows) or Ctrl and click (to select separate rows), then right click to select the Fill Down menu item. (Version 20.9)

Financial Period Calendars Allow You to Use Different Financial Periods for Different Projects: You can create multiple financial period calendars with different periods. The different financial period calendars can have different durations as well as different start and end dates to each period. You can create new financial period calendars from scratch or duplicate an existing calendar as the basis for a new financial period calendar. (Version 20.10)

Copy Dates to Other Assignments Using Fill Down in Resource Usage: You can use fill down to populate dates in the Resource Usage Spreadsheet of the Activities window of P6 Professional. Fill down options for start and finish dates are available both in the Activity Resource Assignments section and the spreadsheet columns. (Version 20.10)

Easily See Exact Values for Histogram Bars: You can select to view the values for bars on histograms and stacked histograms in the options for the Activity Usage Profile, Resource Usage Profile, and Tracking View. (Version 20.10)

Categorize and Organize Assignments Using Codes: With potentially many thousands of active resource and role assignments across hundreds of projects, assignment codes provide another method for grouping, sorting, and filtering the assignments you need to access quickly. (Version 20.11)

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Oct

Dissolving vs Deleting P6 Activities

Categories: P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, P6 Tricks, P6 Web

Tags: delete activities, dissolve activities, open ends, Primavera logic

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by Bill Pepoon

We all make mistakes, or perhaps the scope of work has changed, which leads to activities being deleted in the schedule. And most users will simply delete the unnecessary activities. This, however, often leads to open ends in the logic. After all, you might be deleting the only successor to another activity in the schedule, or deleting the only predecessor to another activity. To avoid this problem, I dissolve activities instead.

All of the current versions of Primavera scheduling software have the ability to dissolve activities: Primavera Contractor, Primavera P6 Professional, and Primavera P6 EPPM. But dissolving activities is nothing new, as Primavera P3 incorporated this feature many years ago. Regardless, many P3 users ignored the feature and continue to do so in the current programs.

So what exactly does “dissolve” do? Well, when you dissolve an activity its predecessors are linked to the successors of the dissolved activity. Say for example that Activity A precedes Activity B, which in turn precedes Activity C. Dissolving Activity B would result in Activity A becoming a predecessor to Activity C. In theory this should be an acceptable change to the logic, since Activity A was already an indirect predecessor to Activity C.

Here is an example of how the dissolving process works. In the screenshot below I have three activities, each with a duration of 5 days, linked together using Finish to Start relationships. So the total amount of time required for these three tasks in 15 days:

In the next screenshot, I have highlighted Activity B and then right-clicked to select dissolve from the menu:

Now that Activity B has been dissolved, Activity A is a predecessor to Activity C and the total amount of time has been reduced to 10 days:

Easy as pie, unless I’m the one baking it. While it is always a good idea to check the Schedule Log for possible open ends elsewhere in the schedule, there should be no open ends as a result of dissolving activities.

Any questions? Feel free to contact me.

All posts tagged dissolve activities

P6 Version 20.12 Released

Dissolving vs Deleting P6 Activities