Primavera P6 users who share a database with other users will not see the most current changes being made by the other users right away. The other users must commit their changes, and then the user will be able to refresh his or her screen to see these changes. We will discuss how changes to a project are committed to the database first.
Most users commit their changes to the database without realizing it. For that matter, many users are not even aware of any specific procedures for committing changes. Yet it happens on a pretty regular basis as long as the other users take one of the following actions:
- Closing the application
- Choose File, Commit Data (F10)
- Choose File, Refresh (F5)
- Summarize Projects
- Apply Actuals
- Schedule
- Import/Export
- Delete a resource
- Delete a project
- Change a user password
- Open a project
- Close a project
- Save a project baseline
- Save a layout in Tracking View
- Add a resource and complete the New Resource Wizard
- Create a new Report using the Report Wizard
- Import or Export a report
- Select a baseline project to use and click OK
- Edit a calendar from Enterprise, Calendars
- Delete a Resource Shift from Enterprise, Resource Shifts
- Modify a Resource Shift and click Close
- Leveling resources
Whew! And that is not even the complete list! So if the other users are moving around the program quite a lot they will probably commit their changes to the database by “accident”. Which is fine, but if someone is adding a long list of activities and doing nothing else, other users who open the same project will not see these changes. But as seen below, switching from one of these views to another will also commit changes:
- Projects View
- Reports View
- Resources View
- Tracking View
- WBS View
- Work Products and Documents View
- Activities View
Once the changes have been committed to the database then other users simply need to refresh this data on their screen. Thankfully, this list is pretty short:
- Choose File, Refresh
- Save a copy of the current project as the baseline
- Choose Tools, Check Project Integrity
- Selecting Apply on various windows within P6
The user making changes would not lose them because he or she failed to commit changes for the simple reason that closing Primavera P6 automatically commits changes. For that matter, I have never seen a situation where data was lost even when Primavera P6 crashes. So the only concern is whether other users are seeing the latest revisions.