All posts tagged Primavera P6 Professional

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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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Sep

Final Week to Buy Primavera P6

Categories: P6 Professional

Tags: Perpetual Licenses, Primavera P6 Professional, Term Licenses

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by Bill Pepoon

That’s right. This is the final week to buy Primavera P6 Professional. After September 10, 2020 Oracle will no longer sell the program.

Sort of…

Oracle has decided to pivot away from term licenses to perpetual and cloud licenses. There are a few exceptions, but otherwise users will no longer be able to lease Oracle software for 1 to 5 years. However, Oracle will continue to support all existing term licenses until they expire.

I personally liked the idea of term licenses given that quite a few companies only need the software for a particular project, or they need an extra copy of P6 for the project team to use. A term license can fill these needs without the bigger financial commitment of a perpetual license.

Term licenses for Primavera P6 were introduced by Oracle after it acquired Primavera Systems, the company that developed the seminal scheduling program Primavera P3 in 1983. Primavera P3 was only available from Primavera Systems as a perpetual license.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: why do Primavera P6 files have an “.xer” extension? Because a company named Eagle Ray was the first to develop enterprise scheduling software. Primavera Systems acquired Eagle Ray and re-branded the software as Primavera P6. The file extension is basically an acronym: eXport Eagle Ray.

A term license has all the functionality of a perpetual license. The only difference is that a term license does eventually expire. Perpetual licenses last forever. Oracle will continue to offer term licenses for a few non-Primavera programs.

Nevertheless, you only have a few more days to buy that term license. After September 10th they are gone forever!

May

The Makings of a Complicated Schedule

Categories: Activity Types, P6 Calendars, P6 EPPM, P6 Professional

Tags: Activity Type, Duration Type, P6 Calendars, Primavera P6 Professional, Resources

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by Bill Pepoon

When does a Primavera P6 schedule become complicated? I realize that for new users it might seem like every schedule is hard; but their problem is a lack of training or experience, not the schedule itself. Schedules with thousands of activities take more time to assemble, but that alone does not make them more complicated. Besides, in nearly every schedule there is repetitive work, so we can often copy dozens (if not hundreds) of activities quickly and reuse them. If you do not already know how to do this, read Time-Saving Tricks in P6 You Must Use.

Having prepared hundreds of original plans and thousands of updates, I can say for certain that two characteristics in particular complicate a Primavera P6 schedule. There are other situations that make a scheduler’s life “interesting” but trust me, these two are the biggies:

The schedule has more than one calendar
The schedule is resource loaded

Having more than one calendar is, mind you, often a necessity. The project specifications may require that inclement weather days be added to the calendar. In other words, anticipated weather days must be blocked out similar to holidays and other non-work days. But not all activities will be affected by weather (shop drawings, permits, interior finishes, etc.) so we must also utilize a calendar that does not have weather days.

Another reason for more than one calendar would be that some activities can occur any day of the week without exception, such as concrete curing, or the project specifications identify certain tasks accordingly. So now we have a 7- day calendar in addition to a work calendar with weather, and a work calendar without weather. Just like that the schedule has three calendars!

Okay, but why is it such a big deal to have multiple calendars? To start with, strange things can happen as the schedule moves from one calendar to another. Here is one possible scenario:

The predecessor finishes on Saturday because it obeys the 7-day calendar. If the successor has a 5-day calendar, it cannot start until the following Monday. Even though both activities might be on the critical path, the predecessor will have one (1) day of Total Float while the successor has zero (0) Total Float. After all, the predecessor could have finished on Sunday and still not hold up the successor.

In Primavera P6, Total Float is relative to the activity calendar so two activities on the same path may not exhibit the same float value if they have different calendars. By the same token, activities with the same Total Float value may not be on the same path.

Here is another possible scenario: the predecessor has a calendar that is 7:00 am to 4:00 pm. The successor has an 8:00 am to 5:00 pm calendar. The relationship between them is Finish-to-Start. The successor will start the same day the predecessor finishes because there is still one hour left in the day (i.e. 4:00 to 5:00 pm). This can confuse a lot of people who never display the time of day on their schedules. They think the activities are overlapping somehow when in reality they are not.

Moving on the resources, there is a calendar issue here to consider as well. Resources cannot use project calendars. Only global and resource calendars can be assigned to resources. Our students know why we prefer to use project calendars on every project. But the moment resources are added we are stuck with global or resource calendars. There is some logic here on Oracle’s part. Resources are not project-specific and so only a shared type of calendar would be appropriate.

So think about it. We already had three calendars because of weather and the need for a 7-day calendar and now we have a fourth one! The schedule can get seriously weird at this point. What if the resource plays by different rules than any other calendar? Well, our strategy is to create a global calendar first, copy it as a project calendar, and also assign it to the resource. So the project calendar and the resource calendar are identical.

There are situations where the resource works different hours or different days and should take over in terms of calculating dates. Perhaps the resource is never available on Fridays. We have to consider whether the project or resource calendar is more important. This is why Primavera P6 offers Task Dependent and Resource Dependent activity types. There is no single right answer; it depends on the circumstances.

The question in my mind when it comes to resources is, “does the dog wag the tail or does the tail wag the dog?” If the dog is in charge then I want a Task Dependent activity. Then it won’t matter if the resource calendar does not align with the activity calendar.

Another consideration with resources is that we can allow Primavera P6 to change the activity duration – something that would never happen otherwise. Therefore, the Duration Type becomes a very big deal. Should we let this happen? It does introduce additional moving parts to a schedule that might be difficult to understand due to other reasons such as multiple calendars. Still, it does make sense that if I know the budgeted hours and the crew size, why not let Primvera P6 do the math?

And of course, if we resource-load a Primavera P6 schedule we can also resource level the schedule. I teach this in my intermediate and advanced classes, albeit with the caveat that it takes several iterations of resource leveling before we can be satisfied that the optimum answer has been found: finishing as quickly as possible using a reasonable number of resources. Not exactly something the Pharaohs worried about but for us mere mortals, time and resources are limited.

Sometimes, giving priority to the earliest activity that needs the resource yields the best result. Other times it is better to give priority to the activity with the least amount of float. If I want a very precise allocation of resources I will utilize the Activity Leveling Priority. Unless you know what all of this means then it would be unwise to resource level a schedule without guidance.

Owners may not like the idea of resource leveling because it reduces the Total Float that contractually is almost always shared between owners and contractors. But sequestering Total Float is not the idea. One of the best schedules I ever saw (that wasn’t mine) was a resource-leveled schedule on a project in Hong Kong. The owner thought it was madness but it definitely worked.

I have not touched upon everything to consider with multiple calendars and resources, but hopefully the point has been made. Complicated schedules are frequently unavoidable, often necessary, and must always be respected. Are you ready for the challenge?

Dec

Primavera P6 Certification

Categories: Oracle Gold Partner, Oracle University, P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, Primavera Contractor, Primavera Training

Tags: Oracle Certified, Oracle University, Primavera Contractor, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera P6 Professional, Primavera Training

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by Bill Pepoon

A simple word – certification – can create so much confusion. Nearly every day we are asked about this word. How do I become certified on Primavera P6? Or how do I become a certified Primavera P6 scheduler or trainer?

Let’s start with the highest level of certification: Oracle University. Yes, there really is an Oracle University. In order to sell Oracle software a company must become an Oracle Partner (which involves a lot of paperwork and payment of fees) and get a certain number of employees certified on the Oracle programs the company wants to sell. Oracle offers Guided Learning Paths (GLPs) to help its partners prepare for these certifications.

In order to view the GLPs, however, you must have access to the Oracle Partner Network. In other words, individuals who do not work for an Oracle Partner cannot review the training materials. The GLPs cover a lot more than just the software itself, so it is vital to access to this training. Moreover, this trainer is geared towards implementing software solutions in various industries, which goes beyond what most schedulers would be expected to understand.

The next step is to take a proctored exam. By “proctored” we mean an exam observed by a third party. Oracle offers some exams during OpenWorld in San Francisco (an annual event for Oracle Partners, programmers and devotees) but there are computer learning centers around the country who offer the same exams on a more frequent basis. A passing score is 70%.

Passing this exam (1Z0-535) establishes someone as a Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 8 Certified Implementation Specialist. If you are wondering, the “8” refers to Release 8 of P6 EPPM. Oracle has not changed the certification process even though we are now up to Release 17.7 as of July 2017.

You can view my certificate here.

Wait a minute! What about Primavera P6 Professional and Primavera Contractor? Well, Oracle does not offer separate certifications for those programs. But the reality is that P6 EPPM is by far the most difficult version of Primavera to learn and there are many features common to all three programs.

In addition, there is a desktop component of P6 EPPM that is identical to P6 Professional with one exception; the Admin menu is missing. Administrators are required to use the web component. But this also means that users who understand P6 Professional understand P6 EPPM to some extent, and vice versa. No one other than the administrators are required to use the web component and most schedulers prefer the desktop component.

I can promise you that just understanding Primavera P6 is not enough to pass this exam. There are questions related to the target markets for this software and how to implement various solutions. Companies who sell Oracle software are expected to be able to demonstrate why this software is the right solution. As you might imagine, P6 EPPM is the solution favored by Oracle.

In a nutshell, this is what it means to be “Oracle Certified”. Not all trainers are certified, and it should be rather obvious by now why firms that are not Oracle Partners are unlikely to have trainers who are certified by Oracle University. Being certified by Oracle University implies a pretty serious commitment to teaching Primavera P6. Oracle Partners also have access to resources unavailable to anyone else.

The next level of certification is by an Oracle Partner. While this may not sound as prestigious as being certified by Oracle University, the ultimate goal for non-trainers should be to learn the program, right? We are aware that job postings sometimes specify that applicants must be “certified” yet it is unlikely that the company posting the ad really understands the certification process.

Certification by an Oracle Partner will vary depending on the class. For example, our online classes are either 8 or 16 hours of instruction, while our in-person classes are 8, 16 or 24 hours. Each class has its own certification. We also offer certification via our On Demand Primavera P6 Training. When someone asks us which class to take, we try to understand what their job function requires. We offer a variety of classes to accommodate everyone’s needs.

The fact is that we have certified more than 2,500 people and not one of them has been turned down for a job because they lacked the correct certification. Each certificate we issue includes our Oracle Partner logo, and these companies know they can call us to discuss our curriculum. We want our students to succeed and we want companies to accept our imprimatur.

Perhaps more importantly, the employers we talk to overwhelming support training provided by an Oracle Partner. They appreciate that Oracle Partners are accredited by Oracle University and maintain a formal business relationship with Oracle. Moreover, only Oracle Partners can offer software sales and training. Oracle Partners are the most qualified to recommend the right solutions.

Some companies are looking for certified trainers to teach other employees – someone often referred to as the Subject Matter Expert (SME). These individuals most certainly need to be certified by at least an Oracle Partner given their additional responsibilities. After all, they are setting the standards for the entire organization. Oracle Partners work with companies in many industries and understand the proper procedures for each.

Several people who have taken our classes were initially trained by non-accredited instructors at companies not affiliated with Oracle and learned that their prospective employers would not accept their certifications. Those classes might have been cheaper, but in the long run these people end up paying a lot more to get the proper certification. And keep in mind that just because the instructor knows more about Primavera P6 than you do does not make them an expert.

Of course, real-world experience is important as well. Our company has prepared more than 600 initial schedules and more than 10,000 periodic updates. Each of our instructors has at least 25 years of experience in project management. We are in fact often asked to teach Primavera courses offered by other training firms because they recognize that our level of experience is unrivaled.

Yes, you read that correctly: some of our competitors are willing to pay us to teach their classes!

A couple of years ago a gentlemen contacted our firm and said he already knew Primavera P6 very well and therefore did not want to take a class. Instead, he wanted to buy a certificate from our firm! Needless to say, we declined. We have had our share of “experts” who did not understand the program all that well.

Any questions? Hopefully not, but let us know!

Oct

The Snowplow Effect

Categories: P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, P6 Tricks, Primavera Contractor, Schedule Performance Index

Tags: Primavera Contractor, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera P6 Professional, Schedule Performance Index, SPI

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by Bill Pepoon

During our training sessions in Kansas City this summer I was describing how Primavera users approach status updates differently than many Microsoft Project users. Primavera P6 users will change the Data Date when updating the project schedule to match the cutoff date of progress. So a Data Date of November 1, 2016 means that we have considered all progress up to November 1, 2016. (The default time for the Data Date in Primavera is 12:00 am so normally we do not include any progress on the Data Date; I will explain how to change the default time in another post).

In Microsoft Project there is the Status Date, which functions like our Data Date. But inexplicably, many Microsoft Project users never change the Status Date when updating the schedule. I realize I am using a bit of a broad brush here, but I have personally reviewed many Microsoft Project schedules where I was not able to determine the cutoff date of progress very easily because the Status Date was still set to the day the project started. I end up searching for the latest actual date in the update to approximate what must be the Status Date.

The end result of not moving the Status Date in Microsoft Project is that activities will have planned start and finish dates that are in the past. A nominal November 1, 2016 update will show activities starting and finishing before that date. That would be a mean feat unless one has a time machine! Now, I suspect that many Microsoft Project users are self-taught and the program is easier to learn than Primavera P6 or Primavera Contractor. So it is possible that many Microsoft Project users simply lack the formal training to apply the tool correctly.

One reason for the confusion might be Microsoft Project’s insistence on displaying the day you open the file as the Status Date. Granted, until progress is applied to the schedule nothing happens to the planned dates, but making the Status Date appear to be fluid is not a good idea. And I suspect many Microsoft Project users are not changing the Status Date because they think the date has already changed; it has, but until the schedule is calculated this date is meaningless. This is why the true Status Date is often the project start date.

If everything went according to plan, we could get away with not moving the Status Date. But that has not been my experience for the past 29 years that I have worked as a scheduler in the construction industry. Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke famously said, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Battles and projects are both unique endeavors where anything can happen. Work often does not start according to the planned dates, takes longer to complete, or is performed out-of-sequence. Moving the Data Date is the only thing that keeps the schedule honest.

When I started my career as a professional scheduler I would often sit down with my clients and mark up the large (30″ x 42″) hand-drawn logic diagrams and tell them, “here are the activities on the critical path; it has been four weeks since I was last here, so you need to give me four weeks’ worth of progress along this path.” My clients would sometimes think I was being a bit harsh, but I knew what would happen when I changed the Data Date. The work not performed gets shoved to the right.

Temporary procrastination does not always cause an immediate impact to project completion, however. Activities that are ready to start but not currently on the critical path may still have enough Total Float to wait until the next schedule update. My favorite way to track these lagging, non-critical tasks is the Schedule Performance Index (SPI). The SPI compares planned progress in the baseline schedule to the actual progress in the current schedule, expressed as follows:

SPI = Performance Percent Complete ÷ Schedule Percent Complete

Performance Percent Complete sounds mysterious, but normally it is the same as Activity Percent Complete. You can check this setting under Admin > Admin Preferences > Earned Value. Schedule Percent Complete is merely the progress expected per the Project Baseline, whatever that might be. It is important to check which schedule is assigned as the Project Baseline since it may have been changed recently.

Because Performance Percent Complete is the numerator in the above equation an SPI of 1.00 or greater means that more work has been performed than expected. This is also quite hard to achieve, since SPI is based on the early dates in the schedule. So not starting a non-critical activity as early as possible hurts SPI just as much as starting a critical path activity late. For this reason I usually run SPIs filtered by: (1) all activities, (2) critical path, and (3) non-critical activities for comparison.

An SPI of 0.80 would tell us that we failed to complete 20% of the work scheduled for the current update period. Early in a project the SPI may not look so great, but the closer we get to the end of the project the SPI has to improve if we have any chance of finishing on schedule. The baseline can be the previous update and still be valid in some situations. We may have deviated so much from the original plan that running the SPI off the original plan is simply not relevant.

I do warn my students there is no clear threshold for SPI where being under a certain number means the project is clearly behind schedule. The most important thing is the trend. We cannot keep ignoring work that is otherwise ready to start if we want to avoid mass chaos during the waning moments of the project. Unless it will somehow cost us more money to start activities on time, what excuse have we got?

The only drawback to SPI is that the schedule must be resource-loaded, either costs or units. Without knowing the “weight” of each task Primavera cannot compare the progress of one task to another. The activity durations might be the same but the daily effort to perform the tasks can be quite different. In any case, we must still consider that not every activity may be resource-loaded (such as submittals) so SPI will not tell us anything about the progress on these tasks.

Getting back to the snowplow, the analogy that I always use is a broom sweeping the remaining work to the right. (Why we tend to see the future as being to the right and the past as being to the left is a bit curious, as if time travels west to east, but we seem to accept this as making sense). One of the participants in my Kansas City class mentioned how they think of the Data Date as a snowplow. I liked their analogy so much I warned them I would use it in my blog. And so I did!

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.

Apr

Expected Finish Dates

Categories: Expected Finish, P6 EPPM, P6 Professional, P6 Tricks, Primavera Contractor

Tags: Expected Finish, Primavera Contractor, Primavera P6 EPPM, Primavera P6 Professional, Remaining Duration

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by Bill Pepoon

Some features of Primavera P6 are easy to ignore without a better appreciation of their true benefits. Expected Finish dates are a good example. The concept is pretty simple: pick a date when a task is expected to finish and – presto – the Remaining Duration is automatically adjusted to achieve the desired date. This works in all versions of Primavera scheduling software: P6 Professional, P6 EPPM and Primavera Contractor.

We typically use Expected Finish dates for long-lead items with big durations. It can take several months to fabricate and deliver specialized equipment, which means the task will span several update periods. So rather than have to manually adjust the Remaining Duration during every update, Expected Finish dates basically automate this process for us.

Several years ago on a project in Calumet City, IL the time required to procure blowers for a new building was nearly 18 months so I prepared a special procurement fragnet to more accurately track the blowers’ progress. My normal procurement fragnet of submit > review > fabricate/deliver was not enough for such an important long-lead item. This was a blower facility, after all, so if the blowers arrived late we would have had a major problem. With this in mind, I set up a series of activities to track the fabrication in Germany, transport to the port, loading on the ship, and the voyage to America.

There is perhaps one small catch with Expected Finish. We only recommend using Expected Finish dates on activities with progress. Once a task has started it is easier to decide whether a particular finish date is still valid. Otherwise, if the preceding logic is changed you might wind up with a very large Remaining Duration because the task is now starting much sooner than before.

Conversely, if an activity starts much later than anticipated because of re-sequencing the original Expected Finish date may be unrealistic (and possibly before the actual start date, which will obviously seem weird). So we are much better off waiting until the task has begun before putting too much faith in the Expected Finish date. We can verify that the preceding tasks are finished and therefore be more confident that no other obstacles remain.

There are just three steps required to set up an Expected Finish date. First, make sure you have checked the box next to Use Expected Finish Dates under the Schedule Options, as seen below:

Second, select an Expected Finish date under the Status Tab in the Activity Details window. In the example below I have selected February 19, 2016 as the Expected Finish date, which is about a month later than the current Finish date:

And third, schedule the project. The Finish date will now match the Expected Finish date. Note that if the Expected Finish date is not a normal work day according to the activity’s calendar then the next available work day will be selected instead.

What I like most about Expected Finish dates is that it reinforces the accuracy of the current Finish dates. In other words, the current Finish dates are not the product of Remaining Durations that may or may not have been verified recently. The Expected Finish dates tell me these are good dates.

One last consideration. If you are updating a cost-loaded schedule then I recommend using Physical as your % Complete Type. This allows us to update the Remaining Duration (via Expected Finish) independent of the percent complete used to calculate Earned Value.

Feb

Party like it’s 2050

Categories: P6 Calendars, P6 Professional, P6 Tricks

Tags: Primavera P6 calendars, Primavera P6 Professional

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by Bill Pepoon

Recently we noticed several people asking about the “2050 problem” with Primavera P6 on Linkedin. Here is the issue. When Primavera P6 users try to input dates starting in 2050 the calendar reverts to 1950. Holy Marty McFly! (As an aside, my brother Steve owned a DeLorean for more than 20 years and his mechanic did all of the work on the “Back to the Future” cars). For those of you with access to My Oracle Support, a solution was posted in Doc ID 905558.1 without much explanation as to the root cause. This problem does not occur in the P6 Web component of P6 EPPM.

While 2050 may seem like a rather esoteric concern the reality is that some of our clients are planning projects right now that are expected to last decades. For example, we trained project managers from the Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate. SwRI is an independent, nonprofit, applied engineering and physical science research and development organization with over 3000 employees. One of their projects is NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto.

The New Horizons spacecraft left Earth on January 19, 2006 and did not reach Pluto until July 14, 2015. That’s nearly nine years just traveling in space. But before that there were the many years spent planning this mission. We have also trained several NASA contractors at Cape Kennedy and it really makes you appreciate what long-range planning is all about, in terms of both time and distance!

Personally, I expect to be either dead or cryogenically frozen by 2050, but for the younger Primavera P6 users out there who expect to be around then there is a solution right now. First, we need a DeLorean…

Just kidding. The solution is actually quite simple. The “2050 problem” only occurs in Primavera P6 when the date format is set to two digits for the year. Inputting 01/01/50 in a date field is interpreted as January 1, 1950. Who knows why this suddenly starts happening in 2050. Dates in 2049 are fine! But if the date format is set to four digits before the dates, P6 is ready to party on past 2049.

The date format is a user preference. Go to Edit > User Preferences > Dates to change the date format. Keep in mind that changing a user preference changes the appearance of all projects accessed by that user. Going back to two digits for the year later on could cause issues with the projects that extend past 2049. I am certain that Oracle will fix this issue eventually. And perhaps we will see a real hoverboard by then!

Sep

Delete POBS Data in an Oracle XE Database

Categories: Oracle XE Database, P6 Professional, POBS Table

Tags: Oracle XE Database, POBS Table, Primavera P6 Professional

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by Bill Pepoon

Several people responded kindly to my post regarding how to Put Your Primavera XER File on a Diet. Mostly I focused on how to shrink the size on an XER file after it has been exported from a database, Microsoft (SQL) or Oracle (XE). I also explained – briefly – how to delete POBS data in an Oracle database so that it is not exported in the first place. Both solutions are important. For example, if someone sends you a bloated XER file you want to delete the worthless POBS data before you import it into your database. Otherwise, your database becomes bloated. Also, it significantly reduces the amount of time required to import XER files. We have heard from users saying it takes hours to import larger schedules. That is ridiculous! It should never take more than a few minutes to import one schedule.

However, I realize that some users need more specific instructions regarding how to delete POBS data from an Oracle XE database. So today I am going to describe each step in detail:

Step One – Locate the Oracle XE Database Home Page

Unless you are using Windows 8 or later, simply click on Start > All Programs. Oracle XE is a program, after all. Starting with Windows 8, all programs are treated like apps so I have to look in my apps group. Ugh! But here is what you are looking for in Windows 8:

Select Got to Database Home Page. Note that all of the Oracle/Primavera apps are grouped together. Double-click to launch the home page. This might take fifteen seconds or so.

Step 2 – Log Into the Database Home Page

Once the Database Home Page loads you will be presented with the following login screen:

You must use ADMPRM$PM as the username. Elsewhere you may have read that SYS is the username, but this username does not give you permission to execute commands. Your password is the same password you used when setting up the database. Hopefully you wrote it down because recovering it is not fun.

Step 3 – Select SQL Commands

After logging in you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below. You need to select SQL Commands > Enter Command:

Step 4 – Enter the Count Command

The Oracle Knowledge Base suggests that the following command be entered:

select * from pobs;

This does work. However, it will display all of the POBS data without giving you too much appreciation for how many lines are actually in the database. Use the command below instead:

select count(*) from pobs;

And yes, you do type the semicolon!

Then click on Run.

This command (and the results) is shown in the next screenshot:

Note that in the bottom part of the pane the count is zero. This is because I had already run the command a few days ago. At that time, the count was 86,987 (!) Not surprisingly, my XER export files were getting pretty chunky. A typical XER file for me is less than 1 MB but until I ran this command I had no exports smaller than 14 MB.

Step 5 – Enter the Delete Command

The final step (yeah!) is to delete the unwanted POBS data. Modify the previous command to read:

delete from pobs;

Again, make sure you include the semicolon. Also, note that you do not necessarily have to run the other command mentioned in my previous posting:

commit;

Oracle XE has an option to autocommit all commands. You will see this option in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. You won’t hurt anything by running the command but it is superfluous (just like my brother-in-law, but he thinks I’m giving him a compliment…)

A couple of other things:

The Oracle Knowledge Base also suggests running a couple of “trigger” commands after deleting the POBS data. This is not necessary in an Oracle XE database.
If you continue to import XER files that contain POBS data you will need to delete this data on a regular basis. Again, my original posting explains one way to clean up XER files prior to importing them.

In another post I’ll discuss three methods of backing up an Oracle XE database.