Reflection projects are a little-known but very handy feature in Primavera P6 Professional. A Primavera P6 Reflection project is essentially a copy of a project but with one snazzy built-in trick – the ability to merge the copied project back into the original at any time. If the genius of this trick hasn’t struck you yet, it will.
This merging ability was designed to help planners work with scenario projects.
Let’s say you’re the planner for a large capital project that is a falling behind schedule. The boss wants you to assess the impact of adding an extra shift to the work schedule. How much time can be caught up with this approach (ie: scenario)?
The thing to do here is to create a Reflection of the project in Primavera P6, add an extra shift and verify the finish date. If the boss approves the extra shift, then you can merge this scenario project into the original project along to keep the changes you made.
Primavera P6 reflections save you the time of renaming projects, resetting permissions and copying and pasting changes from one project to another. There are also some nice options to help you create a backup of the original project in case you need to reference it again in the future.
Step 1 – Creating a Reflection project in Primavera P6
From the Projects window, right-click on the original project and select Create Reflection from the menu.
If the original project has any baselines you will see pop-up window where you can select whether or not to copy these baselines into the reflected project. Simply mark the checkbox in the Copy column if you want to preserve any baselines in the Reflected project.
You should now see a copy of your project in the Projects window. The copy will have the same Project ID with “-1” appended. This reflection project will also be marked with a Status of “What-If” which is Primavera’s way of indicating the project is a “scenario” project and not a real project plan.
Step 2 – Open the Reflection project and Activity Layout
You Primavera P6 reflection project is now created and ready for editing.
Now it’s time to run your scenario – ie: you can now make changes to the Reflection project to run your scenario, test out a hypothesis, etc.
In this tutorial, we’ll make a small change to the reflection project’s resources.
Open the Project and then Open the Activity Layout provided the tutorial downloads section.
Before we make any changes, you’ll need to make sure a key setting for working with resources is set correctly in User Preferences. Go to Edit -> User Preferences, and click on the Calculations Tab.
Set the “Recalculate the Units, Duration, and Units/Time for existing assignments based on the activity Duration Type” option. This will make sure that Primavera will perform the necessary recalculations when resources are added or removed from an activity. Close the User Preferences window.
NOTE: this step isn’t necessary when working with Primavera P6 Reflections, but I like to set this option when I’m doing resource-based scenarios.
Step 3 – Making changes to your Primavera P6 Reflection project
Find Activity A1020 – Convert Legacy Data. You’ll be adding another resource to Activity A1020 to see how this will affect the project’s overall finish date.
Since the activity’s Duration Type is set to “Fixed Units”, adding an additional resource will have the effect of reducing the activity’s duration and spreading the units equally over the 3 resources assigned. Let’s give it a try.
I’ll now add resource Tom Bell as a new resource assignment to A1020 and reschedule the project using the current data date and check the project’s finish date.
The project should now finish on Dec 20, 2010 whereas before it was scheduled to finish on March 1, 2011.
Step 3 – Reviewing the Reflection Differences Report
One of the best features of working with Primavera P6 Reflections reveals itself when you initiate a Merge – the differences report.
The differences report will show you specifically what has changed in your Primavera P6 reflection project.
Go back to the Projects window and right-click on the Reflection project – “Billing-1”.
Choose “Merge Reflection into Source Project” from the menu. You should now see the Differences Report window.
This screen is really nice. It provides you with a report on the differences between the original project and the reflection at the activity level. You’ll see the value for say Remaining Duration from the Source Project, and the updated value from the Reflection project.
From here you can choose which changes you want to merge into the original, or leave out by checking the box in the “Merge” column next to the item. Don’t like the updates on a particular activity? Just leave them out.
Primavera P6 also gives you some options to archive the original project, either as a baseline or as an .xer export file. This is *essential* as you’ll likely need to keep the original project around. And you can also choose how to handle the reflection – keep it, delete it or replace it (update it) with the new merged project.
Step 4 – Merging the Reflection into the original project plan
If you agree to merging the projects, you can go ahead and set the options as above, and click “Merge Changes” to finalize the merge. You may want to print this differences report first, or you might even copy and paste it into a text document before you Merge. You can do either of these by clicking the Display bar.
With your scenario complete, don’t forget to communicate the results.
Merging Primavera P6 Reflections – Limitations
The merging process between a source project and a reflection project has some limitations that I’ll do my best to outline here.
Permissions to Create Reflections and Merge
The following permissions apply if you are running a version of Primavera P6 Professional that connects to an enterprise database – not a standalone version.
In order to be able to create a Primavera P6 Reflection project, you will need to have the permission to “Add Projects” in whatever Project Security Profile you are assigned. Most folks will already have this permission.
The ability to merge reflections requires further permissions. In order to be able to merge a reflection, you will require BIG ACCESS – yes – Super Admin. You will need to have the “<Admin Superuser>” Global Security Profile in order to merge reflections.
Deleted Data in your Reflection Project
If you have deleted data in the reflection project, Primavera P6 will have a very difficult time resolving the differences when you merge the project back together. According to Oracle, the Merge cannot distinguish whether or not an item was deleted from the Reflection or if the item was added to the Source after the Reflection was created. (Here’s another way to compare 2 project files.)
Thus any deletions in your reflection will not be deleted in the source project during merge.
More specifically, the following items will not be removed from the source project if they were deleted from the reflection:
- Activities
- Relationships
- Resource Assignments
- WBS elements
- Work Products and Documents
- Project Expenses
- Project Issues
- Project Risks
“Merging will not necessarily remove items from the source project that have been deleted from the reflection. If major elements of a project have been deleted from the reflection, you will have to manually delete them from the source project if you do not want to keep the elements in the source project. Elements that are not deleted during a merge include Activities, Resource Assignments, WBS elements, Work Products and Documents, Project Expenses, Project Issues, and Project Risks.” (Primavera P6 Reflections help file)
Right away, this puts some limits on what you can do with reflections. But it’s clear that they were not meant to support major changes between source & reflection, only smaller, incremental changes.
Dealing Duplicate entries after merging
Another set of limits is when you change the following items in the reflection:
- Project ID
- Activity ID
- Resource ID
- Role ID
- Cost Account
- Price/Unit
Any changes to these items will result in new items being added to the source project.
For example, let’s say you change renumber Activity ID ENG-2050 to a new ID of ENG-3050. That change will not be merged into the source project.
Instead, a duplicate activity, ENG-3050 will be added to the source project, resulting in 2 identical activities with different IDs.
The same behaviour applies to the other items in the list above.
So you’ll definitely have to review your schedule after a merge to ensure there’s no duplication.
What else you should know about reflections:
- Primavera P6 Reflections are only available in Primavera P6 Professional (windows) and not in Primavera P6 EPPM (web) (check out this article for ALL of the differences)
- Check Primavera P6 help file for more information, like this handy FAQ about reflections
Wrap Up
Primavera P6 Reflections and merging features in Primavera P6 are great features for the planner or scheduler who needs to run project scenarios or hypothetical analysis.
Many planners also use reflections to help with progressing their project, especially when subcontractors are involved.
Things for you to try:
- Try making more than 1 reflection of the same project to compare multiple scenarios
Download Tutorial Files
- Want to follow along with this tutorial? Grab the files below.
- Project .xer and Layout [Reflections-Tutorial.zip] – Don’t know how to import our layouts? Read how here.
This article was originally published in August 2011. It has been updated for accuracy.
I understand that you need superuser privileges to be able to merge reflections. However, I also understand that there is something called Project Superuser. Can you merge reflections with Project Superuser privs or do is Admin Superuser required? Also, what other privileges come with Project Superuser?
Great question.
I did some checking and testing on what permissions you need to both create a reflection and to perform a merge. The P6 user guide says that you don’t need Global “Admin Superuser” privileges to create a reflection. You only need to have privileges to create projects. As for project-level permissions, you DO need to have “Project Superuser” privileges for both the source project AND the reflection project.
Project Superuser gives you ALL of the project privileges in the profiles setup screen, as well as the following (which are unstated for some reason):
1. Can change the Responsible Manager for any project that they have access to
2. Allowed to Import into an existing project with the following options – Update, Add Into or Replace
3. Select or Deselect the option to copy activities when copying a WBS node
And I guess we would add…
4. Can Merge Reflection projects back into the Source project.
M
Hi – yes i agree this looks very usefull, however my scenario is slightly more complex as the ‘reflected’ programme will need to be backed up (XER) and issued to subcontractor for update. When i have tried this and imported the updated XER it doesnt give me the ‘merge’ facility – is there a way round this?
Rob
Hi Rob,
Another good question and likely scenario. This is a nice way to use reflections for updating which I hope to cover soon.
I was able to create a reflection, export it to .xer, reimport it and merge the changes. One thing that might be tripping you up is during the import – you have to make sure that you have the reflection project open before you perform the import. This will update the reflection project in your database from the .xer file. If you don’t have the reflection project open, P6 will try to create a new project in the database and you won’t be able to perform the merge.
Steps:
1) Open the reflection project.
2) Goto File -> Import.
3) Select your file.
4) Choose from the Import Option dropdown to “Update Existing Project” and select the project in the “Import To” field to the right.
5) Complete the Import.
6) Merge the Reflection Project back into the Source.
Drop me a line back if this doesn’t fix it for you. Thanks for the comments.
Hi,
When i tried to import the reflective programme back from my sub-contractor, under the import action i could only see two options as create a new project & ignore existing project.i cant find the update the existing project option as i find trouble in merging the reflection into source project. need assistance.
Thanks & Regards,
Hassan A
Hassan,
Before you import, open the original project first. It sounds like you have no project open when you do the import so P6 doesn’t offer the update options.
Sir I’ve a question,
I’m working on 1 project which will be executed by 2 Companies
I’ve more than 4500 activities divided in 3 categories
1. Activities by ABC company
2. Activities by XYZ company
3. Activities by both companies (Combine)
All this activities are interlinked
Now my Question is
The XYZ Company want to have their part of schedule i.e Activities by XYZ company & Common activities (i.e Activities by both companies) & they will update & send that schedule to us. But the client wants only 1 Schedule for the whole project which is natural & standard.
Both the companies are located far away geographically.
Web access to XYZ company is also not possible due to security policy.
What will you suggest in this situation?
Can Reflection Project option help me in this case?
Thanks in advance for your reply
Hi Vicky,
The best approach to updates is to have the companies work in the database where the project resides. This eliminates all sorts of hassle with importing data and updates. You’ll want to ensure you have proper security profiles set up for each company that logs in.
However, if having the contractors log in to the database is not possible, as you’ve stated, then importing .xer files is probably the next best approach.
Yes, you can use Reflections for updating projects as well. I think it would be a good choice for you to use in this situation. I might suggest you make a copy of the project to test the Reflection updates on first – so can you get a feel for how they work. Just remember that reflections don’t update all data. If there are major changes in the reflected project, like new relationships and resource changes, the Reflection Merge will not import them and you’ll have to do it manually. However, you can still import a .xer without using a Reflection in that case.
If your contractors are merely providing status / actuals updates on existing activities, I do recommend you use Reflections. You’ll have the ability to review the changes in the Reflection differences report before merging them in.
This will be the topic of a future tutorial soon.
Please feel free to contact me via with any other questions. I’m happy to help. michael@plannertuts.com
Michael
Good Morning Sir,
As said by you, “reflections don’t update all data”, It’ll be
difficult for me to use that option.
How Importing .xer file can help?
I mean suppose if i (ABC Company) prepare baseline schedule for all 3
types of activities (Activities for ABC, XYZ & Combine). I export the
project as xer file, send it to other contractor (XYZ Company), During
the execution of the project say in 1st month, i will update my
portion of activities ( ABC Company activities), XYZ company will
update their portion & send .xer file to me.
Now when i import this .xer file & if i use “Update existing project”
option in Import action in Import window
then will it be correct import or there are any chances of mistakes?
How can i check that ?
I mean the resulting project will show updates by both companies correctly?
Hi Vicky,
I have a better understanding of your scenario now. If I was in your shoes, here’s how I would proceed.
1) My first choice is, if at all possible (even by nagging managers and IT folks), get these contractors to work directly in my Primavera database. If I can do that, I’ll have the utmost control over the flow of data and security to keep each contractor focused on only their activities.
2) If I have exhausted all possibilities of acheiving 1) above, then my second choice is to divide the project into 2 separate project plans. Each contractor can then perform updates via .xer file without interfering with the other contractor’s updates or activities. It is possible in Primavera to work with multiple projects as though they are 1 project, by opening them together, using Activity Codes to essentially merge the two projects together for viewing and analysis even though they are separate. Depending on what you’ve agreed to with the client, this is the next best option, however it is not perfect either. There could be challenges if both contractors don’t update their projects at the same (or reasonably close). Each project will have separate Data Date and if these DD’s become very out of sync, then I would have other challenges to deal with.
3) If neither 1) nor 2) was an option, then my next choice would be to enforce regular project updates from both Contractors using Reflections. When you merge the Reflection project, I’ll be able to see if there were major changes (new activities, new resource assignments, etc.). Since these major changes can’t be merged, I would have to preserve the project before (make a copy or baseline) and then either do an .xer import or manually update the major changes. I might use the Claim Digger tool to compare the differences after the import. I would also ask contractors to perform status updates more regularly to manage fewer updates each time.
I know it sounds difficult and tedious, and in some ways it is but using the tools in 3) would ensure that I’m very careful with the data to ensure one contractor doesn’t affect the other’s section of the project.
4) I have one further option I might pursue. Bring complete control of the schedule in-house – ie: don’t allow the contractors to update their schedules, do it for them. Many companies also take this approach and find it can help to better manage their contractors as well. This way, we get rid of hassle of updating and merging, but now we need to have a good communication strategy to get information from the contractor when we require an update.
Vicky, I hope I’ve given some viable options to consider. This is all tricky business. But I really think if you can go with option 1), it’ll make life alot easier.
Please feel free to email again if you’ve more questions. I’m here to help.
Michael
Your Comments
While looking for some on-line tutorials for advanced work (linking projects together, Reflections, etc) in Primavera P6, I came across Michael’s tutorials and comments on YOUTUBE and http://www.planacademy.com. Loved it, I’m a fan!
Michael’s tutorials are professional, free of gimmicks and dubious music choices imposed upon me. I’ve enjoyed watching every one of them! Fortunately, I’ve been able to successfully put it in practice and live-test for the benefit of my own company. Glad to say that “it does what it says on the tin”.
Great work Michael, please keep them coming – virtual classroom at its best!
Your Comments
Your tutorials were recommended to me by a colleague. I have found them all to be very useful as I didn’t know Primavera was so versitile!
Now I am looking forward to the next lot of tutorials to further impress my bosses!!
As Sunchana states ‘it does what it says on the tin’
Keep up the good work
Thanks Dave! We really appreciate your positive feedback and will strive to continue to helping this community.
How can I get all the tutorials of you. Please advise.
Hello Krishna,
Please browse the site. All our tutorials are posted here and are currently free to peruse.
Warmest Regards,
Michael
Hi Sir. I’m using reflections to do lots of changes etc, and hope to pull all back into the original plan. However, I also want a new baseline of said changes. How does p6 react when re-baselining, a quarter way through the plan, and where I have %ages, earned values etc,,
thanks for any help.
Hi Doug,
P6 has no problems with creating baselines mid-project. After you merge your reflection in, you can rebaseline your schedule to capture it with the newly merged changes.
Hopefully that answers your question. If not, drop us another line here.
Regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
There are different activities like A,,B,C, in my plan.they having different start dates and end dates..predecessor and successor activities.after preparing my plan i realize that its one time activity and i want to merge all these activities as one one Activity.because if i deleted all Activities it will disturb my whole plan. what should i do now??i want to merge all activities as a one time activity.
thanks
Regards
kash
Hi Kash,
A few options.
1) You could create a new activity to replace A B C, then delete A B C. But as you said, it would disturb your plan. If you delete A B C, it might also upset any baselines that have those activities in them as well.
2) A second option is to use a Level of Effort activity (set Activity Type to Level of Effort on General tab) to “summarize” those 3 activities. A Level of Effort activity is a special type that can summarize groups of activities – it will automatically span the duration from the start of A to the end of C. Create a new activity (LOE). Set it to be a “level of effort” activity type. Create a predecessor from LOE to A – set as Start-Start. Create a successor from LOE to C – set as Finish-Finish. Reschedule your project and LOE will summarize those activities – it’s duration will be auto-calculated as the duration from the start of A to the finish of C.
Give that a try and let us know if it helps. You may also review this tutorial which explains level of effort somewhat https://www.planacademy.com/use-a-level-of-effort-to-add-work-stoppage-info-to-a-project-and-still-track-to-your-primavera-baseline/.
Regards,
Michael
Hi,
I have dissolved some activities in reflection of the project. Now before merge all change in base project i want to be sure that these activites will going to be dissolve in base project as well. Is it possible to do so or is there is any other way we can make reflection as a base project?
Thank you in advance.
Best Regards
@Jayant
By design, Merging will NOT Remove items from the Source Project that have been deleted from the Reflection. If major elements of a Project have been deleted from the Reflection, the User will have to manually delete them from the Source Project.
Elements that are not deleted during a Merge include:
Activities
Relationships
Resource Assignments
WBS elements
Work Products and Documents
Project Expenses
Project Issues
Project Risks
Hello.I have an issue concerning the merge reflection into a source project, when i try to do the merge i got this message : “Cannot open both projects exclusively.You will not be able to merge.” .Any idea about how solving this matter? Many thanks in advance.
It sounds like someone else has one of your projects open. You can check who is using a project by going to File->Open, select your project and click the Users’ button.
MY question concerns the use of reflections and changing activity relationships.
Can I change the activity relationships in reflection project and upon merge, will these “revised” relationship replace what I have in the current project?
We have a scenario for some offshore work that we want to look at different marine vessel sequencing and this would allow me to do “what – if” planning in several plans to present to Offshore team.
Thanks in Advance for your assistance.
Hello. Great thread as always!
Can you re-name the reflection project without compromising it’s functionality?
Hi, yes, I believe you can. The link is not by name, but through another field which eludes me now.
M
@WTaylorCooper,
Unfortunately relationships do not merge. Same goes with resource assignments. You have to update these manually in the merged project – the merging feature will not do it for you.
HI.
sir,
Is there any option in P6 to generate the the S-Curve to express planned and actual progress.
with regards.
If I made a reflection to model some changes and the project I made a reflection of is statused, is there a way for me to have that status merged into my reflection? In this example the what if senario is taking several months and regular status is still continuing. My what if is becoming out of date. Any ideas?
Thank you in advance!
Hi Michael, i have a little problem with reflection, when i merge the projects, the labor units triplicates, why is that happening?
Thanks for the tutorial and for any comment.
Hi,
I don’t have any clue and couldn’t dig up any known bugs that might be related. Did you try a screen refresh (F5) after merging? When you merge, it’s possible to copy the merging stuff and to paste into a notepad doc – or print it – then you can go over it in detail to ensure it’s working as expected.
Sorry I can’t offer more than this.
Michael
@Nicole,
That’s a tough one. You’re sort of stuck keeping 2 projects in sync with status until someone decides to go forward with the what-if scenario. You’ll likely have to test this out with a small project to see how it behaves. I suspect it’s not going to do what you’re hoping.
Obvious (but probably not favourable) would be to status both the real project and the what-if project.
I suggest you run some tests. Sorry I can’t offer more.
Michael
How can I merged an updated two (2) .xer files with unmatched ID’s, Activity Names and Data Date.
Appreciate your help.
@Danu – probably not. If you have 2 projects with unmatched Activity IDs and Names, then it seems like they are completely separate projects, and I’m not sure how a merging of these two would work.
If you need to combine them into 1 project, you can always open both and copy from one into the other.
Michael
I Have problem installing the P6, The problem arrives when create database. It shows bad user name or Invalid private user name. Can some rectify This problem
We work in an multiple project IMS, with major inter-linking between tasks of the projects (A-to-B, C, D; B-to-C, E, F; etc.) and have entertained the use of “reflections” for “what-if” scenario processing.
Examples Projects: “A” “B” “C” “D” “E” “F” “Reflection of A”
My concern is that when the reflection is created (“Reflection of A”
), it created duplicate logic ties to the non-reflection projects (“B” “C” “D” “E” “F”) in our IMS.
Won’t the “reflection” processing changes affect my non-reflection project dates based on predecessor / successors from the “reflection”?
What happend when the link between de Reflected and Source Project is broken? I mean: I have exported both Source and Reflection, and imported in other Machine. But now, field “source Project” is blank, and there is not option to merge the reflection Project into de Source Porject.
Thanks in advance.
@Moises
Apparently when moving projects to a new database, the link for reflected projects breaks. Here’s the workaround:
– Create a reflection from the broken source project and open only that project.
– Export the copy or broken reflection that won’t merge to an XER file.
– Import the XER back into the database as ‘Update Existing’ to the created reflection.
Make sense?
@Chris,
Hmmmm…good catch. I think you are probably correct. See if this helps.
In the reflection project, click the Options button on the Scheduler window (like you’re rescheduling).
In Options, check “Ignore Relationships to and From Other Projects”. Then run your scenario. This setting should make sure you don’t drive dates to your other projects when they are rescheduled.
Let me know how it works out.
M
That process would work, except our Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) has a great deal of interdependency linking between the projects that are not the reflections. Changing to “Ignore Relationships to and From Other Projects” ignores all the logic created between all of those non-reflection IMS projects.
I was afraid that was the case, but hoped to be wrong.
Thanks
is it possible to set a different calender for each and every wbs?any single option?
No. Calendars are assigned only to Activities. To change the calendar for all activities in a wbs, add the “Calendar” column to your layout and use “Fill Down”. (Edit menu -> Fill Down).
DEAR SIR;
I have 2 copies of same project (same activities same relations) but different resources because one of them loaded by budgeted resources (cash out) and another one loaded by selling prices to give invoices (cash in) .
I make time & dates update which is same in both projects – but financials different .
how to use what-if to merge updates to the another copy of the project (not source project)
Dear Michael,
Is there a way we can load data from excel to the Work Products and Documents in p6. I have tried Exporting and Importing including using global change but it’s not working.
Best Regards,
Arnold
Hi,
Can you keep the reflection & blow away the original?
Do you have to merge it back?
Then rename the Reflection to be what the original project was?
Yes, you can. Just delete the original. The reflection will stay – these are all just projects in the end.
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Hi Michael,
I have a question if you can help me answering it. I am main contractor and there is a subcontractor recently inducted by our contracts department. I want to get schedule activities related to that subcontractor updated by subcon through reflection tool. But problem is that my schedule is loaded with BOQ cost (In the form of resource) which I don’t want my subcon to see when I send them reflection of schedule for updating.
Can you guide me please how can I solve this issue?
Thank You in advance.
Sorry – I can’t see any way you can hide resources when you create a reflection. It’s a complete copy of the project. I think the only way is to move their work into a separate project and link the 2 projects together.
can i edit the relationships ?? because the reflection isn’t showing any relation for activities
Unfortunately, you can’t merge any relationship changes using reflections. Michael
If the relationship changes cannot be merged back, can I “unlink” the reflection from the main project and make it a stand-alone ? This way I could put the base project as a baseline to this stand-alone to implement the changes and maintain visibility of the past.
Yes, you can unlink it. You simply have to change the “Project Status” field from “What-if” to something else – “Active” perhaps. Then the merge feature goes away. If you set it back to “What-if” you can merge it again.
Michael.
Is there any possible to create reflection for multiple project at a time? i have seen reflection when select single project that opened. Give me the solution becuase i am using more than 20 projects and make schedule for every day. your solution would be really helpful for me.
Thanks
Arun
That would be great, but I don’t think P6 can do that.
HI EVERYONE,
I AM WORKING ON A PROJECT AND PROJECT IS ON MIDWAY. I ALREADY UPDATING ACTUAL DATA ON PROJECT. BUT NOW MY BOSS IS SAYING TO CHANGE THE SCENARIO OF THE PROJECT BY HIRING MORE CONTRACTORS AND OVERLAPPING THE ACTIVITIES. PLEASE SUGGEST ME HOW CAN I MAKE CHANGES ON A MIDWAY PROJECT WITH ALREADY APPLYING ACTUAL WITH BASELINE?
Sounds like you want to make a scenario. Copy your project and do the scenario in the copy. If the boss like it, make the same changes in your original project or make this scenario project the new go-forward project. Then rebaseline.
Hi everyone,
I want to know, can i update 2 baseline program in 1 layout, because my boss ask me to do 2 baseline program which 1 we submit to client and another one for internal used which the completion date much early. I just a new planner because before this i was engineer. all this still new to me and i hope someone can help me. thank you.
Hi Michael ,
I am updating master project based on the progress update I receive from multiple users in reflection project. I wish to update the forecasted dates in Reflection project on daily basis based on the updated master project schedule . Is there any option to achieve this requirement without creating another reflection project .
In short , My requirement is as below
Daily Activity status update – From Reflection Project(Multiple users) to Master project (Planner)
Daily Updated schedule with new dates – From Master project(Planner) to reflection project (for multiple users)
The tutorial was helpful but can someone help me a step by step procedure on how to carryout portfolio management on primavera p6?
please i need a primavera software tutorial step by step on how to prepare a project portfolio of more than one project, i.e combining more than one projects which are started same time and sharing same resources.
Hi Michael,
First of all thanks for the wonderful tutorial and for giving us insights of Reflections.
Now I have a question. We are client and using Primavera. Out contractors are usig Microsoft Project. Now I got one Microsoft project file from them which I have converted in p6. At the month end I would like to send them the reflection of current porgram and make them update so I can merge it back. I am thinkng of following below steps. Can you please suggest if there is a better way of doing it.
1) Create p6 program reflection
2) Open reflection. Export it into Microsoft Project format
3) Send it to contractor & contractor opens imports it into his database (Microsoft project)
4) Contractor performs update and sends us updated file (probably microsoft project)
5) We import his file into p6 (I will keep the reflection project open when importing)
6) p6 reflection updated
7) now merge the reflerction with Main project and complete the update.
Can you please review the above steps and let me know if you think it can work.
Thanks in advance
Nirav
HI everyone,
I already have tried the above scenario and I can confirm it works. There is a little catch. once we complete step5 and upload contractors file into p6 by opening reflection project we need to check the project Status. With Importing microsoft project file it actually changed my Project status to “Active” so this was not allowing me to merge the reflection. Now if you change the project status back to “What If” and do the right click it will show you merge option again!!!!
Also once you finish your merge reflection this will keep the data date unchanged. So you will need to review the changes and if you are happy with it you can change the data date. I really liked this functionality as imagine if you have created 3-4 reflections for different contractors and you are getting their responce one-by-one. You really dont want ot change the data date untill you receive everyones update!!!
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Regards
Nirav
Thanks Nirav!
Dear Michael,
I merged three schedules from different companies with different DATA DATES on it.
e.g. Company a DD : 18 Oct
b DD : 20 Oct
C DD: 30 Oct
Once I merged these three and I want to update, which DATA DATE I will use?
Ideally, you would merge projects with the same data date. However, I would use the earliest data date 18Oct. You can still update activities in the merged copy to get everything to 30Oct.
When I want to creat a reflection from project It gives me this message :your job has been scheduled see job status for more detail
But I can not see a copy of project in the node?
You must be using Primavera P6 EPPM then. The reflection is sent to a job applet that makes the copy. The applet may need some technical attention. I would check with your administrator or an IT guy to help sort it out.
Hi Sima,
Often it’s as simple as pressing F5 to see the reflection you made.
Also, check there’s no filters on.
Lastly – are you using P6 in an EPPM environment / Shared database, or is it standalone?
Sometimes, you will find that the service on the EPPM server needs restarting.