Do you work in an enterprise environment where so many people have access to the same Primavera P6 database? Have you ever wanted to find out who made changes to your Primavera P6 schedule without leaving any comments in a Primavera P6 Notebook? Here is quick tip to help you track users who made changes to your Primavera P6 schedule. Add the 4 new fields (columns) to your
The Best Primavera P6 Tutorials & Articles
Browse all of our Primavera P6 Professional tutorials and articles here. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro with Primavera P6 Professional, we've got helpful and informative articles that are perfect for you.
The One Indicator That Can Foil Your Excel Import into Primavera P6
16 Comments
There is the temptation to think that because you can export a data field from Primavera P6 to Excel that you can import the same data field back to Primavera P6 after manipulating the field’s data in Excel. If you have ever imported data into Primavera P6 using Excel, you would have experienced instances where despite getting the familiar message of a successful import, some of the changes you
How to Print a Calendar from Primavera P6, with some help
17 Comments
In this quick tutorial we show how to create a 12-month formatted calendar in Excel based on the data extracted from an xer file using the handy Xer-Reader utility. Hopefully I will soon provide a more technical explanation on how the code works in the xer reader wiki. Michael has written excellent article about calendars and The Biggest Problem with Primavera P6 Calendars, And How You Can
Import an XER File From a Newer Version of Primavera P6
24 Comments
To import a newer version XER file to an older version of Oracle Primavera P6 installed on your computer, follow this quick fix. 1) Open the XER file in any text editor like Windows Notepad. 2) On the very first line, you should see the version of Oracle Primavera P6 that this XER file was saved in. Edit the version in the file to match the version installed on your machine. You can check
The Big Problem with Primavera P6 Calendars And How To Fix It
25 Comments
Primavera P6 Calendars have a big problem and it becomes a major pain in the butt as your list of calendars grows and grows. As planners and schedulers, we are tasked with managing mountains of project data everyday; progress updates, scenario projects, reports, reports and more reports. Data can quickly take over your life if you're not careful. And you don't have time for that. That's why
Critical Path vs Longest Path
36 Comments
When it comes to your project's Critical Path, there are few topics more important to your client. The expectation is that YOU, dear scheduler, are the expert. So YOU had better know your project's Critical Path inside and out. But wait! ......Is it the Critical Path you should be reporting on, or the Longest Path? The terms Critical Path and Longest Path are often used interchangeably when
How can I force an activity onto my project’s Critical Path?
13 Comments
Last week, I taught a Primavera P6 training course to some great folks in frosty Fort McMurray. As often happens, an interesting question came up about Critical Path. And this is not the first time this question has been put to me. But this time, I thought I would write about it. "How do I put an activity on my project's Critical Path in Primavera P6?" So here's the situation. A project
Here’s A Quick Way To Keep Your Milestones in Focus in Primavera P6
25 Comments
Milestone Activities in any schedule usually represent the most important deadlines, deliveries, start ups or drop-dead dates for a project. These are undeniably dates that you’ll want to stay on top of and keep close at hand in case you’re asked for a report or to check on the health of the project. But it can be difficult to search for milestones in a large construction schedule, and at the
Graphing a P6 Resource S-Curve in Excel
6 Comments
In my previous tutorial in this series, I described the procedure to export resource assignment data from P6 to Excel. Most of us have worked with Excel charts in our job or during our study in college or university. What we all know is that they are really helpful when you want to demonstrate some analytical information without technical terms. In this tutorial, I am going to tell you how to
One Trick to Export P6 Resource Assignment Data to Excel
60 Comments
As you know Primavera P6 has a lack of graphical features so often we schedulers need to export everything to other software packages (mostly Excel) to produce an understandable schedule and graphs. I always had a problem when I export P6 resource assignment data to Excel with the standard exporting feature on P6 until I found a way to leverage the Reports feature. Here you can use the current
How Primavera Calendars Change Durations – and what to do about it
58 Comments
If you do a quick google on keywords <Primavera calendars change>, you'll end up with quite a few results that show you how to use Primavera's Fill-Down feature to change the activity calendar of all the activities in a project. But I think the fill-down piece is only the first step in changing activity calendars. What about durations? Changing an activity's calendar in Primavera can
Create a P6 Project Dashboard in Excel
29 Comments
Tutorial Files Excel Spreadsheet (Excel 2007+): PTuts_Project_Dashboard.xlsm - 1.5Mb One of our previous site manager told us (the project control team), that if we bring to him another report that have more than 1 page, he will just throw it away (sic), actually managers care only about the big picture, and don’t bother reviewing every small details. The purpose of this tutorial is to
How To Link A P6 Schedule To The BOQ With Different Levels Of Detail
11 Comments
Tutorial Files Excel Spreadsheet (Excel 2007+): PlannerTuts_BOQ_Pay_Item.xlsx P6 Schedule and BOQ challenges A contract's Bill of Quantities is always meant to be more details than the schedule, at least in theory. In many cases, the planner and the estimator are not working in perfect coordination and you may end with two different level of details for the same project. In case you need
How To Remove Resource Costs from XERs in Primavera P6
24 Comments
This tutorial will walk you through a process to remove resource costs from XERs exported from Primavera P6. This comes in very handy if you are sending project schedules to general contractors but want to hide cost information from them (or anyone else for that matter). In case you want to completely remove resources from your schedule prior to sending over the XER file, here are the steps to
[Ask Plan Academy] How To Remove Resources From A Primavera P6 Schedule For My Client?
8 Comments![[Ask Plan Academy] How To Remove Resources From A Primavera P6 Schedule For My Client?](https://cdn.planacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ask-plannertuts-primavera-p6-help-264x200.jpg)
Plan Academy, I have to send my client a copy of my schedule every month. But the client would like me to exclude any resourcing information in the copy that I send them. How can I easily remove resources in the copy of the project I send to my client?Signed, Geoff. Geoff, it turns out that this is easily accomplished in Primavera P6 with the features included in the software's smart project
Quick Tip: Mixing AND and OR Options in Primavera P6 Filters
10 Comments
Building a filter where all the conditions are either 'And' or ‘Or’ between each row is pretty straightforward. However, if you want to mix them up a little its not so obvious how you should do that in Oracle Primavera P6 Professional. This quick tip will show you how. Example: I want to find all the milestones in the project that have a date variance that is not equal to zero. In other words,
The Essential Guide to Printing Layouts in Primavera P6
38 Comments
Primavera P6 provides the ability to display project schedule information using “Layouts”. Layouts are customizable views of project information and are the primary method for printing Gantt Charts, Profiles, Spreadsheets, and Trace Logic views. Schedules are tough to read and all members of the project team can benefit from an easier way to interpret their schedules. Did you know that you can
Quick Tip: Use Fill Down To Copy Data Across a P6 Schedule
10 Comments
As all of you know, when you want to develop a time schedule there are many attributes that should be assigned to activities and for this purpose we use Activity Detail bottom on the Activity Toolbar. By pressing this bottom, a form will be appear below your time schedule and in this for you can assign different attributes to your activities, such as type, duration, start and finish dates,
Excel VLOOKUP Tutorial – Step by Step for Primavera P6 Users
8 Comments
Primavera users are also Excel users. As many of you know, Microsoft Excel has many useful functions in different areas such as Financial, Date & Time, Math & Trig and so on. One of these areas is Look up & Reference. The functions in this area are dealt with lists, indexes and arrays and help us to find some special information in these listed data or other. This required information
Video: Import Primavera P6 Updates from Excel
53 Comments
Occasionally we revisit some of our reader's favourite posts from the annals of the Plan Academy tutorial library, and today we're revisiting a topic that is always hot - importing updates from excel. Let's take a look! Often large projects demand many sub-teams or subcontractors update a portion of the master project plan on an on-going basis. If your subcontractors are not up to speed on
Quick Tip: Descrunch the P6 Gantt Timescale For Better Printing
11 Comments
Have you ever printed your P6 Gantt Chart only to find that you can't quite see the first or last milestone because they fall off the page or are cutoff? I have. Here's how to avoid printing a scrunched gantt chart by easily expanding your P6 gantt timescale before you print.
[Video] Building a Stacked Histogram in Primavera P6
35 Comments![[Video] Building a Stacked Histogram in Primavera P6](https://cdn.planacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/stacked-histogram-featured2-264x200.jpg)
A great way to see all your resource assignment levels comparatively over time is to use a Stacked Histogram in Primavera P6. It's a feature that is available in the Resource Usage Profile charting facility. The process to get this all working is a bit convoluted, so we're going to show you step-by-step the process. Stacked Histograms are common sight in project environments.
Approve Updates from Subcontractors using Reflection Projects in Oracle Primavera [Video]
32 Comments![Approve Updates from Subcontractors using Reflection Projects in Oracle Primavera [Video]](https://cdn.planacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/merge-p6-updates-reflections-264x200.jpg)
Featured this week is a great way to use Primavera P6 Reflection projects. If you've perused our other Primavera P6 tutorials, you may already know reflection projects are great for working with and managing scenarios. But they can also provide a way to preview and selectively approve activity updates from sub-contractors or other groups. The key to getting project updates to merge back to a
Primavera P6 Relationship Lines Point to Baseline Bars. Why? [Video]
7 Comments![Primavera P6 Relationship Lines Point to Baseline Bars. Why? [Video]](https://cdn.planacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Baseline-Bars-201x200.jpg)
Primavera P6 relationships lines sometimes do some strange things. By now you've probably figured out how to turn on and off the relationships lines on the Primavera P6 Gantt Chart using the toggle button on the toolbar. But do you do if Primavera P6's relationship lines are pointing to the baseline bars? Well, in P6 order is important! Last post, we showed you the nuances of shading
How To Shade Non-Workable Time on the P6 Gantt Chart
8 Comments
It turns out that people like pictures. Yes, that's right, we love pictures....and we love the Gantt Chart. What makes the Gantt Chart so essential is that it simplifies something that is complex. It gives us a snapshot and a trend that our brain can digest rather than just text and numbers. Getting the Gantt Chart to look the way you need it is a really key skill for Primavera
How to Build a Lookahead Filter in Primavera P6
73 Comments
A lookahead filter in Primavera P6 provides us with the ability to create lookahead reports. Lookahead reports are one of the centerpieces of consistent project reporting and controlling. Lookahead reports filter and highlight upcoming activities in the project. Most common lookahead reports focus on activities scheduled for the upcoming week, next 2 weeks, next 3 weeks, next month and next 3
Can A P6 Level Of Effort Help Define Work Stoppage?
11 Comments
Typically when we develop a schedule we assume that an activity can be finished uninterrupted once it has commenced. But, sometime events occur which force the work on the activity to stop. This could range from wet weather to a change in design. Additionally, there might be times when you want to add additional network logic. In most cases, it is desirable to maintain the original Activity ID
Using Primavera’s .Xer File Parser – Import WBS From Excel Without The SDK
69 Comments
In this tutorial we explain how to import a WBS dictionary in Primavera P6 without the SDK. NOTE: The steps needed to transform a classical WBS presentation (which is WBS Path and Description) to a format understood by the database (which is parent / child) is covered in Steps 1 to 6 of this tutorial. To load the WBS data into Primavera P6, instead of using the SDK we will use the XER File
How To Import WBS From Excel To Primavera P6 Using The SDK
37 Comments
In this tutorial we explain how to use the Oracle Primavera P6 SDK to import a WBS from Excel to Primavera P6. We are using the WBS.xls P6 SDK spreadsheet made available by Oracle Support. The SDK is a very handy tool, but the data must exactly respect the required format, we used a sample WBSand a step-by-step guide to prepare the data to be imported. We assume you already have the Primavera SDK
Convert WBS to Activity Codes in Oracle Primavera P6
18 Comments
The idea of this tutorial was inspired by a question in LinkedIn forum. A planner had received a Primavera P6 schedule using WBS. It's often useful to have different layouts to present the schedule to a different audience, so Activity Codes were needed. More importantly the Work Breakdown Structure was based on geographic area in the construction phase, and then based on systems in the
Video Tutorial: Activity Splitting in P6 Using User Defined Fields
4 Comments
Primavera doesn't have a feature to split a planned activity. It does have "Suspend" and "Resume" fields for statusing an activity with a break in the middle. But as for splitting planned activities in Oracle Primavera, we have to get creative to make it happen. One way to split an activity is using User Defined Fields to display the split on the Gantt Chart. I'm using a special Gantt bar -
Using Primavera P6 Filters On Export To Excel
19 Comments
Primavera's custom Activity filters are great for focusing in on a subcontractor's work list or even to hide Activities that are already completed. But when it comes to filtering down a 5000 line project plan to Activities in a specific timeframe, P6's filters fall flat. Here's the Gotcha: any filter that uses a rolling date or P6's built-in date variables will not work when exporting P6 data to
