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Sorting of Activity IDs in P6

10 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2009-10-20 00:52
WAEL ELHAJJ
User offline. Last seen 1 year 48 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 55
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Dear All,
I am suffering for a consistant problem with activity ID sorting. My client who is a major Construction consultant is requesting a schedule with activity IDs in sequence. this is easy to preform if we use the regular sort mechanism on P6, yet the system is reading digit wise rather than numeric wise.
for example
DC1
DC10
DC11
DC2
DC3
DC4
DC5
.
.
DC9
this is a huge problem that still holds my submittion. please if any one has a clue on how to solve this I would be of great thanks ...
yours wael
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Replies

Thu, 2009-10-22 01:02
#1
WAEL ELHAJJ
User offline. Last seen 1 year 48 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 55
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Dear Neil,
If you love to workin oil and gas , well i hate it... I lostthe sense of smell and the taste of women. thus... do you want to exchange jobs/location?
wael
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Wed, 2009-10-21 09:58
#2
Neal Walsh
User offline. Last seen 4 years 7 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Sep 2007
Posts: 49
Groups: Civil Engineering
Wael,

I’d love to be best pals with an oil tycoon.....could you get me one of those please? ;) ha

Anyway glad you got your Activities sorted the way you want. You certainly need a global function for 12,000 of the little buggers!

Take care

Walshy
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Tue, 2009-10-20 10:54
#3
WAEL ELHAJJ
User offline. Last seen 1 year 48 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 55
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Dear Neil and Arnold.
Neil I already tried out the first choice and it did not work out as i wanted it to ... it should have worked but it did not...
Arnold i figured out the mean to for fill my need, it is very close to what you said. I exported all activities to excel... from there i sorted them and gave a user denide integer asending value to all 12,000 activities. after every activity ID was sorted and had a sort value allocated accordingly. after i imported the spread sheet , i sorted the schedule with reference to the new user defined field and the result amazing...
problem solved, why didn’t i think of that earlier... :)
again I thank you alot for sharing very important and vital information with me. I would have never been able to do it with out your support.
by the way if you ever need anything from UAE please inform me, I will be more than glad to help anytime.
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Tue, 2009-10-20 05:59
#4
Neal Walsh
User offline. Last seen 4 years 7 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Sep 2007
Posts: 49
Groups: Civil Engineering
Wael,

As Arnold has already said, just delete the ’Field Name’ and it will sort it correctly for you. I’m sure this should work for all versions of P6.

Walshy
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Tue, 2009-10-20 01:46
#5
WAEL ELHAJJ
User offline. Last seen 1 year 48 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 55
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Dear Rav and arnold,
I thought of Global Change as a solution for this problem yet the activity Ids are not uniform , ie: for substructure the form of the ID is different than the submitals of every single contractor activity ID ... along with the activity ID defines sectors of the projects, levels and partitions.
if this could be sorted out with Global Change please inform me of the parameters.
thank you alot for you time and help. hope i could be of any assistance in the future.
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Tue, 2009-10-20 01:17
#6
Arnold Puy
User offline. Last seen 9 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 1147
Groups: GPC Qatar, Pinoy Planning Planet Community
Hi Wael,

You can try Rav’s suggestion.

You need to be specific in sorting. If you have linked the activities and do you think it is okey then you can try to change the Activity ID using global change.

In P6 v7, it is very easy to change the Act ID. If you need further assistance on how to create a parameter in global change, let us know.


Regards,

Arnold

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Tue, 2009-10-20 01:11
#7
WAEL ELHAJJ
User offline. Last seen 1 year 48 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 55
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Dear Arnold,
Thank you for your very fast reply , you are a friend indeed. I tried to remove the field name in the sort that is found in the organize GUI yet it still persist...
it did not work. is there any other mean or tool to correct sorting or correct how P6 considers the activity ID?
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Tue, 2009-10-20 01:01
#8
Arnold Puy
User offline. Last seen 9 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 1147
Groups: GPC Qatar, Pinoy Planning Planet Community
Hi Wael,

Try to remove or delete (Leave it blank) the Field Name in the Sort.

Regards,

Arnold


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Tue, 2009-10-20 00:59
#9
A D
User offline. Last seen 4 years 2 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 1027
Groups: Accreditation Editors
Change it to

DC01
DC02
DC03
.....
....
....
DC09
DC10
DC11


DC19
DC20
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Tue, 2009-10-20 02:38
#10
Arnold Puy
User offline. Last seen 9 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 1147
Groups: GPC Qatar, Pinoy Planning Planet Community
Hi Wael,

Try the following workaround:

1. Create a new UDF, say ActSort.
2. Select Data Type equal to "Text".
3. Create a new Global Change, say "Sorting Activity ID".
4. The Parameters:

Select Subject Area "Activities"
If:
Where:
Activity ID "starts with" or "contains" DC

Then:
ActSort " = " SubString(Activity ID,3,10)

When done, Go to Group and Sort, select Sort, Add

Field Name = user_text1
Sort Order = Ascending

Regards,

Arnold
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