Tips and Tricks in Primavera - 6

Here is what I consider the #1 tip check your TIMES

Make sure that your project start TIME, your data date TIME, your Project must finish by TIME, any constraint TIMES, your actual start TIME and your actual finish TIME are all correct and matches the earliest time for Project Start TIME, data date TIME, Actual start TIME, Start Constraints Times. make sute that it matches the latest hour in all of your calendar being used for project must finish by TIME, actual finish TIME, and any Finish Constraint TIMES.

If these are not correct you can have activities that span more than the original duration. ie, a 1 day activity starts on one day and finishes on the next day spanning 2 days instead of starting and finishing all on the same day.

I see this all of the time turn your times on and spot check a few 1 day activities and see if they span 1 day or 2. This wil have an effect on your float valuves if not correct. 

You will be surprised. 

Hi,

I have write lots of Tip and Tricks at my blog.

Kindly visit my blog at https://doduykhuong.wordpress.com/

lets not confuse tips and trick with simple keyboard short cuts 

lets not confuse tips and trick with simple keyboard short cuts 

Hello Everyone,

I am looking for .xer of projects gulf/India with Schedule & resource for praciticing , can anyone help me out.

Ctrl+w for closing all opened projects.

When you are creating a schedule similar to the one you have already, take a copy to to the methodology management module and get it back to the PM module with customization/tailoring options.

It saves a lot of time. It is very true in case of someone who is into tender planning/central planning dept; which is responsible for preparing the programmes/schedules for many projects.

Viewing 2 projects at the same time.

Open 2 projects you want to compare. In the Activity window, choose View then select Show on Bottom choose Gantt Chart.

You should have a divide on your window with independent scroll bars, you can then assign each project to either windows.

Its non comparable to P3 but its the closest we can get from P6.

Keep planning, keep sharing.

Would appreciate a little lesson in updating information using excell (export / import) and its technicalities. cheers.

Hi Trevor. Brilliant tip. Thanks.

Hi... i am expert in P3 but new for P6. i want to export my p3 file to p6. can anybody tell me the main points to consider before start work with P6. (i'm succesfully completed my export action. now i need tips like...setting calender etc)

Thanks

senthil

[email protected]

Hi Mate,



Not working at Woodside (I’m with a engineering company that supplies mining equipment) but I do know a couple of people there...

oh man u did it at one shot. Very outstanding wahhhooooo

Brother u don’t mind if i want your email? are working with woodside company?

Haha... I should have looked a bit more closely...



Anyhow... In no particular order, here’s a few simple ones, that I believe are fundamental to creating a good schedule, most people would already know these, but they may be handy for beginners…



Tip # 13

Assign Activity ID #’s to a UDF field in the Resource Assignments View, so that you can filter by it. (Don’t know why... but Primavera doesn’t include activity ID # as a parameter in the filter dialog box for the Resource Assignments view)



Tip # 14

Set and use the Project Phase WBS codes in the Admin Categories (Going forward hopefully Primavera makes these hierarchical like all other codes)



Tip # 15

Set-up your report Headers & Footers in the Admin Preferences to standardise your layouts & reports (I believe that you should always include a time stamp where possible)



Tip # 16

If required, store period performance to get the correct spread of time distributed actual data.



Tip # 17

Use notebook topics for all changes to the forecast plan. If it ever gets legal, at least you will then have a change log. (I can’t stress how important I believe this one is)



Tip # 18

If you want to know something 1st select the “Hint Help” in the view window then hover over the field to get a explanation from the Primavera Application.



Tip # 19

Find & Replace rocks



Tip # 20

Always create an activity Name that defines an action to achieve an outcome & is unique, i.e. Do Something to Something! If the Activity Name is unique when you code your schedule & then group & sort by code, the descriptions will still have some meaning to you



Tip # 21

Get buy in… Make sure that the people that are responsible for executing the work help to create & more importantly manage the schedule.



Tip # 22

If you are using roles as place holders, ensure that the Rate Source is correctly set in the Resource Assignments View so that the correct price/unit is used to calculate the costs for the assignment when both a resource and role are assigned to an activity.

yup buddy it was posted below. Anyway it’s good try.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the fill down short cut key is: ctrl + e

I dont know if this is considered a "tip" anyway

Tip # 12

if you’re opening more than one project and you want to schedule to a different data date you wont be able to change DD from the schedule dialoge box.

Go to projects window, insert Data Date column, change one DD to the desired date and FILL DOWN.

then back to activities and F9



P.S. Fill Down is my favorite command ! :D

HI ALI,



Could you please explain more about the "claim digger"

and provide me by an example.

tHIS IS MY EMAIL:[email protected]

it seems like the topic have been ceased. Really disenchanted

Tip 11



To import an XER file to a different version of Primavera Project Manager than it was exported from Open the XER file using Word Pad and simply change the version number on the top line to the version you are importing the file to and save and close the file. To find out what version you are running open Primavera and Select HELP > ABOUT PRIMAVERA and view the SYSTEM tab. Include and services packs (SP) if applicable.



This works extremely well for going backwards in release versions (i.e. - From P6 to P5).

Abdul Khadeer,



it is easier to first select all the activities (using shifht or ctrl) and then select the resource from the resource assignment window...

p.s the select bottom will be disabled when choosing more than one activity, hence, press on the resource icon on the right menu

same for activity codes, roles etc....

Tip No 10



To assign same resources to many activiies, select first activity, select resource from resouce assignment window and assign. then select other activities (contr+select) and click assign from reoure window



Keep Planning Keep Sharing



AK

Nobody willing to forward it to you. The Idea is we share all tips and trick at this website. You should have your own incentives to compile all of these stuff. Don’t be so lazy.



have you notice the veteren planners will hates this kind of attitude?

Hai,



This is Rajesh, my email id is [email protected].

Can anybody help me in giving the tips and tricks in primavera 6. your effors are highly appreciated.

thanks in advance



regards,

Rajesh

Dear Sitaram



5.4 Years of experience in planning + others in business life isn’t a youngster.



Calendars:

Default: gives duration and float for all summary lines and is used if no other default setting exists. Most beginners get confused.

Project calendar: Used as a default calendar for new activities.

Activity calendar: Basis for calculation per activity (scheduling, float..) for all taskdependent

Resource calendar Basis for calculation per activity (scheduling, float..) for all resourcedependent activities with this resource assigned



Modification of default calendar will not affect any activity’s calculation.



Learning: There are many seminars and books (e.g. from our colleague Paul Harris). The material I have is copyrighted. Please understand that I can’t distribute.



Almost all planning is faster in P6, but some details were better in P3. You’ll get a good overview in the PDF "From P3 to P6" on your Primavera documentation-cd.



Regards



Dieter

Dear Mr.Wambach



Thanks for your valuable advice. It is real helpful tip for the young budding planners like me.



But my question is if i select the 7day/8hours calendar as default, will it effect my previous project dates whose default calendar is 6day/8hours calendar. If so, how to maintain different projects with different calendars and getting exact summary durations? please help me out.

Only the present project, the client insisted on 7day work calendar and all remaining projects i’m working with 6 day work calendar. Do help me in this regard

As far as basis of design for the software,which you correctly pointed out, can i have a clue from you where i can find it out...please give details to find it, so that i can follow it for better use of p6 software.

Ofcourse, development of plan is much faster in p6 when using WBS developed in p6 than in P3.

Thank you once again for helping the young buddy



regards

sitaram

Sitaram



Summary durations are taken from the default calendar. Enterprise --> Calendar --> mark 7day/8hours calendar as default.



One remark to your laments on missing items in P6 and the good old times with P3:

- If it’s a good plan, this depends on you, not on the software

- If you’ll try to use P6, Spider, Powerproject or any other software the same way you did use P3, you’ll fail.

- Every software has its own basis of design. Learn it before you’ll start working with a software. You’ll be successful.

- My experience: development of a plan/programme is much faster in P6 than in P3 if you are trained on both.



Regards



Dieter

Hai Izam



Thank you for your valuable adivce and it’s right.....one has to find solution for every problem we face in life it may be either related to job or life.



Recently i tested the time frame for a sample project whose actually duration i took as 49 days comprising 7 activities, each activity having 7 day duration. I considered 7 day calendar whose working hours as 8h/day.

I gave the time units in admin preferences as 8h/day, 56h/week, 243h/month and 2920h/year. I allowed the user to change the time period. In the user preferernces also, i used the same time units which i mentioned above.

Upto now, i hope everything is clear.

Here comes the high drama.

when i made a program and scheduled it, it is showing the correct end date ( which i prepared through network diagram...ofcourse all activities are FS relationship, i took for testing ....) but the summary duration is showing as 42 days instead of 49days i.e.,it is considering 6day/week calendar instead of 7day/week calendar.

Please find the solution ...and please correct me where i’m doing wrong.



waiting for reply from our planners



regards

sitaram

But Sitaram, we still have a solution such like use the p3 as second view. Open both software P6 & P3 then minimize it and it will occur the cascade view. Ermmm like my masters(azri, andik and denni the great planners I ever seen) told me don’t put any obstacles in your life. Find it the solution as we proud as we are.

Hai Ali



Thank you for your reply. But my need is to work on two different projects in two different windows just i used to do in P3.



regards

sitaram

Hai Planners especially everyone who answered my question



Izam



You are right...what you thought is right! I found in many ways, we can’t open two different projects just like in P3 to work on two different projects. P6 is useless in many ways when compared to the best features in p3. I don’t know what the hell the primavera idiots did with the name of advancement and enhancement. I found very difficult even with the durations...god’s sake....totally utter confusion......oh my god...it’s real hell....i want to know the planners who helped the primavera idiots to develop such a nuisance software when there a valid and well tested P3 in the market. Except for the enterpise level, networking and internet use...i don’t find it is useful rather it is more confusing in planning the schedule....i found it is much easy to plan manually even a complex project rather than using the P6 which is creating chaos in developing the real schedule.



Please expert planners and the real elders...please guide the young planners in this issue and through the comments sincerely to sought out this issue with Primavera(or now Oracale-Primavera) by sending our suggestions through the Planning Planet. I welcome every experienced planner has to take part in this process



thanks in anticipation



regards

sitaram

Sitaram,

use claim digger to compare two schedules..or simply baseline one schedule against the other and compare by adding the BL1 values...even you can open two projects together and group them separately compare them manually. you dont need to open two sessions in P6

Joseph,



it’s a good tips.

Sitaram,



Back to your topic, in P6 we can’t do that. It’s diffrent with P3 which we can press shift and F5 then cascade view will display.



Maybe some of planners here do not understand about what are you trying to explain.

Tip 11:



Press F9 --->push "View Log" to view the shedule/levelling reports, settings, statistics and errors of currently opened project. Usually Im using this in tracking errors like out of sequence activities and activities with constraints which affects the resulting critical path of the project.



Cheers,

Press shift and F9 for levelling resources heheheheh

I have only one concurrent license. how can i login to other session. please send the details. I want to compare two different projects which are having almost same type of schedule

If you want to compare then why not use it as a baseline ? You don’t have to have two systems. You can have two sessions of Primavera (I mean two login sessions) on the same PC & open two different projects on these two sessions.



Regards

Naveen

hai naveen



do u mean we have to use two systems. My question is can we open two projects in two different windows in the same computer just like we do in p3 version. In p6 we can open two projects at a time but they are coming one after the other in the same window which makes us to compare them difficult.

If you are opening the projects in the same computer in two different windows. please let me knowthe procedure.

Thanks in anticipation.

Bye the bye are you from Andhra Pradesh,India.



regards

sitaram

Hi Sitaram,



If you have a concurrent license, you can open two sessions of P3 & open different projects on these two sessions. We are using it.



Regards

Naveen

Hai good morning



I’m having concurrent license but it is not happening. I don’t think it is related to license. what license will do with the opening of projects in the same computer. Please correct me if i’m wrong

You need to have concurrent license to do that.

Is it possible to open two projects in two different windows just like in P3.

Tip 9:



A Project may only be opened as Exclusive by using the Open window. In all other methods, it will opened in the shared mode.



Tip 10: (Courtsey: Arnold Puy :-)



If u get P3 file in prx format, then change extension to exe and then extract and then convert to get it imported into P6

Tip 8



When scheduling, click the "scheduling options" button. Some useful options are selected:

Progress override vs. retained logic.

Lag Calendar

Tip 6

When entering percent complete, make sure you selected the appropriate percent complete type for each activity. Unlike P3, P6 has three percent complete types that do not match unless an activity is complete

Please can anyone tell how to open multiple projects at the same time in P6. Consider both the option that 1. Projects in same EPS node and 2.Projects in different EPS node.

Is their any option that to be changed to open multiple projects at the same time.

I’m trying to open 2 projects at a time but when i’m opening the second project, the first project automatically getting closed.

Please provide me the solution to [email protected].

Tip No. 05: Updating basaelines for Large Projects



For large projects, you may need to increase the Java VM memory size to successfully update the project’s baselines.



To increase the Java VM memory size on a Windows operating system, click Start, Run.



Type regedit, then click OK.



Navigate to the following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Primavera/Shared/Update Baseline.



Double-click PARAMETERS. At the beginning of the Value Data field, enter -Xmx512m.



Be sure to leave a space AFTER the last ’m’. Click OK.

Tip No. 04: Drive Activity Dates



Always make sure that u have checked the DRIVE ACTIVITY DATES box.



Go to resource tab --> Customise --> Add DRIVE ACTIVITY DATES column (General).



If it is not checked, then it might be possible that activity duration is less and resources are assigned for more days, and so, it may show overloaded resources.



Cheers,

Make sure you had maintained your Baseline before you assign it.