Global change in P6

Thank you folks.



That sound like what I wanted, and I guess part of the cockpit settings of P6 I need to get familiar with.



Thurs-Friday are weekends in Oman and P6 resides in office machine that I only can (and want) to get back to after the weekend.



Which might get extended should the cyclone off the coast of Oman truly hit us.



Thanks again





KC Chan

I just wanted to add that when setting PCT EQ 0, the Cost to date, BCWP etc etc all got reset as well. The Budgetted Cost remaining unchanged as it should be.



At least P3 did that for me and should do that for you too.



KC Chan

Hi again,



In P3, I have undo updates in activites using global changes.



I normally have backup of project during updates to fall back onto. Even if not, I could get back to where I wanted it to be by first updating the P3 to the data date I wanted (which might be in the past)



Then global change to AS EQ "" AND AF EQ "" for activities selected . That followed by setting percentage done PCT EQ 0 . The RD will automatically take on the OD value.



Pressing F9 will then restore the project to what it was.



Is there a way to do that equivalent in P6?



Needless to say, I tried Global change on them like in P3.

I struggled for the last 3 hours. Even trying to revert updates manually in P6 is a challenge



Using the ’status tab’ on the activity details, the moment you click on the boxes for ’Started’ and ’Finished’, the durations all revert to 0.



Is there a solution to my problem? Other than making sure of earlier backups before doing updating.



Warmest regards



KC Chan

Rodel,



:-)



I been using P3 from DOS days. I think the Penguin in P3Dos is so much better than in P3 Windows.



But that is just my humble opinion.



I am a standalone user in P7. You read in my earlier letter that



’I tried to give myself all the powers by ticking on all the boxes. That perhaps my problem is caused by a behind-the-cockpit setup’



As the Adminsuperuser, I cannot be more super as it is.



:-)



Or is there a Hyper user?



As said, it is lucky I do not have to us P6 in ernest. But I thought it better for me to try it out before that.



I just imported another old project with massive resources manipulation and cross resources levelling to interate the optimum crew sizings.





Abed Prnd,



I wish you luck in your quest. And do remember to duck and stay in one piece and alive.

Rodel,



I came to that conclusion too that Activity Codes cannot be updated in P6 the way it is done so naturally in P3.



But I thought one of the main use of Global Change , at least in P3, was to easily populate the Act Codes to allow meaningful grouping and collating of data.



There is still another Act Code LEVM which grouped 6 floors into Low Rise, High Rise, Sky Rise, Executive Rise etc etc etc.



And even more Act Codes to distinguish between Civil, Structural, Archi Finishing, cladding etc etc. Not to talk of E&M and subsystems.



I am lucky my contractors with me building the Port (US$1500 Million) , Dry Docks /Shipyard (US$ 750 Million) , Airport etc etc all insisted on using P3.

Their language when it came to P6 is extremely colorful.



I thought I try P6 again after I received an email from a good friend a couple weeks ago from down under at Brisbane with the his following sentiments.



’

After nearly 3 years of keeping away from P6 I’ve finally had to concede to using the thing and now that it has reached V7 and handles a whole lot more like P3 3.1 I would say it works reasonably well. Just a few more iterations and it will be just like 3.1 and it will only have taken them 10 years to get there. If only I had a stand alone copy, without interference from the IT people I might even get to like it – it makes very pretty colours you know.’



I will press on into P6 out of morbid curiosity.



I am now trying my best to make P6 talk to Excel. So that changes be made in Excel with standard string functions and reimported back.



But I got the following problem.



*****************************************************

* EXCEPTION REPORT *

*****************************************************

Date: 03-May-10



Executable: PM.exe

Application: Primavera P6 Project Management

Event Code: CNFII-2364-D

Message:

Could not find installable ISAM



Context:

1: TfrmWizExport.RunExportWizard

2: TfrmMain.actHomeExecute

3: TCFormManager.SetToolbar

4: TfrmLogin.FormCreate

5:

6:

7:

8:

9:

10:



Detail:

Type: EOleException

Object Type: TCUltraButton







System Info

===========

Username: chank Hostname: W-UAEL-07486

OS Version: Windows NT ver 5.1, build 2600, Service Pack 2 (Intel Pentium)



My IT Manager is hopeful he can sort this out.



Perhaps you might be even more helpful than my IT Manager.



Warmest regards



KC Chan

Hi Rodel,



Thank you for your helpfulness.



But I think LEVL is difficult to be numeric when it contained B1 B2 B3 etc for 6 levels of basement and M1 M2 etc for mezzanine floors as well as G0 for ground floor.



And then when I added fields of user_txt1 and user_txt2, the P6 residing in my machine refused to recognise that as text.



I am glad to be still using P3 on daily basis rather than P6 in ernest.



You are lucky your P6 is better behaved than mine.

Rodel,



The problem is in P6 I could not get that LeftString(Activity ID,2) into that box to replace the value in LEVL.



That was the first thing that I tried.



P6 offered me only the choice of chosing the existing values instead of allowing me to put any string function to extract the values that I wanted.



As said in earlier email, string functions seemed only to be allowed for Activity Name and nothing else.

Hi Rodel,



Thank you for your answer.



So there is no need to set up all the temp holding places via &A, &B,&C.



I tried to give myself all the powers by ticking on all the boxes. That perhaps my problem is caused by a behind-the-cockpit setup.



Take another situation. I got that template of a floor typical activities and with unique IDs, and by prefixing that template with 01, 02, 03, etc etc got to have a 20 storey building.



There is a project code of LEVL for level of the floors that in P3, I would just populate by extracting the substring of ACT first 2 characters.



In P6 global change, when I set in the ’then’ space, and when parameter is set to Levels (that LEVL), then when I get in the Parameter/Value box, when I click on it, I am faced with the extracts from the LEVL , ie Code Value and Description to chose from.



I cannot get it into the substring function to operate on ACT.



That substring function operate only on the Activity Name.



I did it the slow and dirty way by sorting it on acitivity ID and manual change and then fill down for each floor.



What have I done wrong? and how to use global change to populate that LEVL the way P3 global change allowed so easily with



Then LEVL EQ SS(ACT,1,2)