in this discussion Im missing the question "how to sort?".
Within my groups I use the IDs to sort, as something like start is not a good field for this, as it can change. Therefore Im forced to use at least a little organisation for my IDs. I use my Phases inside my ID-numbering, as it hardly will happen that an activity will change from desgn-phase to execution-phase. I then also can see at a glance that my predecessor is a design-activity and not an execution-activity.
Further information realy belongs in Activity Codes for reasons you can read in other postings.
So you could call my ID a semi-intelligent ID, taking into account the pros and contras of this discussion
I saw my name popsup in some stage of the discussion, and lucky it is not in the middle of the fire.
LOL
back to the topic: the reason I recommended not to use intelligent activity numbering just because a few individual in the organisation think it is a good idea.
1. The intelligent you built into the Activity id will be very hard for reporting... give u an example said the first character is area code, second character is the floor and the last third is for something else. Then whe you try to build your filter, the conditions become very complex
2. Only a few individual will understand the meaning of the code, outsider will not able the read the schedule. Then the schedule loss one of its function - communication tool. The site supervisor will not thank "U" for it
3. Duplication of code, a lot of time I saw schedule had intelligent into it also built-in the intelligent into their project code as well, and that mean double effort and room for error.
4. ....
I think I had said enough, I am not discounting the credit of intelligent Activity ID but the same result can be achieve with better result in Activity Code.
Futhermore if you are not using activity Id to identify work package it will (to some extend) force the planner to have a better descriptive activity description. And that is certainly an common problem in lots of schedule I encountered in the past.
Your continued campaign for a friendly, helpful planning planet is much appreciated. Have you considered becoming a moderator? You would be valued as such, I am sure.
Nadeem Syed:
I am glad you apologised and trust it was sincere. To reinforce R Catalan’s point, may I ask that you observe the forum rules, specificaly rule #2:
"(2) Keep conversations civil. This is a professional forum. Flaming, taunting, name calling, abusive language and derisive / condescending posts will not be tolerated. "
I have edited the offending post to remove the expletive.
You’ve to understand on what stages what type of programme we’ve to develope..ie..as per concept design stage, Schematic design stage and Detailed design stage...
Youve to understand on what stages what type of programme weve to develope..ie..as per concept design stage, Schematic design stage and Detailed design stage...
The usage & importance of activity IDs are industry specific. In this case, the example cited by David regarding the phase change is true in a sense that if we try to build too much intelligence into these activities, then we might end up changing them at every instance of a change in project scope or progress(thru more imports & exports). At the same time, I agree wih Taqi that some worthwhile moment spent on structuring the activity IDs might be useful in fulfilling the requirements from some corners of the organization. (some people will be more intersted in viewing the activities sorted by activity IDs which is serial # for them than viewing them by logic al sequence which unfortunately they dont understand).
It is depressing to know that experts like Alex Wong don’t see any significance of intelligent activity IDs. I often use and recommend creating intelligent activity IDs. The single most important reason being- it helps a lot in tracing logic and "assigning"/changing relationships between activities. E.g. by looking at the activity id you know which zone and floor it belongs too. Also, you notice at once if there is any external dependency attached to a particular activity (e.g. one activity of ground floor linked to corresponding trade of the next floor). Many a time global change can be more conveniently achieved by using intelligent IDs than by activity codes, etc.
IMHO, it is worth spending a few minutes more in deciding the structure of activity IDs and implementing it before establishing the baseline. Once the baseline is in place the IDs should not normally be modified for obvious reasons.
the program you people were working on here in ax-324 was rediculous, how could a professional planner work on such a program, it was total non sense, i think you were also a member of that group isnt it.
Yes you are correct we working on Citrix environment..yes u can export in spreedsheet but not import(due to access right
But we have got multibillion project and nearly 50 planner are working on same platform and control by one user(Project Control Manager) in which some of things we havent got access.
Before you import anything to P6, first export in a spreadsheet from P6 to capture the proper codes for import, the user data that will be the second tab. We use P6 in a Citrix environment and have no issue doing imports. I have not had any issues importing anything other then status (*); any item marked with an asterisk will not import. Otherwise everything is created in Excel for import into the P6 schedule because it is a lot faster.
Check with your network administrator if you are having some hitches in the giddy up. I hope this helps.
SAT MAd >Its not necessary itll work in WBS,its work in Project too.Ive tried in project and am working on it.
frank felix >Yes Frank u can do by import also in Excel.
But on the P6 server network some time u will not get a facility of import and global change, then its useful to do above procedure which i spoke earlier.
I create the Activity ID in Excel and then import the remaining information with it. When I create an activity Id it has specific meaning, what sub assembly, which line for example then I can reuse the activity id with the change of one letter or number in the coding and I get double the reward for little effort. We have created a 6000 activity schedule and after the first hundred I needed to find a better way.
I would go much further than Alex. The ONLY important attribute for an activity ID in P6 is that it does not change. If you build "intelligence" (that stupid, stupid expression from the P3 601 course) into the activity ID, eg you use the 4th and 5th character to identify the phase of the work, then if the phase of that job changes you have to change the activity ID and loose your audit trail......
So I would say it is not just poor style, but bad practise to have the activity IDs mean something or run in sequence.
If you are using P4.5 or above, I dont see any reason to have intelligent activity id. That is only for planner still using P3.
This is depressing, because it is like asking please quote the bar code of the ice-cream you just brough. The bar code is only for the computer to read. We human read meaningful description....
Export the whole stuff to excel and import that back by changing the Ids as you need. hope it would solve your problem.
Stritly speaking the activity ids should not bother you but may be they are bothering some people on the top. I understand that is the first comment you will recieve from some one who doesnt know how to read the schedule. (This is my personal opinion)
i believe you dont need global change, just sort by Activity ID and/or Start Date, for me, activity id sequence doesnt matter (it happens because of late insertions or additions of some activities), just make sure that the logic-sequence(s) are correct
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Is R. Catalans name Richard?
-Arlene Africa
Mohammad & Nadeem,
Thanks to us for becoming friends. That makes us a better person. I owe both of you a good coffee.
All,
For me, like Hannes, Intelligent ID is very helpful.
Best regards,
R. Catalan
Hi
in this discussion Im missing the question "how to sort?".
Within my groups I use the IDs to sort, as something like start is not a good field for this, as it can change. Therefore Im forced to use at least a little organisation for my IDs. I use my Phases inside my ID-numbering, as it hardly will happen that an activity will change from desgn-phase to execution-phase. I then also can see at a glance that my predecessor is a design-activity and not an execution-activity.
Further information realy belongs in Activity Codes for reasons you can read in other postings.
So you could call my ID a semi-intelligent ID, taking into account the pros and contras of this discussion
Regards
Hannes
Hi All
I saw my name popsup in some stage of the discussion, and lucky it is not in the middle of the fire.
LOL
back to the topic: the reason I recommended not to use intelligent activity numbering just because a few individual in the organisation think it is a good idea.
1. The intelligent you built into the Activity id will be very hard for reporting... give u an example said the first character is area code, second character is the floor and the last third is for something else. Then whe you try to build your filter, the conditions become very complex
2. Only a few individual will understand the meaning of the code, outsider will not able the read the schedule. Then the schedule loss one of its function - communication tool. The site supervisor will not thank "U" for it
3. Duplication of code, a lot of time I saw schedule had intelligent into it also built-in the intelligent into their project code as well, and that mean double effort and room for error.
4. ....
I think I had said enough, I am not discounting the credit of intelligent Activity ID but the same result can be achieve with better result in Activity Code.
Futhermore if you are not using activity Id to identify work package it will (to some extend) force the planner to have a better descriptive activity description. And that is certainly an common problem in lots of schedule I encountered in the past.
HTH
Regards
Alex
R Catalan:
Your continued campaign for a friendly, helpful planning planet is much appreciated. Have you considered becoming a moderator? You would be valued as such, I am sure.
Nadeem Syed:
I am glad you apologised and trust it was sincere. To reinforce R Catalan’s point, may I ask that you observe the forum rules, specificaly rule #2:
"(2) Keep conversations civil. This is a professional forum. Flaming, taunting, name calling, abusive language and derisive / condescending posts will not be tolerated. "
I have edited the offending post to remove the expletive.
Thanks,
Gary
I Apologise Kaifi Brother.
Sorry, Catalan
Hi Mohd. Kaifi & Nadeem,
Can we request that we avoid verbal abuse in here?
It seems that you know each other, Im thinking maybe you can sit down and settle your differences.
Thanks my friends,
R. Catalan
From Kaifi to
Nadeem Brot.
You’ve to understand on what stages what type of programme we’ve to develope..ie..as per concept design stage, Schematic design stage and Detailed design stage...
The scenario of past u didn’t know.
Cheers
Nadeem Brot.
Youve to understand on what stages what type of programme weve to develope..ie..as per concept design stage, Schematic design stage and Detailed design stage...
The scenario of past u didnt know.
Cheers
I would still go with intelligent activity codes in P6 though it wont serve a shortcut to organize projects as in P3. Still it helps in many ways.
The usage & importance of activity IDs are industry specific. In this case, the example cited by David regarding the phase change is true in a sense that if we try to build too much intelligence into these activities, then we might end up changing them at every instance of a change in project scope or progress(thru more imports & exports). At the same time, I agree wih Taqi that some worthwhile moment spent on structuring the activity IDs might be useful in fulfilling the requirements from some corners of the organization. (some people will be more intersted in viewing the activities sorted by activity IDs which is serial # for them than viewing them by logic al sequence which unfortunately they dont understand).
Regards
Naveen
It is depressing to know that experts like Alex Wong don’t see any significance of intelligent activity IDs. I often use and recommend creating intelligent activity IDs. The single most important reason being- it helps a lot in tracing logic and "assigning"/changing relationships between activities. E.g. by looking at the activity id you know which zone and floor it belongs too. Also, you notice at once if there is any external dependency attached to a particular activity (e.g. one activity of ground floor linked to corresponding trade of the next floor). Many a time global change can be more conveniently achieved by using intelligent IDs than by activity codes, etc.
IMHO, it is worth spending a few minutes more in deciding the structure of activity IDs and implementing it before establishing the baseline. Once the baseline is in place the IDs should not normally be modified for obvious reasons.
hi kaifi,
the program you people were working on here in ax-324 was rediculous, how could a professional planner work on such a program, it was total non sense, i think you were also a member of that group isnt it.
Hi Nadeem
Could u introduce urself?
hi kaifi you are not a good planner i know you from dubai international airport ax-324, dont talk *nonsense*.
*Edited by Gary W to replace expletive*
Hi Frank, Good morning
Yes you are correct we working on Citrix environment..yes u can export in spreedsheet but not import(due to access right
But we have got multibillion project and nearly 50 planner are working on same platform and control by one user(Project Control Manager) in which some of things we havent got access.
Before you import anything to P6, first export in a spreadsheet from P6 to capture the proper codes for import, the user data that will be the second tab. We use P6 in a Citrix environment and have no issue doing imports. I have not had any issues importing anything other then status (*); any item marked with an asterisk will not import. Otherwise everything is created in Excel for import into the P6 schedule because it is a lot faster.
Check with your network administrator if you are having some hitches in the giddy up. I hope this helps.
Frank
SAT MAd >Its not necessary itll work in WBS,its work in Project too.Ive tried in project and am working on it.
frank felix >Yes Frank u can do by import also in Excel.
But on the P6 server network some time u will not get a facility of import and global change, then its useful to do above procedure which i spoke earlier.
I create the Activity ID in Excel and then import the remaining information with it. When I create an activity Id it has specific meaning, what sub assembly, which line for example then I can reuse the activity id with the change of one letter or number in the coding and I get double the reward for little effort. We have created a 6000 activity schedule and after the first hundred I needed to find a better way.
This will work only when we copy actvities with in the WBS and pasting them. Am i right?? or can we do all the activities in a project in one go??
I tried and its working..
First we have to copy all the activities and go in project command and use Default tab.
Choose Activity ID prefix/Activity ID Suffix & Increment as your wish.
Again come to your file (By clicking Directory -Activity)
Paste all the activities.Do "ok" for a open window like "project option", & "wbs option"
After pasting activities you will see all activities id as per your wish.
Now sort all by old activity id. Delete all old activity.
Now you will see your all new activity id.
Thanx Alex,
I told the same thing and I have changed my job too but this is not always possible and for everyone.
Any way, just keep your mood good and everything will look good.
sat
In bad mood today see some of the posting is very depressing.
As a planner, your job not only update the schedule in your computer and do as you told.
You have to explain to the top management of why you dont want to change your activity id.
If you are only follow instruction then you no different to a data entry clerk.
Alex
I would go much further than Alex. The ONLY important attribute for an activity ID in P6 is that it does not change. If you build "intelligence" (that stupid, stupid expression from the P3 601 course) into the activity ID, eg you use the 4th and 5th character to identify the phase of the work, then if the phase of that job changes you have to change the activity ID and loose your audit trail......
So I would say it is not just poor style, but bad practise to have the activity IDs mean something or run in sequence.
What to do if the guy on the top wants it in order every time you produce a layout.
Disgusting, then they presume you dont know how to do thats why u r getting irritated.
Dear Planners
If you are using P4.5 or above, I dont see any reason to have intelligent activity id. That is only for planner still using P3.
This is depressing, because it is like asking please quote the bar code of the ice-cream you just brough. The bar code is only for the computer to read. We human read meaningful description....
Alex
Export the whole stuff to excel and import that back by changing the Ids as you need. hope it would solve your problem.
Stritly speaking the activity ids should not bother you but may be they are bothering some people on the top. I understand that is the first comment you will recieve from some one who doesnt know how to read the schedule. (This is my personal opinion)
i believe you dont need global change, just sort by Activity ID and/or Start Date, for me, activity id sequence doesnt matter (it happens because of late insertions or additions of some activities), just make sure that the logic-sequence(s) are correct