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3 Primavera Tips & Tricks PDF
3 Primavera Tips & Tricks PDF
3 Primavera Tips & Tricks PDF
farest planner
Problem: The customer, vendor, contractor client need to view in .pdf format hence they don’t have
Primavera software to view.
Solution:
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2. Open the page you want it to be saved as a pdf and click on the Print Preview button, at the Toolbar.
3. It also available in any directory window you open even in the reports you will find a Print Setup
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5. Now go to the Print icon and type Printer name also as PrimoPDF. Click OK
6. This Dialog box will appear automatically. In the ellipsis icon, select a directory where you want to
save the file in., e.g. Desktop.
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Exporting Projects
Problem: The customer, vendor or contractor has an older version of Primavera or another project
management tool, and needs to view a schedule.
Choose the format including desired program and version. For Primavera PM/MM and Primavera
Contractor, there are now several options for versions.
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Do not try to save the file to your C drive or any other local drive on your computer. Try saving to a
network drive (in this example, the file is saved to the M: drive)
Click Finish
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Function Keys
In both the P5/P6 client and web applications, the following function keys work:
F1 Context-Sensitive Help
Toggles between Edit and Browse modes when the focus is in Description Panes in
F2 Details Tabs for Notebooks, Steps, WPs and Docs and the Notes to Resources pane on
the Feedback Detail Tab
F3 Find Next (works after using )
F5 Refresh (from server)
Spell check when in Edit mode on the above-mentioned Panes and Tabs and in a given
F7
column currently in focus in tables
F9 Schedule
Shift+F9 Schedules with Leveled Resources
F10 Commit Changes (to server)
P6 Hierarchies
When creating hierarchies in P6 (for example, WBS), as an alternative to using the mouse, Ctrl +
arrows will promote, demote and move elements up and down.
When customizing a portlet on a dashboard in the Primavera Web Access program, in order to bring
up an external website or URL, one tip needs to be known in case you must troubleshoot or if you are
experiencing problems with the page loading.
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For example: Your personal or project workspace dashboard has a link to the weather or a link to your
company website. If the page delays in loading or has difficulty and freezes, you will need to know this
tip.
If Primavera or other dashboards are working, then likely the external website is having difficulty
loading, not that Primavera is having trouble.
DO NOT exit the web browser—you will remain logged in to the Primavera tool and not be allowed to
log in for 30 minutes or until your admin changes your password.
Instead, type “1=TRUE” at the end of your URL in the URL field of the site and hit return.
Example: http://servername:8080/myprimavera/login_cmt/1=true
(http://servername:8080/myprimavera/login_cmt/1=true)
This restarts the page in “safe mode” and ignores external websites temporarily. Next time you logon
and the external website is working, you should not experience the problem. Now you are logged on
without the use of that external site. You can do all other work in Primavera until the external site is
working again.
The following may already be known by all of you, but it’s still a pretty slick trick.
Ever wish you could just copy / paste roles or resources from one activity to another (or several others)?
Here’s an alternative.
That’s it! It’s still not quite as easy as “Ctrl-C” – “Ctrl-V” would be, but it’s a decent workaround.
Often managers are uncomfortable with the “guesstimate” given for percent complete. The Primavera
steps feature becomes very useful when they are weighted to drive the percent complete in a way that is
less subjective and more quantifiable. Generally, steps are a way to track deliverables or any sub-
activity without adding activities and complexity to your schedule. Any group of steps that is often
repeated (a typical document workflow for example) can be made into a step template for use on all
such activities, too.
To have each step automatically drive physical percent complete for the activity:
1. Open the columns within the step tab by right-clicking on the last column and selecting
“Customize Column Headings”. Then select the Step Weight and Step Weight Percent columns
and move them into the view by clicking the right arrow button on the middle frame. Click OK.
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In my adventures here in Indianapolis, I just came upon a feature in Primavera Web of which you need
to be aware. There are two standard filters for Activities Views, that are actually configurable:
If you use either of these filters, you can specify a number of days (calendar days) that you wish to use.
Instead of using a custom filter to create a lookahead report, you can just use the “activities occurring
within specified days” filter.
This is a viable workaround to the issue regarding only being able to filter on specific dates when using
custom filters.
The primary issue is that these filters are dynamic, and use the system date, rather than a data date.
The Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) is a hierarchical based structure that represents your
organization. The Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) is also a hierarchical based structure that
represents how your projects are organized.
The OBS and EPS are combined together through the responsible manager field on the EPS structure,
project folder and WBS level. The Responsible Manager field is the OBS and this determines what
users can gain access to the Project. When you create a user, you have to give them Responsible
Manager assignments in order for them to see projects.
Your EPS and your OBS need to have a one-to-one relationship. If you give a user a Responsible
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Your EPS and your OBS need to have a one-to-one relationship. If you give a user a Responsible
Manager assignment (OBS) that is not tied to an EPS, Project or WBS level, they will not see any
projects when they log into the Primavera Client application or the Web Application.
Since v5.0, I have been under the impression that a resource was limited to 5 “rate types” in
Primavera. Today, I was informed of a field available in the Resource tab that allows a user to select a
“Rate Source”. The values in the rate source field are “Role”, “Resource” and “Override”. Override
allows the user to plug in the custom rate for the resource at the activity assignment level.
We therefore are no longer limited to what was essentially 10 rates (5 role, 5 resource) for a resource
assignment.
Conducting a detailed and thorough schedule or cost risk analysis can be a data intensive and time
consuming effort. Proper conduct of the assessment process requires input from multiple responsible
project team members. Though this process is necessary to provide a credible analysis there is one way
to get a quick initial thumbnail sketch for any given project plan.
From the Pertmaster menu, select Risk, Duration Quick Risk, then specify whether you want to include
“All tasks in the plan”, “All filtered tasks, or “Selected tasks only”; then specify a Distribution function
and standard percentages for the Minimum, Likely and Maximum durations. Click OK and you’re all
set to run the risk analysis. Repeat the same steps for resource costs.
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Just like Project Codes and Activity Codes, Primavera provides you resource codes that allow you to
organize, group, sort and filter your resource dictionary. The resource codes also allow you to group
and sort in the Resource Assignments and Resource Profile views.
A resource profile can also be grouped by the Manager resource code. This allows the user to click on
the manager’s name in the profile and see a rollup of all of the limits for the resource under that
manager’s name. This view makes for a great capacity planning report. To group by the Manager
resource code that was created above in the resource profile, follow the instructions below:
1. Open a project.
2. Click on the Activities button in the Directory bar.
3. Turn on the resource profile in the bottom layout.
4. In the resource list on the left side of the resource profile, choose the Directory Bar.
5. Click on the Select View and then choose Resource.
6. Click on the Group and Sort By.
7. Choose the Manager resource code as the first option to group by.
8. Click on OK.
9. In the resource list, you should now see your resources grouped by the Manager name.
10. Click on the Manager name in the list and you will see the rollup information displayed in the
Profile view on the right of the screen.
When adding header and footer information to your custom printing layouts or notes fields, Primavera
adds a double-space when you hit “Enter” for another line by default. You can get a single space by
holding down the Right Shift key while hitting “Enter” to minimize the space you need and make the
reports look more professional.
When using P6 for managing resources, users often want to be able to see the number of people a
project will require to complete. This can be achieved by using the Resource Allocation capabilities of
P6.
Start by building your project schedule with the required roles to do the work. Next, turn on the
Resource Profile in the bottom layout view. Then go to the Role Profile options by clicking on the
Display Option bar in the Resource Profile view. Click on the Graph Tab and go to the bottom of the
window and click in the check box next to Calculate Average. In the Divide Intervals Total by section,
type in the number 40 (this represents a typical work week amount of 40 hours per week). In the Unit
of Measure field type in FTE (Full Time Equivalents) or People or whatever you want the unit of
measure to be.
Click OK on the Window and your resource profile will now tell you the number of people needed.
Because you can export Expense information from the schedule to Excel, you can easily add, revise or
delete this information. It can then be imported back into Primavera.
The “catch” to this is that any column that has a column header that contains an asterisk (*) from the
export is Read-Only and you cannot modify these fields. One of these columns is the “Unit / Price”
column, which is one that may need revision. The “Trick” is that the values in the “Actual Cost”
column will populate the “Unit / Price” values when they are imported back to the Expenses in
Primavera. Just place the “Unit / Price” value in the “Actual Cost” field of the spreadsheet. Once
imported, the “Actual Cost” field from the import will also populate the “Unit / Price” field and
“Budgeted Cost” will result from the product of “Budgeted Units” x “Unit / Price”. Zero ($0) out or re-
import the true “Actual Cost” values in Primavera and you’re done!
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7 Responses
Well, in couple of days i will be interviewed for a planning engineer job, can you people help me in
this case? what type of typical question are common in interview of planning engineers?
Regards, ihtsham
Reply
1) Get familiarize with Planning Tools i.e Microsoft Project, Primavera etc. It will help you to
explain how you are going to start your work. The most popular question is:
1. What is CRITICAL PATH METHOD?
2. Relationship between successor & predecessor
3. Different between financial & physical curve
4. WBS concept and implementation on Primavera
5. Calculation for the physical progress
2) Prepare your Planning Sheet; which is comprises with site productivity. You can organize as
your construction library. As Planner, Planning Sheet is our basis to justify duration for each
activity we assign in Primavera or MS Project.
3) Get to know with correct sequence of work. No matter either you are in construction industry or
M&E system, extensive knowledge in correct work sequence is an essential skill to develop.
Reply
Reply
Hi,
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Hi,
I like the level of detail in the article.
Regards
Ravi
Reply
Pls Help
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