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How to Display P6 Durations in Both Hours

& Days

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Someone recently asked me if it was possible to display two duration columns in a

Primavera P6 layout, one column in hours and the other in days. This tutorial
outlines the steps required to display two different units of durations.

Tutorial Complexity: Beginner

P6 Version: Release 18.8.0

Create a custom field for second duration unit

You might be wondering (just like I did) why one would need to display durations in
more than one unit but apparently, this was a site schedule (Level 5 schedule) where
durations are all in hours and the manager also wanted to see durations in days as
the schedule had two calendars. Some activities were on a 24-hour calendar while
others were on a 12-hour calendar.

Assuming we have the schedule below with durations in hours and we want to add
another column to show durations in days.

We start by creating a custom field called User Define Field (UDF) in P6 and to
do this, from P6 menu click on Enterprise >> User Define Fields and this will

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open the User Define Fields dialog.

In the dialog, select Activities from the dropdown box (arrow 1) and then click on
Add (arrow 2) and a new field will be created. Change the title of this this field to
Duration in Days (arrow 3) and change the data type to Number (arrow 4).
Finally click Close (arrow 5) to exit the dialog.

To add this newly created UDF to the layout, from P6 menu, click on View >>
Columns to open the Columns dialog.

From the Available Options section of the dialog, double-click the newly created
UDF, Duration in Days from the User Defined grouping (arrow 6) and this will
move this field to the Selected Options section (arrow 7). Click Ok to exit the
dialog (arrow 8).

The Duration in Days column now appears in our layout but you will notice it is
empty. To populate this column, we need to run a Global Change. Global
Change is a powerful P6 feature that enables user make changes to activities,
resource assignments or project expenses.

A powerful tool for simple arithmetic

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From P6 menu, click on Tools >> Global Change to open the Global Change
dialog.

Click on Modify (arrow 10) to open the Modify Global Change dialog.

Pick Activities in the Select Subject Area dropdown (arrow 11), this is because
Original Duration (i.e. Duration in Hrs) which we want to use belongs to Activities.
Then enter a suitable name for the Global Change so that it easily recognised from
the list of Global Change (arrow 12).

Next, we are going to get P6 to perform arithmetic calculations to convert hours to

days.

Click the IF section of the Modify Global Change dialog and under Parameter
select Calendar from the dropdown beside the Where. Under Is, select equals and
under Value, select 7x12-hr day calendar (arrow 13). Note that if you only have
one calendar in use, you can ignore the IF section.

Click the THEN section of the Modify Global Change dialog and click on the
Add button to make the section active. Under Parameter, select Duration in
Days, under the first Parameter/Value select Original Duration, under
Operator select / and under second Parameter/Value select 12 (arrow 14).

Click the ELSE section of the Modify Global Change dialog and click on the Add
button to make the section active. Under Parameter, select Duration in Days,
under the first Parameter/Value select Original Duration, under Operator
select / and under second Parameter/Value select 24 (arrow 15). Note that if you
only have one calendar in use, you can also ignore the ELSE section.

To convert hours to days, we divide the duration in hours by the calendar hours i.e
for a 24-hr day calendar activity the formula will be original duration in hrs /
24 while for the 12-hr day calendar the formula will be original duration in hrs /

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12. So in summary what we have in arrows 13 to 15 is; IF calendar is 12-hr day

THEN divide Original Duration (i.e. Duration in Hrs) by 12 ELSE divide Original
Duration (i.e. Duration in Hrs) by 24 for 24-hr day.

To run the Global Change, click on Change button (arrow 16) and a warning
message will pop up asking if you wish to proceed as the global change cannot be
cancelled after viewing the report.

Click Yes (arrow 17) to open the Global Change Report

The report will show New Values for the Duration in Days field (arrow 18).
Next, click on Commit Changes (arrow 19) to populate the Duration in Days
field with the calculated values. When prompted to save log file, click on No (arrow
20)

In the Modify Global Change dialog, click OK (arrow 21) to exit the dialog.

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The newly created Global Change now appears in the list of Global Changes (arrow
22).

To exit the Global Change dialog, click on Close button (arrow 23).

The schedule layout now has the Duration in Days column populated as shown
below (arrow 24).

Future Updates

UDF are not updated automatically, therefore anytime you change Original
Duration (Duration in Hrs), the Duration in Days column values will not
change, so you will need to remember to run this Global Change after each time
analysis (schedule update or F9) to update the Duration in Days column values.
The good news is that for future updates, you only need to go to the list of Global
Change and select Populate Duration in Days Column (arrow 25) and then
click on Apply Change button (arrow 26) and this will take you straight to arrows
17 to 20 steps.

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