21 PRIMAVERA TIPS AND

SHORTCUTS
PRIMAVERA
1 SPOT OPEN ENDS IN THE ACTIVITY
NETWORK
An important health check to perform before issuing a schedule is to remove open ends
in the activity network. A good starting point is to look for the list of activities without
predecessors/ successors in the Scheduling/Leveling Report, which can be accessed
from the Schedule window (F9 or Tools >Schedule>View Log). A sample of this
section of the report is shown below:

Figure 1.1 – Scheduling/Leveling Report

Note that open ends are also generated by activities whose i) only predecessor
relationship is a finish-to-finish link or ii) only successor relationship is a start-to-start
link. This check can be performed manually within P6 by looking at relationship lines
on the Gantt chart or looking at predecessors/ successors in the Activity Details
window; or through the Schedule Check utility available in Primavera Risk Analysis, or
other schedule analysis software with similar capabilities.

1 PROJECT-LEVEL SETTINGS: USING

THE DEFAULTS TAB
The Defaults tab under project settings can save you a lot of time if you need to add
multiple activities with the same calendar, duration type, percent complete type, activity
type, cost account and/or even a given ID structure. In other words, there is a way you
can pre-assign a given value to each of these settings for all new activities you insert to
the schedule, eliminating the need to edit them on a per-activity basis, after you’ve
added the new tasks.

In order to do this, go to the Projects window, select the project you’re working on and
then locate the Defaults tab at the bottom of the screen, where the Project Details are
displayed. If the Defaults tab is not visible, make sure you right-click anywhere in the
Project Details area, choose “Customize Project Details” from the drop-down menu and
move Defaults to the Displayed Tabs list on the right. Once you access this tab, you’ll
be able to select pre-determined values for all the parameters mentioned above.

3 RENUMBER ACTIVITY IDS

Although P6 is more flexible than P3 when it comes to changing activity IDs, making
edits for multiple activities can be cumbersome- especially if you’re dealing with, say,
more than 10 activities or even worse: renumbering an entire schedule. In order to re-
number multiple activities, all you need to do is highlight the line items whose IDs you
need to update, right-click and select “Renumber Activity IDs”. You will then be
prompted to i) define an increment value, ii) define prefix/suffix or iii) replace
characters in the current numbering structure of the selected activities.

For example, let’s assume you have a group of activities belonging to 2 different phases
of your project and whose IDs are entirely numeric. If you needed to update their IDs to
reflect the phase each line item belongs to through an alphanumeric ID, you’d do the
following:

a) Highlight all activities occurring during phase 1 of the project, as shown in Figure 3.1
below.
Figure 3.1 – Select Activities

b) Right-click, choose “Renumber Activity IDs” and check the “Auto-number” option.

c) Pick a prefix such as “PH1-”, a suffix “1000” and an increment value of 10. Click Ok
to see the updated codes for your activities (ie: PH1-1000, PH1-1010, PH1-1020, etc),
as shown in Figure 3.2 and Figure 3.3 below.
Figure 3.2 – Renumber Activity IDs Parameters
Figure 3.3 – Updated Activity IDs for Selected Activities

d) Proceed in the same way for phase 2 activities, using “PH2-” as prefix to denote they
belong to phase 2.

4 FILL DOWN INFORMATION

You can use this command to quickly copy WBS and Activity Code values (as well as
almost any parameter that can be displayed as a column in the Activity Table) from one
activity into other activities in the schedule. For instance, if you’d like to change the
calendar for multiple activities, you need to:
a) Display the Calendar column in the Activity Table, as shown in image 4.1 below.

Figure 4.1 – Display Calendar Column in Activity Table

b) Change the calendar ID of the first activity in the range to the desired calendar.

c) Highlight all the activities that you need to update calendars for. Note that the
activities you select don’t need to be listed consecutively in the Activity Table (ie: gaps
in the range are allowed as well). Also, ensure that the cell containing the desired
calendar ID (ie: the value that will be copied onto the rest of the activities in the
highlighted range) is the first item in that selection, as shown in image 4.2 below.
Figure 4.2 – Activity Selection
d) Click Edit>Fill Down, press Ctrl+E, or right-click on the range and select Fill Down.
The calendar for all activities in the highlighted range will be updated to match that of
the first cell in the range, as shown in Figure 4.3 below.

5 DISABLE AUTO-REORGANIZATION
If you’re using a layout that groups activities by a certain parameter (eg: WBS, calendar
or a particular activity code), editing the value of this parameter for multiple activities
can become a cumbersome task. Why? Because every time you update this information
for one activity it automatically gets moved to its new “location” in the schedule,
forcing you to make edits on a per-activity basis.
This problem can be easily avoided by disabling the auto-reorganization option, which
you can access through the corresponding button in the “Tools” toolbar, or the
Shift+F12 hotkey. This way, you can work on editing the values of a particular
parameter at the activity table level without any of your activities moving around until
you’re done making changes. This can be particularly helpful if you’re using the Fill
Down tool to copy information from one activity into multiple activities.

6 UPDATE PARAMETER VALUES FOR

ALL ACTIVITIES IN THE SCHEDULE
There are several data fields and activity settings than can be edited at once for all the
activities in your schedule through P6’s Global Change tool. In order to access this
feature, click the Tools menu, and select Global Change. You will be prompted to create
or modify an existing rule.

For instance, let’s assume you’d like to change the percent complete type for all
activities in the schedule from Duration to Physical. After adding a new Global Change,
you’d need to select “Activities” in the subject area (note that you can also implement
global changes on resource assignments and project expenses), and then create a rule for
P6 to apply across the schedule, as shown in Image 6.1. This rule is set up as follows:
-Box #1: If Parameter “Percent Complete Type” equals “Duration”.
-Box #2: Then Parameter “Percent Complete Type” equals “Physical”

Figure 6.1 – Modify Global Change

Next, click the Ok button and select “Apply Change”. You will see a log with all the
proposed changes, as shown in Figure 6.2 below. Finally, click “Commit Changes” to
update all parameter values to the new values.

Figure 6.2 – Global Change Report

Note that you can add multiple rules and use two logic operators (ie: apply changes if
“any” or “all” of the rules created apply) to customize the Global Change you’re trying
to implement. In this case of this tip, we only used a single rule; but the tool can clearly
be utilized to implement more intricate and complex changes to the schedule.

7 CHANGE TIME UNITS & DATES

FORMAT
In order to control the way in which these values are shown in the system, you may
click Edit>User Preferences, and navigate between the Time Units (Figure 7.1) and
Dates (Figure 7.2) tabs on the left-hand side of the User Preferences window. For
instance, this comes in handy when engaging in higher-precision scheduling efforts,
which could require tracking activities down to the hour. Conversely, you could set
units to weeks, months or even years if you’re working on less-detailed, higher-level
schedules.

Figure 7.1 – User Preferences, Time Units Tab

Figure 7.2 – User Preferences, Dates Tab

As you adjust the settings on the Units Format window, you can see the resulting format
on the right-hand side of the window, within the “Example” boxes. Similarly, changes
made to the date format can be visualized at the bottom of the “Dates” window, in the
“Sample” box.

8 EXPORT TO EXCEL
Unlike P3, Primavera P6 allows you to export information directly into a spreadsheet by
copying and pasting the desired information, just like you would do on any other
program. To export the entire Primavera Schedule, press Ctrl+A to select all the
information displayed on the Activity Table; then press Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to
paste directly to spreadsheet.

Alternatively, you can always stick to the traditional method by i) right-clicking on your
selection and choosing “Export to Excel” or by ii) clicking File>Export, and choosing
the Spreadsheet (xls) option.

9 COMPARE SCHEDULES WITH CLAIM

DIGGER
Have you ever lost track of the changes made from one schedule revision to another, or
needed to put together a comprehensive variance report? In these cases, the Claim
Digger utility that comes with Primavera P6 can be particularly useful.

In order to run the Claim Digger utility, all you need to do is go to the Tools menu, and
click “Claim Digger.” You will then be prompted to pick 2 files: one for the original
project (or baseline) and another containing the revised project, as shown in Image 9.1
below. Click compare and you’ll get a comprehensive report of all the differences
between both schedules from durations, float and logic to activity additions/deletions
and WBS changes.

Image 9.1 – Select Revised Project and Baseline

10 BULK IMPORT FROM EXCEL

Have you ever done a significant amount of work in Excel as part of the initial planning
process for your project (eg: define WBS, activities, activity codes, etc.), and needed to
find a way to incorporate all the information without having to create activities one by
one? This is where the Import function comes in handy. All you need to do is go to
File> Import> Spreadsheet – (xls), and choose the file containing the information you’d
like to import.

It’s very important to make sure your spreadsheet follows a specific format that
Primavera P6 can read and import. Therefore, it’s a good practice to create a template
first, which you’ll then dump your data on and import. In order to do so, simply go to
File> Export and check the Activities box in the Export Type window. You will be
prompted to select the fields (ie: columns) that you’d like your Excel template to
display. This can include activity ID, name, durations, WBS activity codes and even
other information such as predecessors/ successors, resources, etc., as shown in Figure
10.1. Once you’ve picked your columns, you can export the template and save to a
known location. You can now open the file and dump your data into the columns you
selected. Save the updated template, and proceed to import as instructed above.

Figure 10.1 – Modify Template

11 OPEN MULTIPLE SCHEDULES

SIMULTANEOUSLY
When deciding on the granularity and level of detail of your schedules, remember that
P6 allows you to work on several projects at the same time and created logic ties
between them. This feature gives you the flexibility to split the work into multiple,
smaller schedules, without compromising the articulation between them.
For instance, given the magnitude of a particular project, you may decide that it’s better
to create multiple sub-schedules that feed into a master schedule by establishing ties
between the former’s more granular items, and the latter’s higher-level, summary
milestones and activities. Cross-project ties can be created by opening multiple
schedules at a time, and proceeding to assign links as though you were working on a
typical, larger schedule. To open multiple projects simultaneously, simply go to the
EPS, hold the Ctrl key to add the desired projects to your selection, and press Ctrl+O.

12 SCALE TO SINGLE-PAGE WIDTH

This simple, yet useful tip will spare you the (quite recurrent) pain of seeing your
schedules printed on more than 1 page wide (ie: “horizontally” split in 2 or more parts).
To scale your project so it doesn’t exceed a width of 1 page, click Print Preview>Page
Setup. Make sure you do this from the Activity List view (not EPS). Then, select “Fit
Timescale To” and make sure “1” is selected, as shown in Figure 12.1. Similarly, you
may choose the “Fit To” option and enter the same value. In this case, however, you’ll
also be prompted to fit the schedule to a given number of pages tall.

Figure 12.1 – Page Setup

13 CREATING LOGIC TIES IN THE

ACTIVITY NETWORK
When developing the logic for your schedule, remember links can be created in three
ways, which you can use to expedite your workflow:
1) Visually: by clicking and dragging your cursor from one bar to another in the Gantt
chart.
2) At the Activity Details level: by going to the predecessors and successors tabs in the
activity details window and adding activities to each list.
3) At the Activity Table level: by highlighting the activities you need to connect, right-
clicking on the selection, and choosing the “Link Activities” option.

14 QUICKLY SEQUENCE ACTIVITIES IN

ANY ORDER
Linking activities at the Activity Table level is a very powerful tool for creating logic
ties (more so than the visual or activity detail methods). A very useful tip when creating
chains of activities is to highlight as many activities as needed in the order in which they
are to be sequenced. After doing so, just right-click the selection and choose “Link
Activities” from the drop-down menu. After running the schedule, you’ll see that they
follow the order in which they were highlighted when creating the links, as opposed to
the order in which they were originally listed in the activity table (ie: by activity ID,
alphabetically, by WBS or any other criterion). Images 14.1 through 14.3 illustrate these
steps:
Image 14.1 – Activity Set Without Logic Ties
Image 14.2 – Activity Selection in Desired Order
Image 14.3 – Final Activity Sequence

15 IMPORT A NEWER XER FILE INTO AN

OLDER VERSION OF P6
Primavera returns an error message when trying to import a XER file created in a newer
version of P6 (for example, when trying to open a P6 15.0 file from P6 8.3). In order to
solve this problem, simply follow these steps:

a) Open the XER file you’re trying to import using Notepad.

b) Locate the second string of characters (or “word”) on the very first line (or
“sentence”) of the document, as shown in Image 15.1 below. This is where the file
version is specified.
c) Edit this number to match your version of P6. In this example, you’d replace “15.0”
by “8.3”.

d) Save the file. Make sure the extension remains as .XER and is not changed to .TXT.

e) Import the updated XER file.

16 REPORTING PROJECT VARIANCE

Maintaining and Assigning baselines is a very useful P6 feature that allows you,
amongst other things, to easily report variances across different schedules. All you need
to do is to add the project against which you’d like to compare your current schedule to,
and then add variance columns to the activity table displaying the desired changes in the
schedule.

First, pick your baseline(s) by going to Project>Maintain Baselines (see Image 16.1).
Here you’ll be able to choose from your other projects in the EPS, or save a copy of the
currently open file to serve as one. Each baseline can be named and assigned a baseline
type (ie: initial planning baseline, customer sign-off baseline, etc.). Once you have a list
of potential baselines (or target/ reference projects to compare your current schedule to),
you can go to Project>Assign Baselines (see Image 16.2). A window will pop up and
you’ll be asked to select a project baseline, as well as up to three user baselines
(primary, secondary and tertiary).

Image 16.1 – Maintain Baselines

Image 16.2 – Assign Baselines

The last step is to have P6 display the calculated variances for you. To do this, simply
add columns to the activity table (right-click> columns) and pick the variance-related
fields that best suit your reporting needs. Options include columns like “Variance – BL
Project Duration” and “Variance – BL Project Labor Cost”.

17 CREATING CUSTOM UNITS OF

MEASURE
By default, Primavera has only a few options to choose from when it comes to defining
and assigning Units Of Measure (UoM) for material resources in the schedule. This is a
very common issue that you might encounter in virtually every project you work on, as
materials (and therefore their units) can widely vary depending on project type, cost-
management requirements, measuring conventions, etc.

For example, when looking through a construction budget you might see that timber
matting is measured by square foot; while on a similar project its UoM can be square
yards– a unit that might not be available by default in P6. Similarly, activities such as
seeding and stabilization might require an area UoM other than the traditional square
foot, such as acres.

In order to create custom UoMs, go to Admin>Admin Categories. On the Admin

Categories window, go to the Units of Measure tab. Select “Add” and assign your
custom unit an abbreviation and name. The new UoM will be listed in the dropdown
menu when creating or modifying material resources, as show in Image 17.1 below.

Image 17.1 – Admin Categories, Units of Measure

18 RULE OF THUMB: LONGEST PATH VS
TOTAL FLOAT <= 0
You may have noticed that P6 offers two criteria for determining the critical path in
your schedule (F9 hotkey>Schedule Options): i) Total Float Less Than Or Equal To
(typically zero) and ii) longest path. While both can yield the same results under certain
conditions, most times critical paths can differ dramatically when calculated under one
criterion over the other. Below are a few notes that will help you decide which of the 2
to use.

The intent of the Critical Path Method (CPM) is to allow you to obtain total project
duration by finding the longest sequence (ie: “path”) of activities from project start
through completion. If we’re working on a schedule baseline, then both methods will
lead to the same result. In other words, activities in the longest path will also be those
with zero total float (TF). This continues to hold even when we add constraints to our
baseline to account for intermediate and final project deadlines (eg: building dried-in,
substantial completion and final completion milestones); as by definition, a baseline
shows no delays and hence no negative float.

Now, let’s assume we update the schedule and find that there is a delay relative to the
original completion deadline, as well as some of the intermediate milestones we
incorporated earlier into the baseline. As you may expect, these unsatisfied constraints
generate negative TF values. Evidently, each of the 2 critical path calculation criteria
will yield completely different results this time around. The Total Float Less Than Or
Equal To (zero) method will include any activity with a negative TF value; while the
Longest Path method will continue to show the longest progression of activities leading
to project completion.

This means that, if a 100-activity schedule is delayed and 80% of its activities have
negative TF values, then the critical path determined through the first method will be
comprised of 80 line items, and will not necessarily let us distinguish which activities
have an impact on the current project completion forecast. The Longest Path option, on
the other hand, will continue to show only the activities that drive our current
completion date and keep the list of activities considered “critical” to a minimum.

In conclusion, the Total Float Less Than Or Equal To rule is valid for calculating total
project duration (ie: the longest sequence of activities leading to your project
completion milestone) as long as you don’t have unsatisfied constraints generating
negative TF values. However, chances are you’ll be in the latter scenario most of the
time, as you’ll for sure need to add constraints to your schedule; let alone update it on a
regular basis and probably even show delays on more than one occasion. In these cases,
the Longest Path option would be the recommended setting for calculating total and
remaining project duration.

19 IMPORT & EXPORT LAYOUTS

Setting up layouts can be a cumbersome task, especially if you have to replicate
someone else’s layout to make sure you’re looking at the same report and data, or just to
be consistent with reporting formats. You can save you and your team a lot of time by
setting up a layout (ie: report) once, exporting it and having the people involved in the
project import it without having to re-create it on their own every time you send them a
schedule.

To do this, go to View>Layout>Open and select the layout that you’ve previously set up
for your project. Once you select “Export,” you’ll be prompted to specify a location for
the .plf file (Primavera Layout File) that was just created. That is the file that you
should send to anyone who needs to see the schedule under the specific format (ie:
layout) that you’ve created.

Similarly, when the recipients of the .plf file have already opened the schedule, all they
need to do is go to the same menu and select “Import” this time (View>Layout>Open;
Import). Once they’ve imported it, it will be listed on the Open Layout list for them to
use.

20 EXPORT FILTERS
Similar to Layouts, Filters can be exported for the same reason: making sure everyone
involved in the project is able to see the same data, and save time to set up complex and
sophisticated filters. P6, however, doesn’t have an option to directly export a filter as an
isolated element. Instead, you’ll need to incorporate it to a layout and export it as part of
the layout.

Once you’ve created a layout and a filter, open the Filters window. This can be accessed
by right-clicking on the activity table and selecting Filters, pressing the funnel icon on
the toolbar or by clicking View>Filter By>Customize. Once there, select the desired (ie:
previously created) filter from the list and press the Copy As Layout button, as shown in
Image 20.1 below.Now the filter will be listed under “Layout Filters”, and will be
exported together with the current layout (ie: the layout that you previously created and
which you wish to send to your project team).
Image 20.1 – Filters, Copy As Layout

21 ADDING GRANULARITY TO YOUR

SCHEDULE WITHOUT BUMPING UP
ACTIVITY COUNT
One of the advantages of adding more detail to a schedule is that it allows for finer
progress tracking. In other words, reporting status on a deliverable that is represented by
more than 1 activity in the schedule can be a more structured, traceable and overall
reliable process than for a single-line-item one.

For instance, think of the effort associated to preparing as-built drawings during the
closeout phase of a project. This can be either incorporated to the schedule as a single
item representing all work from final as-built survey through record drawing set
approval; or it can be broken down into the smaller tasks (or “steps”) implied by this
effort. At the same time, however, the latter can result in an unnecessary number of new
activities which can make your schedule unmanageable and very cumbersome to
update.

If you’ve been faced with this dilemma, fortunately you can get the best of both worlds
by using the Activity Steps feature. This option allows you to create sub-tasks (namely,
“steps”) for the activities you need to track more closely without the need to break them
down into separate, smaller activities. In order to do this, select the activity you need to
create steps for. Then, go to the Steps tab located in the Activity Details window and
define the sub-tasks required for this activity as shown in Figure 21.1.

Image 21.1 – Activity Details (Steps Tab)

As shown above, you can record progress under each Activity Step, and even assign
weights to drive overall activity progress calculation. If the latter is the case and you’d
like P6 to do this automatically for you, make sure to activate the “Activity Percent
Complete Based on Activity Steps” setting. This option can be found under the
Calculations tab at the project-level settings, as shown in Figure 21.2 below:

Image 21.2 – Project-Level Settings (Calculations Tab)