Sometimes a software feature can be a great thing or a bad thing all at the same time. Oracle Primavera P6 Professional has one such feature that, for the most part is terrifically useful and time-saving, but for new users can cause a little anxiety when first encountered.
This article is about the “Current Project’s [item]” filter, which can save you time on a fully fleshed out project schedule, but will cause blank lists, dialogs and views to appear when you are first building the schedule.
Some Examples of the “Current Project’s …” Filter in Action
Help – my Resources list is empty!
In this first example, there is no project open in Primavera P6 Professional. Therefore there are no “Current Project’s Resources” so the page is blank.
To fix this, simply go to the Display drop-down shown above, and change the Filter By setting to All Active Resources. This will display all the resources in the system. Alternatively you can simply open a project and the window will then display any resources assigned to that project; as is the case for the following screenshot.
Help – my Select codes dialog is blank?
Another common area where the “Current Project’s Values” filter default can bite you is when assigning activity codes in a new schedule. Again, because no codes have been assigned yet, and the dialog defaults to “Current Project’s Values”, it’s blank when you open it. In this example we are attempting to assign a CAM value to the activity code. However, no CAMs have been assigned elsewhere in the project, so the list is empty.
Just click on the Display drop-down and choose Filter By | All Values. You’ll see all the available values that exist for that particular activity code.
These are a couple of common areas where the Current Project’s … filter default catches folks out. There are other dialogs, lists and views that default to this filter in Primavera P6 Professional, but the solution is the same in all cases. This feature defaults to current project for two reasons. First, it is a good time saver for the user on an established project. Remember that this is an enterprise system so some of the lists can be extremely long. Second, it saves on a bunch of network traffic and therefore helps keep performance optimized. In either case, you can see now why it can be a blessing or a curse depending on the circumstances at the time.
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