Integrating CloudEVM with Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project
For those contractors who have an Earned Value Management (EVM) requirement on their contract, you may have had the experience of gathering data from different business systems that do not easily align. The time-consuming process of merging data cannot only be frustrating but it can also produce reports with outdated, if not obsolete, information.
When marrying different business systems together to perform EVM, tight integration and lightning speed processing times are a key part of a solution to this problem and this is where CloudEVM comes in. It integrates with most popular scheduling tools, including Oracle, Primavera P6, Microsoft Project, and/or Microsoft Excel. This article will walk you though the import process using Primavera P6 to demonstrate how it all works.
The Need For Speed
CloudEVM directly connects to the Primavera P6 database sending data to it in seconds. The developers considered this approach to be a very important design decision because the Primavera P6 Integration API tool has demonstrated significantly slow processing times in the past.
How It Works
Let’s take a look at how this all works. Before you begin importing from Primavera P6, a little preparation is required. The first step is to select the Primavera P6 project in the Project Selection screen (see figure 1).
Figure 1
The next step is to select which fields you want to use in the Import Setup. Typically the P6 file contains much more information than needed for CloudEVM. The software allows you to select only the fields you need for use in CloudEVM. The choices are User Defined Fields (UDF), Number Fields, Start/Finish Dates, Activity Codes and Resource codes. This pre-selection makes the next step that much easier.
The Import Setup page (see figure 2) can be thought of as your personal control panel between the source data and CloudEVM. This is where you will define what fields in Primavera P6 will transfer to CloudEVM. Click the Baseline node and select the [Add] button to add a new baseline mapping.
Figure 2
The Setup Baseline Import screen (figure 3) appears where you will be prompted to first define the Import Name and then define the Import Source.
Figure 3
The source and destination fields shown in Figure 4 are displayed where you can easily map the appropriate elements and select [Save]. Mappings are considered “one and done”. They can be used for future use and used across the enterprise for other projects.
Figure 4
You are ready to kick off the import process using the Import Process page (Figure 5). Select the Primavera P6 file in the pull-down menu next to the newly created mapping and select [Import Now]. Don’t blink because depending on the size of your project you may miss the progress bar advance.
Figure 5
During the import process, two things occur. The time-phased budget and the planning curves housed in the scheduling system are applied and parsed using CloudEVMs accounting calendar. This gives a project an apple-to-apple comparison when comparing budget, actuals and performance values.
The second action is CloudEVM useslight its powerful rating engine to apply indirect cost to the direct cost using the Rates and Rate Formulas located in the enterprise files (Figure 6). This develops the performance measurement baseline required for earned value to occur.
Figure 6
Your import process is now complete. Once you’ve imported actuals and performance you are ready to analyze data using CloudEVM’s reports, charts, and the dynamic Cube shown in Figure 7. The Cube’s on-demand drill down allows you to perform ad hoc analysis and reporting. If necessary, the software comes with the ability to export to XML so you can send the data to tools such as Encore’s Empower, Deltek’s wInsight or to comply with UN/CEFACT requirements.
Figure 7
Summary
I hope this gives you a taste as to how easy the integration process is between CloudEVM and Primavera P6. It’s worth reiterating that this integration also works with Microsoft Project, and/or Microsoft Excel.
The beauty of CloudEVM is that it not only comes with lightning speed integration, but its Cloud technology enables users to receive real-time information anytime, anywhere. There’s no doubt that the Cloud is redefining the way organizations manage their data so they can spend less time organizing and more time analyzing and CloudEVM does this well.