Exciting news from Oracle as they launch their second P6 release for 2016, Primavera P6 EPPM 16.2 (Enterprise Project Portfolio Management).
Primavera P6 EPPM 16.2 focuses entirely on the web based version of the software, so there’s nothing much to write about here for Primavera P6 Professional users.
This is, nevertheless, tremendous news for the entire Primavera P6 suite because we are seeing another huge stride away from the Java based applets in favor of HTML5 pages. Break out the Champagne people, this change alone is worthy of celebration. Companies that invest in this upgrade should expect to see a vast reduction in their IT support load; and users see will an increase in responsiveness.
Java performance, update, backward incompatibility and security issues have dogged this otherwise excellent product for years. All the users we have spoken to about this move away from Java have been very happy to hear the news.
The 16.1 release earlier this year started the trend away from Java and it continues in earnest with release 16.2. That first step gave us some basic pages like the EPS and Activities, with slightly reduced functionality over the existing Java versions; although Java pages are still available thanks to a “Switch to Classic View” option. So for a while at least, users will have the choice to go back to the Java coded pages to use functions that haven’t yet made it into the so called ‘standard view’ pages.
With Primavera P6 16.2, users can operate most of the main software pages even if their Java plugin is out of date. Primavera has added more HTML5 pages to this new version and added more functionality to those it provided in the 16.1 release.
Specifics
- New features include:
- Resource Administration and Analysis pages now available in HTML5
- Enhanced EPS and Activities pages in Standard View (HTML5)
- Ability to link P6 and Prime via Prime Sync feature.
The following pages have been updates to HTML5:
- Enterprise Data
- User Access
- Reports
- Time Sheet Approval
- Dashboards (Gantt Chart Portlet and Filter By)
- Projects Section: Issues, Team Usage, Documents
- Resources Section: Administration, Analysis
As mentioned earlier, new features have been added to the EPS and Activities HTML5 pages. This brings their capabilities much closer to the original Java based pages so you won’t need to switch over to Classic View anything like as much as you did with 16.1.
New Functionality in the EPS page includes:
- Cut, copy and paste projects
- Use fill down in data columns
- Update baselines
- Import and export projects in Primavera or Microsoft XML format. Export to UN/CEFACT format
- Grouping options now allow you to hide a group if it is empty
- View the Budget Log detail window for an EPS or project, view Issues detail window for a project
- Customize the details windows for EPS nodes and projects
New functionality in the Activities page includes:
- Dissolve activities
- Email details of an activity
- Assign resources and roles, and link selected activities
- Use fill down in data columns
- Move WBS elements up and down in the structure
- Update baselines
- Open dependent projects
- Create complex filters with nested conditions and rolling dates
- Import from, and export to, Microsoft Excel
- View Budget Log, Issues, and WBS Milestones detail windows for WBS nodes, and Issues and
- Update History detail windows for activities
- Customize detail windows displayed for WBS nodes and activities
Other Enhancements:
Primavera P6 now offers data sync with Oracle Prime using an ‘Enable Prime Sync’ checkbox next to projects in the list.
Primavera have also made enhancements to the P6 Mobile tools for Android devices, features that were added to iOS in a previous release. These include a demo mode that allows you to access the application with a set of sample data.
You can also view and navigate to the location of a task, if you have locations assigned to them. So you can literally navigate with your mobile device from your current location, to the location of an activity.
Summary
Primavera P6 EPPM R16.2 is a pleasing and exciting set of changes that we believe will be well received by the P6 EPPM user base. Primavera is taking this in the right direction. We certainly saw an improvement in performance with the HTML5 Standard Views in 16.1, and this will continue to improve with 16.2 as more of the functionality migrates over to the new architecture.
To read Oracle Primavera’ s release notes and get full details, click here.