When progressing your schedule, you may want an efficient way to look ahead to upcoming tasks. Filters support looking ahead by displaying only upcoming tasks, but the spotlight feature in Primavera P6 is the most efficient way to highlight these near term future tasks.
The spotlight is a standard look ahead feature in Primavera P6 Professional software, but using the spotlight in Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) release 16.1 web based software requires a little more effort. Oracle is in the process of revamping their P6 EPPM software to unburden its dependence on Java. However, they are only partway through this update process.
In the meantime legacy software features are supported in a classic view of the Primavera P6 EPPM software interface. So, Primavera P6 EPPM comes with two interface views: a classic view and a standard view. Unfortunately, the standard view does not have a spotlight feature. The classic view does, but it takes a little setting up to activate this classic view spotlight.
This article demonstrates a quick tip on how to activate and utilize the spotlight feature in Primavera P6 EPPM 16.1.
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration project.
Figure 1
Note that this schedule has a baseline and has been progressed a few weeks. We want to highlight upcoming activities. The Primavera P6 spotlight feature is simply the quickest way to highlight upcoming events. Unfortunately, the standard view of the Primavera P6 EPPM release 16.1 does not have a spotlight tool.
The legacy classic view does have a spotlight, so click switch to classic view on top right above the Gantt chart. This takes you to an equivalent classic view of the schedule displayed in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Note the baseline and three weeks of updates.
The progress spotlight is normally not readily active in the classic view, so we need to make it available on the toolbar. In Figure 3 we select View | Toolbars | View | Progress Spotlight.
Figure 3
The spotlight icon now appears in the toolbar directly above the Gantt chart, Figure 4.
Figure 4
Click the spotlight icon and a selected range of upcoming activities are highlighted on both the Gantt chart and activities table. Hover the cursor over the right edge of the yellow spotlight on the Gantt chart, Figure 5.
Figure 5
Click and drag the cursor left or right to compress or expand the date range of highlighted activities.
Summary
Yes, it is possible to create a look ahead filter in Primavera P6 EPPM release 16.1. The most efficient filter requires the legacy classic view of P6 EPPM release 16.1. Refer to the following blog Primavera P6 EPPM 4-Week Schedule Look Ahead for guidance on creating a look ahead filter in Primavera P6 EPPM release 16.1.
It is noted however, that the spotlight is the simply the quickest way to highlight upcoming activities both on the Gantt chart and activities table. Again, we turn to the legacy classic view in Primavera P6 EPPM release 16.1 to activate and use the look ahead spotlight.