Primavera P6 EPPM and summarizing projects with summary tables. I had a customer who updated his schedule with your project’s latest progress, but his upper level manager says he hasn’t. Who’s right? In this case, the answer was: both are right.
What? How can both be right? Either the schedule was updated or not, right? Well, it is possible to update a schedule in such a way that your manager does not see the changes.
Primavera P6 EPPM has a special place reserved in the database for so called Summary Tables. These Summary Tables store high-level project data. Data from these Summary Tables are used to populate the enterprise project structure (EPS) project view.
In this way managers can view a wealth of project data with minimal impact on computer system performance. The key factor to remember is that you must summarize your respective project for your project’s updated data to be seen in the project view. If not then your latest data will not be included in your manager’s EPS project view reports.
This article explains project summarization in P6 EPPM release 16.1.
In Figure 1 we have a project view of the EPS for a particular user.
Figure 1
Note the three projects in the Bonus Material EPS node that have not been summarized, refer to the last project view column (last summarized date), Figure 1. In Figure 2 we open Wellmont Substation 22 and click summarize projects, which summarizes all open projects.
Figure 2
After summarization of Wellmont Substation 22 we observe that its high-level project data has populated, Figure 3.
Figure 3
Last when we close Wellmont Substation 22 we see that its high-level project data remains populated, Figure 4.
Figure 4
Also note that the Last Summarized date of Wellmont Substation 22 is later than the data date, which is what we want. In order to ensure that our project date is the most current, the last summarized date should be equal to or later than the project’s data date.
Summary
In Primavera P6 EPPM, project summarization is an important step to remember in the schedule updating process. In order for high-level project data to populate in the EPS project view you must summarize your project. And projects must be open to be included in the summarization process.
Once the Primavera P6 summary tables are populated the high-level project data is visible in the project view regardless of whether or not the project is open. Last confirm that your data is most current by comparing the last summarized date to the project’s data date.