The Gantt chart is at the heart and center of Primavera P6. And setting the proper Gantt chart for shading non-work time is a fundamental but important step for communicating an accurate project schedule situation.
Shading for non-work time is a basic Gantt chart function that has an impact on interpreting the schedule situation. And it is as simple a matter as specifying the non-work time for your project. But what happens when you want to display multiple projects that have differing calendar non-work times?
There is logic to how Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) handles this situation, although the solution may not be completely satisfying.
This article describes a quick tip for how to specify calendar non-work time while accessing one or more Primavera P6 EPPM release 16.1 project schedules.
The shading for non-work time is defined for each calendar in Primavera P6 EPPM. Both project and global calendars are created and/or edited in the Administer | Enterprise Data.
In Enterprise data it is possible to create global calendars that are available to all users and all projects or project calendars that are available to specific projects. Instructions for creating a new calendar that has both work and non-work time are found at the following blog Primavera P6 EPPM – Setting Up a Four-Day Work Week.
Once your calendar with standard non-work time shading is created it can be assigned as the default calendar for any project. In the Primavera P6 EPPM classic view open your respective project in the enterprise project structure (EPS) and select Actions | Set Project Preference, Figure 1.
Figure 1
In the project preferences dialog select Defaults and click on the calendar structure icon, Figure 2.
Figure 2
Choose your desired calendar in the select calendar dialog. We select 5×8 standard for our demonstration. When we display the Gantt chart, Figure 3, for our respective 5×8 standard calendar associated project, we observe that Saturday and Sunday are properly shaded as non-work time.
Figure 3
Looks good! Great, we’re done!
Well, that is not the complete end to the story. The question still remains what happens when multiple projects that have different calendars are open? In this situation we have to tell Primavera P6 EPPM, which calendar to use as the default global calendar. Set the default global calendar in Administer | Enterprise data | Global | Global Calendars, Figure 4.
Figure 4
In our demonstration, we select the 4×10 calendar and click the set as default calendar icon, Figure 4. The 4×10 calendar has Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shaded non-work times. But if you again view our project’s Gantt chart, you will see that it still has only Saturday and Sunday as non-work time, Figure 5.
Figure 5
But watch what happens when we open another project, Figure 6.
Figure 6
When we open multiple projects the Gantt chart shading reverts to the non-work day shading of the default global calendar, which is 4×10 or Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shaded as non-work time, Figure 7.
Figure 7
To complete this demonstration, we change the default global calendar to the 5×8 standard calendar. Now we observe the Gantt chart with only Saturday and Sunday shaded as non-work days.
Summary
When only one project is open the default calendar in project preferences defaults dialog sets the shading of non-work time. However, when multiple projects are open Primavera P6 EPPM uses the default global calendar to specify non-work time shading.
So when accessing multiple projects you have to choose which calendar, among possibly multiple calendars. This determines non-work time shading. This may not be the solution you were hoping for. But at least you know from this quick tip how Primavera P6 EPPM operates calendar shading non-work time.