Oracle has released the only major update in a year for on premises users, Primavera P6 EPPM 19.12. While many of these new features have been available throughout the year for customers using Oracle Primavera Cloud, this is the first time on premises users will get to enjoy them. Oracle Primavera Cloud upgrades it’s users almost monthly, drip feeding new features and capabilities that are now available in the on premises release of Primavera P6 EPPM 19.12.
Let’s take a look at some of the cool features that are in Primavera P6 EPPM 19.12.
View Migration Utility – Convert Classic Views to Standard Views
Access to classic view pages was removed in release 18. Each user can export any classic views to which they had access and import them to create new standard views. The View Migration Utility allows an Admin Superuser to convert all the classic views in a database to standard views, while retaining the user scope of the views.
Gantt chart – Financial Period Timescales
A very useful addition is in the Gantt Views of the EPS, Activity, Project Assignment and Resource Assignment pages, you can now show the timescale in years and then divided into financial periods.
If financial periods have not been defined by an administrator for part of the duration of your project, the Gantt chart does not show data for the parts of your project whose dates fall outside the existing financial periods. If financial periods do not exist for the whole of the duration of your project, the Gantt chart does not show any data.
You can change the Gantt timescale in the Manage Views dialog box, or refresh your view if you are using the Overallocated Resources view of the Assignments pages.
Timesheet Enhancements
A new feature in in Project Preferences, you can now prevent primary resources from Updating Activity Dates in a Timesheet. There’s an Allow primary resources to update activity dates option, which allows project managers control over when and how primary resources can update the start and finish dates of the activities in a project.
You can reject status updates in the Status Updates page of P6 to request the team member modify and resubmit the update. When you reject a status update, you can provide information for the team member about what changes need to be made to each field in the status update and provide overall comments for the team member. You can also choose to have an email sent to the team member to alert them to the rejected status update. The team member sees rejected status updates in the Action Required page of Team Member Web, P6 for Android, and P6 for iOS.
In Team Member Web, the Application Settings pane includes options to prevent users from entering hours in a timesheet before the start date of their assignment and after the end date of their assignment.
Now when there are timesheets which are pending your approval, you will receive a notification.
Portfolios and Portlets
You can now make existing portfolios available to multiple users and copy and paste portfolios in the portfolio list. When you create a portfolio, you can choose to allow selected users to access the portfolio.
You can group and sort the data and view all levels of the WBS in the Project Statistics Portlet. You can also search, print and download the data in the portlet. When you click a project to drill down, you can customize the view of the data, including adding columns to both the activity grid and the assignments tab.Resource Improvements
You can allow or restrict access to resources from multiple parent resources. You can select up to five resources when defining which resources a user can access. The user can access and use the selected resources and all child resources of the selected resources.
If you select to display the role limit based on the calculated primary resource’s limit, P6 only shows you the limit for primary roles assigned to resources to which you have access. This provides you with a clearer insight into role availability because you do not see the role limit according to all resources, but only those resources relevant to you.
In the usage chart of the Select Resource and Select Role dialog boxes, use the Show usage for list to determine whether the chart shows resource or role usage for all published projects, or only for a specific project.
You can now specify the start and end dates for the usage charts when assigning resources or roles to activities. This setting is saved with the view and can be configured in the Activities page, the Assignments page in the Projects section and the Assignments page in the Resources section.
Finally, you can sort the My Actvities and Timesheet views in Team Member by WBS according to the WBS hierarchy.
XML Files
Now, when you export projects to Primavera XML format, scheduling and leveling options are included. When importing the Primavera XML file, you can choose whether to import with the Update Existing or Keep Existing import actions against the scheduling and leveling options.
You can choose to import projects from Primavera XML files using the currency rate in the XML file or the currency rate in your database. If you import using the currency rate in the XML file, calculations convert the values to account for differences in the exchange rates in the XML file and your database. To use the currency rate in the XML file, you must have a matching currency ID and name in your database.
You can now choose to update baselines when importing a project from a Primavera XML file. When you select the Update Existing import action at the project level, matching baselines you import will be updated from the import file. Baselines you choose to import but which do not have a match in your database against the project you selected to update will be added to the project.
Import/Export
You can now Import and export data in Microsoft Excel format on the Enterprise Data page. Import/export of resource curves, risk categories, units of measure, issue codes, document categories, overhead codes, and baseline types has been implemented.
You can also select global and project import actions in the import template when importing a project from a Microsoft Project XML file using the Create New option.
You can also import/export global data in Microsoft Excel format on the Enterprise Data page. This includes the import/export of funding sources, WBS categories and step templates.
Export resource and role Spreads to Microsoft Excel is now available. From the Assignments pages in Projects and Resources, you can export data to Excel including all the spread columns in your view.
Other Features
View Total Float to Achieve More Effective Prioritization of Your Activities – Your project manager can set a project preference to allow you to see an activity’s total float in both the My Activities and Timesheets pages of Team Member applications.
WBS Fields Available in the Activities Page – You can view the following fields at the WBS level: Anticipated Finish, Anticipated Start, Contains Summary Data, Integrated Application, Integrated WBS, Parent, Project Status, Proposed Budget, Responsible Manager, Status Reviewer, WBS Name, WBS category, WBS code, and WBS Path. You can also filter on and group by many of these columns.
Import Your Non-Work Days From Other Applications – You can import non-work days from an .ICS file exported from another application into your personal calendar in P6 EPPM.
Store Images – You can store images to ensure that your users always have access to the correct, most up-to-date images and logos for headers and footers.
Improved Granularity of Data Types When Publishing Enterprise Data – You can select or exclude the following data types when publishing enterprise data: project, activity, resource, calendar, and enterprise data dictionary.
Delete Discussion Items – You can delete discussion comments in P6 Web. You can delete your own contributions to discussions in Team Member Web. You must have the Delete Discussion Comments project level privilege to delete discussion comments in P6 Web or Team Member Web.
Printing Enhancements – You can print directly to your default printer. Before printing a view, you can customize the header and footer of the output, hide columns, select page setup options, add row numbers, and apply a watermark to the output.
Generate reports while you work – If a report takes more than 20 seconds to generate, it will run in the background so you can continue working. You will receive a notification when it is complete.
Switch off warning about report accessibility – A new setting in the Display Format tab of My Preferences allows each user to disable the report accessibility warning. The report accessibility warning appears each time a user runs a report in a format that is not HTML. It alerts the user that the report will not meet accessibility requirements for visual impairments.
Greater Flexibility in Activity Page Filters – You can filter the Activities page for specific resources and roles using standard filters. You can also compare baseline dates in the activities page. You can compare dates to the hour.
Enable Publication When Copying Projects – When you copy and paste projects, you can select to switch on the Enable Publication options for the pasted copies of the projects.
Control Who Can Delete Published Project Data – You can use the Delete Published Project Data privilege to allow only certain users to delete published data for projects.
Technical Stuff
Job Services – Deploy Job Services to a Separate WebLogic Application Server: Oracle provides the option to configure a separate server for job services using an application server deployment of p6jobservices.war. This option allows for remote monitoring and heath management of the hosting Java Virtual Machine as well as the ability to manage the startup and shutdown lifecycle of the machine. Deploying job services to an application server also conveys the benefits of additional error logging and homogenizes the deployment of your EPPM web applications.
No Email Client? – No Problem – You can choose to use either an installed email client or the Team Member Web email client for sending emails from Team Member Web. The selection can be made on the Application Settings page in Team Member Web.
Summary
Primavera P6 EPPM 19.12 has been a year in the making and these features have been released almost monthly to customers using Oracle Primavera Cloud. As a result, other users have been enjoying these capabilities for nearly a year and so they have been battle tested.
Upgrading to Primavera P6 EPPM 19.12 is a straightforward process and there’s enough here to make it a compelling upgrade.