Notebook Topics in Primavera P6 help to provide specified instructions, notes or a description for performing an activity. Projects are designed with many groups having an input; for example, the Health and Safety Department will have concerns about environmental issues and disposing of hazardous waste according to their strict guidelines.
To ensure that every department has a voice on the project, schedulers often use Notebook Topics in Primavera P6 to highlight to the project manager any issues which are not defined in the scheduled activities, such as a guideline that needs to be adhered to.
Inserting a Notebook Topic on a particular activity can be rather useful and helps multiple users apply a common theme or label to shared information.
So how do you assign Notebooks Topics in Primavera P6 Professional? Let’s take a closer look.
We want to create two Notebook Topics alerting the project manager and construction workers about disposing water from the chilled water line in an environmentally friendly manner. We want to also remind them to check for hazardous material when removing the damaged pipe.
We select ‘Admin’, then ‘Admin Categories’. From the categories on the left-hand side, we select ‘Notebook Topics’ and click + Add to create our new Notebook Topic. We will call our Notebook Topic ‘Safety & Environmental,’ as in Figure 1
Figure 1
We make sure EPS, Project, WBS, and Activity are all toggled for our new ‘Safety & Environmental’ Notebook Topic. We then select the activity ‘Drain Piping System’ in our demonstration schedule, as in Figure 2.
Figure 2
We select the Notebook tab in the bottom details and by clicking +Add we select our ‘Safety & Environmental’ in the ‘Assign Notebook Topic’ as in Figure 3.
Figure 3
We click modify and then we can write an environmental note: “drain chilled water line into sewage line and not storm drain” as shown in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4
Now, we highlight the ‘Remove Damaged Piping’ activity, return to the ‘Safety & Environmental’ in the ‘Assign Notebook Topic’ and write an environmental note “inspect piping for hazardous asbestos material before removal” as in Figure 5.
Figure 5
At the moment our Notebook Topic is only visible for the ‘Drain Piping System’ activity or ‘Remove Damaged Piping’ activity when we display the notebook tab
in the bottom details. We want our notebooks to appear prominently, front and center on the Gantt Chart so that the whole project team is aware of the importance of these messages.
We select ‘Bars’ in the Layout tool group and highlight the ‘Current Bar Label’ which specifies bars features for all ‘Normal or Level of Effort (LOE)’ activities. Under the ‘Position’ tab we select ‘Top-Right’ and select the Label tab to ‘Notebook- Safety & Environmental’ and click +Add, as in Figure 6.
Figure 6
Primavera P6 Professional only allows one Notebook Topic or notes to be attached to each bar. This is why we have created one Notebook Topic for both safety and environmental notes. Therefore, we can display both safety and environmental notes on our activities. We select apply and both notebook topics appear on our Gantt Chart, as in Figure 7.
Figure 7
When we inserted the notebook topic on to the Gantt Chart, we lost our Baseline Bar, so we need to increase the row height. By selecting View, ‘Table, Font and Row’ we uncheck ‘Keep Current Row Heights’ and ‘Select height for all rows’ changing it to 30, as in Figure 8.
Figure 8
We can now see the Baseline. By left-clicking on the right edge of the ‘Drain Piping System’ note we drag right till the note is visible, as in Figure 9.
Figure 9
By manually increasing the row height of our two activities (‘Drain Piping System’ and ‘Remove Damaged Piping’) which have been assigned a Notebook Topic and left-clicking on the bottom line of each activity, we can drag until we can see each note, as in Figure 10.
Figure 10
Summary
Notebook Topics in Primavera P6 offer a handy way for schedulers to attach important notes to activities. There are numerous purposes for this feature and in our example, we highlighted the potential dangers and guidelines involved in an activity.
Notebook Topics in Primavera P6 Professional support both displaying the Notebook Topic in the notebook tab of the bottom details or inserting notebook topics directly onto the Gantt chart. If you insert your Notebook Topic directly onto the Gantt chart you may have to adjust the row height of the activity so that the notebook is fully visible.