In this article, we look at activity resource assignment reporting in P6. P6 Professional can generate a report of resource assignments and their associated tasks to examine the attributes of these assignments.
Often, project managers will shorten critical tasks by adding resources to speed up production. To support this effort, the scheduler must create a report of resource task assignments and associated attributes. P6 Professional has a reporting feature to generate these reports and others. Previously, we demonstrated how to create a report listing tasks and their progress. Refer to the following link to read that article.
Now we want to show how to generate a report using the P6 Professional report wizard to examine the attributes of resources on each of their task assignments in the schedule.
This article demonstrates the utility of the P6 Professional report wizard to create a report of resources and associated tasks and attributes.
Demonstration
In Figure 1, we have displayed our demonstration schedule.
This schedule is for the construction of an electrical substation located at a place called Wellmont. In Figure 1, we have the activity table’s Install Conduit task selected, and in the bottom details, the Resource tab is displayed. Here we can inspect the resource assignments for the Install Conduit task.
When we look at the resource assignments for the Install Conduit task, Figure 1, we find that the lineman and groundman resources each have a Max Units/Time of 40h/d. This indicates that we have four of each resource available to work ten-hour days. (The calendar assigned to each task in this schedule is 4×10 or a four-day workweek at ten hours per day.) The Default Units/Time of 10h/d, however, shows that only one lineman and one groundman were included in the initial resource assignment. The Budgeted Units/Time of 20h/d for the lineman and groundman signifies that the initial assignment of these resources was later doubled. But this is just one task. What if we want to review these resource assignments on all the other tasks in the schedule?
Reviewing each task’s resource assignments with the bottom details would require us to manually select each task in the schedule and examine its assignments in the bottom Resources tab. This is prohibitive, and you have no record of the assignments that are displayed. It is better to generate a report of these resource assignments for both efficiency and documentation purposes.
Activity Resource Assignment Reporting
In our demonstration, we want to examine the lineman and groundman attributes on all their task assignments in the schedule. To do this, we need to generate an Activity Resource Assignment report of the lineman and groundman’s Max Units/Time, Default Units/Time and Budgeted Units/Time for every one of their task assignments.
We begin by first preparing to add a report by choosing Tools | Reports | Reports, which brings up the Reports page, Figure 2.
We want to create a location for storing all our reports. Our demonstration is for an electrical substation, and we want to locate all substation reports in one place. For this, we choose Tools | Reports | Report Groups… This opens the Report Groups dialogue, Figure 3.
We click Add to create a new Report Group, Figure 3. This generates a Report Group called (New Report Group), Figure 4.
We rename it SUBSTATION REPORTS, then locate it at the top of the Report Group hierarchy, Figure 5.
Now we select the recently created Substation Reports report group and choose Edit | Add. This activates the Report wizard, where we click Next, Figure 6.
In the Select Subject Area, we click on the ‘Activity Resource and Role Assignments’ subject area, and click Next, Figure 7.
Figure 8 displays the available subject areas and the selected subject areas, which include our Activity Resources and Role Assignments subject area.
We click Next in Figure 8. The next dialogue, Figure 9, allows us to select 1) the columns we want to display in our list of resources (Columns button), 2) grouping of that list (Group & Sort button), and 3) filtering (Filter button).
For the Activity Resource and Role Assignments subject area, we click the Columns button to specify options to display in the list of resource assignments, Figure 9. Each task’s attributes that we want are the following: Max Units/Time, Default Units/Time, and Budgeted Units/Time, Figure 10.
After specifying the columns, we click OK, Figure 10. Then we click the Group & Sort button, Figure 11.
Here, we can specify how we want to group or sort our list of tasks’ resource assignments. We keep the current Group By, Resource ID Name, to organize our list by each resource’s name. But the default color for resource reporting is yellow; we prefer black, so we clicked the Resource ID Name’s Font & Color field, Figure 12, in the process of changing the font color to black.
Further, we choose not to display Totals, Figure 13.
Next, we click the Filter button, Figure 14.
The first line of the filter is the matching criterion, which becomes important when we have more than one line of criteria. We set it to ‘Any of the following’, which is like putting the ‘Or’ conjunction between each line of the filter, Figure 15.
For the ‘Or’ matching criterion, if a resource assignment meets either criterion, it is captured for our report. This is a less strict requirement than the ‘All the Following’, which is like putting the ‘And’ conjunction after each line. For the ‘And’ conjunction, the resource assignment must meet both lines of the criteria, which is a higher hurdle to leap over for a resource assignment to be included in the capture. The filter in Figure 15 captures tasks when the task’s assigned resource is either a lineman or a groundman.
After entering Columns, Group & Sort, and Filters, we click Next, Figure 16.
We enter a suitable name for our report, Figure 17, Groundman and Lineman Report, then click Next.
In Figure 18, we click the Run Report button to run the report.
Continuing, we toggle to print a preview of the report and click OK, Figure 19.
The final report appears in Figure 20.
In Figure 20, the Activity Resource and Role Assignments report, the task assignments and attributes of the lineman are listed before those of the groundman. Examining the tasks, the lineman and groundman resource assignments are consistent. Out of four available, the initial assignment was one each, which was later doubled to two each. The Project Manager must have concluded that doubling the lineman and groundman resources on all their task assignments was required to achieve the project’s target end date.
Most importantly, we confirmed the attributes of each lineman and groundman resource assignment. And not only was generating this report an efficient process, we also have a record of our findings.
After reviewing the report, we proceed, in Figure 21, by clicking Next.
We then chose to save the report to the Report Groups Substation Reports banner, Figure 22.
A dialogue appears confirming the name of the saved report, Figure 23.
Finally, we click Finish to exit the Report Wizard, Figure 24.
The report appears under the Substation Reports banner in the Reports tab, Figure 25.
If we want to modify or rerun the Groundman & Lineman Resource Report, we select it and choose Tools | Report Wizard.
Summary
P6 Professional makes it possible to report resource assignments for examination of their attributes. The report wizard steps you through report creation. The wizard also supports editing your reports.
You first choose what to report. Then specify Columns, Group & Sort, and Filters. The Columns allow you to specify which attributes to display. You can group and set font and color in Group & Sort. The Filter enables you to restrict the report to only those resources in your focus area. In this way, you can generate a resource assignment report to support various scheduling efforts, like crashing the schedule, which was done in the article at the following link: