What has now become a regular cadence for Oracle, Primavera P6 Professional 22.12 has just been released right at the end of December. So, we start the New Year with a few nice new features and improvements and have listed below the complete list included in this P6 Professional 22.12 release.
P6 Professional is a mature product already oozing with capabilities, but each year, Oracle still does a good job making improvements. Below is the complete list of features and improvements in this release.
Top New Features in P6 Professional 22.12
For me, and your mileage may vary, the top four most useful new capabilities are:
Viewing Projects Side-by-Side
You can now view projects side by side. You do this by going to the Projects menu, selecting open an Additional Activities View and then you can compare two projects side-by-side. You can also open different layouts in each view, and the layouts are saved independently. In addition, you can filter, group, and sort the views separately. Each view can be configured differently for critical path and check schedule options, and auto-reorganization works independently in the two views. Both views can be docked and you can copy and paste or drag-and-drop activities between them. You can print either view simply by clicking on the view you want to print before clicking Print.
Greater Flexibility in Copying Relationships with WBS Elements
When copying and pasting WBS elements, you can choose to copy relationships to activities outside the WBS elements you are copying.
More Easily Identify the Correct Baseline to Assign
This rather handy improvement makes it easier to choose your baselines. When assigning baselines, you can now see more information about the available baselines. So, instead of selecting a baseline from a simple pull-down list, P6 Professional 22.12 presents the baselines to choose from in a customizable dialog box. Here you can add columns to the dialog box and click on a column heading to sort the list.
Copy and Paste a Range of Cells in Spreadsheets
You can copy the values in a range of cells from one row of a spreadsheet and paste the values in those cells elsewhere in the same row or in another row. To copy a range of cells, use the context sensitive right-click menu or use the shortcuts Shift+Ctrl+C (Copy Range) and Shift+Ctrl+V (Paste Range). Only the values in the cells are copied and pasted, so it is possible to copy and paste between cells with different units of measure. When you paste a range of cells, the data is only pasted into editable cells.
Other New Features
There’s a bunch of other stuff in this Primavera P6 Professional 22.12 release, which depending on your use of P6, you may find very useful. Here’s the complete list:
Greater Control Over Importing Data
PPM Only: You can specify whether and how to import resource calendars and responsible managers from a Primavera XML file. You can also specify whether and how import global activity codes and EPS level activity codes separately from each other
Check Schedule Report Available in P6 Professional
The Check Schedule Report analyzes the schedules of open projects allowing you assess project heath metrics. You can specify your own target percentages for each report parameter. The analyses look for:
- Missing relationships, relationship types, lags, and relationships to closed projects
- Hard and soft constraints
- Large durations and negative or large total float
- Invalid progress dates, late activities, and activities missing from the project baseline
The Check Schedule toolbar allows you to filter the view to only those activities that fail specific tests of the Check Schedule Report.
Arrange Field Order on Sort Dialog Boxes
When you select to sort your view, you can move columns up or down the list to rearrange the sort order of columns. Sort order preference is determined by the order of columns in the list, with columns nearer the top of the list taking precedence over columns below. The Move Up and Move Down buttons allow you to rearrange the order of the columns to fine-tune the order of the list.
Create Duplicates of Import and Export Templates
You can duplicate XER, XML, Microsoft Project XML, and Microsoft Project MPX import templates. You can also duplicate Excel XLSX, UN/CEFACT, IPMDAR (when you are connected to an EPPM database), Microsoft Project XML, and Microsoft Project MPX export templates. After duplication, you can modify your duplicated templates to suit your needs.
Specify How Finish Date Filters Define Their Timeframe
A new option called Finish date filters use start of Current Date, Week, and Month has been introduced in the Date Filters section of the General page of Admin Settings.
Since release 20.4, filters comparing any finish date to the current day, week, or month define the timeframe based on the end of the day, week, or month. You can select the new option to revert to the previous default behaviour which always defined the timeframe based on the beginning of the day, week, or month even when comparing against finish dates.
This option benefits customers upgrading from a release earlier than 20.4 who require their existing filter definitions to work consistently after upgrade.
Configure Advanced Tab Options for Importing Multiple Projects and Baselines
EPPM Only: EPPM Only: When you import a Primavera XML file (or a zipped Primavera XML file) that contains multiple projects or multiple baselines, you can set options on the Advanced tab of the Import template. The advanced tab of the import template allows you to specify how to handle the import of codes, user defined fields, calendars, and resources in the import file.
User Preference to Control OBS Assignments for Copied and Moved Projects
A new User Preferences option on the Assistance tab allows you to determine how OBS assignments are handled when copying or moving projects between EPS nodes with different Responsible Managers. You can select either to retain the responsible managers that were assigned to the moved, copied, or cut data or assign the OBS node of the new parent node to be the responsible manager for all moved or pasted data.
See Earned Value for Assignments in P6 Professional
Earned value is calculated for assignments. On the Resources tab of Activity Details and the Planning tab of Resource Assignments Details you can view the following fields: Assignment % Complete, Budget at Completion Units, Budget at Completion, Estimate to Complete Units, Estimate to Complete, Earned Value Units, and Earned Value. These fields are also available as columns for Resource Assignment spread.
The calculations used for these fields take into account the Earned Value Technique in use for the WBS of the assignment’s activity, whether a resource curve is applied to the assignment, the calendars assigned to the resource or activity, and the percent complete type of the activity where relevant. The data is calculated live and is not stored in the database.
View High Level Resource Planning Assignments Made in P6 in P6 Professional
EPPM only: You can view planning resources assigned in P6 on the Planning tab of the WBS view in P6 Professional. This data is read-only in P6 Professional. You can choose whether to copy these planning resource assignments when you copy and paste a project and whether to import them with a project from an XML or XER file. When summarizing a project, you can decide whether to summarize based on High level resource planning or Detailed activity resource assignments. A new reporting subject area allows you to build reports of high-level planning assignment data.
This data is separate and distinct from the high-level resource planning data entered on the planning tab of the Resource Assignments Window of P6 Professional.
Export Projects in IPMDAR Format from PPM and SQLite Databases
You can export projects and their associated activities and resource assignments in IPMDAR format from P6 Professional when connected to a PPM or SQLite database.
IPMDAR is a project export format required by the US Department of Defense. The IPMDAR export generates a zip file containing a collection of JSON files which constitute the IPMDAR data and a text file describing the content of the JSON files.
Primavera.CacheService.exe Command Line Switch Change
When you run Primavera.CacheService.exe from the command line, the switch required to generate a log file has changed from /logfile to /pmlogfile. Use the new switch /pmlogfile to generate a log file when you run a report batch, import projects, or export projects from the command line.
Copy Database Aliases in Database Configuration
On the login screen for P6 Professional, you can copy an existing database alias. When you copy an alias, all the connection information for the alias is copied to the new version of the alias. You can also delete database aliases.
Enable Project Publication in P6 Professional
EPPM Only: You can enable the Publish Project setting for a project, set the publishing priority, view the last published date, and specify whether to publish high level resource planning data or detailed activity resource assignments. Access the relevant settings and options on the Settings tab of Project Details. In the Maintain Baselines dialog box, you can enable the publication of any baselines. Changing these settings and options in P6 Professional also changes them in P6.
To configure and run the publication process itself, use the Services page of Application Settings in P6.