Primavera P6 users need to be careful when removing calendars in P6 to limit the effect on other schedules that may share the same global calendar assignment. Oracle removed the privilege of deleting a global calendar that is currently used by other projects. In this way, P6 Professional prevents you from erasing a calendar that is currently assigned to multiple projects to prevent collateral damage. However, there is an accepted procedure for deleting a global calendar.
- You should identify all projects currently assigned the respective global calendar. The Used By feature in P6 Professional calendar dialogue identifies all schedules that currently use the respective calendar.
- Open all the affected projects.
- You then can select a replacement calendar for all these open projects. The software simultaneously deletes the target global calendar during the swap out.
This article demonstrates a procedure removing calendars in P6 and the Used By feature.
We have in Figure 1, our demonstration list of Global Calendars.
We want to delete the ‘5×8 TQL’ calendar. This is the total quality leadership (TQL) subcontractor calendar for an eight-hour day five-day workweek. We click the Delete button, Figure 1. The following dialogue appears, Figure 2.
It states that the ‘5×8 TQL’ calendar cannot be deleted because it is in use in other projects, Figure 2. To investigate these schedules, we select the ‘5×8 TQL’ global calendar and click the Used By button in the Calendars dialogue, Figure 3.
The list of projects currently assigned the ‘5×8 TQL’ calendar displays in Figure 4.
If we want to swap out the calendar for these projects, we will need to open both. First let us investigate the resources that have the ‘5×8 TQL’ calendar assigned. To display the resources assigned this calendar we toggle, Resources, Figure 5.
Several Resources have ‘5×8 TQL’ as their Resource Calendar, Figure 5. Again, if we want to replace the calendar assigned to these resources, we need to first open the relevant projects. In Figure 6 we select the two affected projects and right click then select open from the popup menu, Figure 6.
Proceeding we choose Enterprise | Calendars, Figure 7.
In the Calendars dialogue we again select the ‘5×8 TQL’ global calendar and choose to delete, Figure 8.
This time when we click to delete the calendar a different popup dialogue appears, Figure 9.
This dialogue, Figure 9, has a select replacement calendar option. We choose to swap out our ‘5×8 TQL’ calendar for the ‘5×8 Standard’ replacement calendar, Figure 10.
Observe that ‘5×8 TQL’ no longer appears in the list of Calendars, Figure 11.
We choose Used By, Figure 11, and observe that ‘Pipe Branch’ and ‘Pipe Repairs’ appear in the list of projects assigned the ‘5×8 Standard’ calendar, Figure 12.
When we toggle Resources, we see the whole list of Resources currently assigned the ‘5×8 Standard’ calendar.
Click close.
Summary
One way you can reduce clutter in the P6 database is to decrease the number of global calendars. The process of removing calendars in P6 is efficient and guarded against negatively affecting other schedules using the same calendar.
You investigate the target calendar’s associated projects with the Used By feature in the Calendar dialogue. The Used By tool captures a list of all projects and/or resources using the target calendar.
Then open all these respective projects in the EPS. The replace options are only available when all the target calendar’s associated projects are open.
Finally, initiate the swap out which also simultaneously deletes the target global calendar. Be aware that the deletion cannot be undone.
Unfortunately, the Used By tool is not available in the Activity Code, Role Code, and Resource Code dialogues. This limits the scope of the database decluttering efforts. P6 Professional also allows the you to delete these codes without a safety net, so be careful.