Some LinkedIn discussions have mentioned an Excel add-in called WBS Organizer for use with P6 Professional. Here we take a look at it.
The WBS Organizer software was written to improve the interface between Primavera P6 Professional and Excel. To find out more about the developer, Gürkan Geçici, refer to his scheduling blog here.
The blog name is Turkish for Planning Engineer, but the web site is also available in English.
This article introduces the Excel Add-in WBS Organizer release 2.4, demonstrates its main features, and discusses its Schedule Assessment reporting tool.
WBS Organizer
Figure 1 shows the WBS Organizer in Excel with its main drop-down menu.
Figure 1
The WBS Organizer is found in the Excel Home tab. These tools work with the spreadsheets in Excel.
Demonstration
Figure 2 displays our demonstration schedule using a Personal Layout created in P6 Professional and applied to this schedule.
Figure 2
The schedule’s yellow bars on the Gantt chart represent the baseline and the original project plan. The demonstration schedule, Figure 2, has progressed through February 11th. See the vertical blue line representing the data date or status date on February 11th, 2025. The completed work is displayed as blue bars.
Copy Task Table to WBS Organizer/Excel
Figure 3
The schedule information is transferred to Excel by copying and pasting the task table from P6 Professional. Figure 3 displays the demonstration’s copied schedule information in the WBS Organizer/Excel add-in.Figure 3
The WBS Organizer obtains plot information from the copied activity table in Excel. The BL Project Start and BL Project Finish baseline dates must be listed in the activity table along with the total float so that the WBS Organizer has enough information to plot the Gantt chart and compare the original plan to the current schedule.
Layout Settings
Before plotting the Gantt chart, we want to adjust the layout settings. We chose the WBS Organizer | Layout Settings, and the resulting layout setting dialog is displayed in Figure 4.
Figure 4
To remove the letter A from the date formats in Figure 3, we toggled ‘Edit date formats in MS Excel’ in Figure 4. We also created a personal color scheme for the summary bars (Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements) in levels 1 through 8. The resulting task table in Excel is displayed in Figure 5.
Figure 5
Note above: I manually filled in the header information background color using Excel’s features to get the yellow headers.
Gantt Chart Plot
I chose WBS Organizer | Draw Gantt Chart to plot the Gantt chart. The resulting Gantt Chart Settings dialog appears in Figure 6.
Figure 6
I set the Timeline Period to weekly and made Sunday the First Day of the Week. I toggled Print Name for task labels. I further toggled to include the Baseline Bars, Show Critical Activities, and Draw by Data Date, then clicked Draw, Figure 6. The resulting task table and Gantt chart appear in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Each non-baseline bar on the Gantt chart is labeled, including deliverables, task-dependent tasks, Level of Effort (LOE) tasks, and milestones.
The WBS Organizer generates and inserts the Gantt chart as a shape, not a chart. In Excel, a shape refers to any graphical object on the drawing layer of a worksheet, including geometric shapes and text boxes; you access and manipulate shapes through the insert tab and shapes option.
The final Adobe PDF plot in Figure 8 was generated using Excel print features, including page setup with header information.
Figure 8
Our company logo, Ten Six, Figure 8, was inserted using Excel’s insert picture header option. I manually typed in the Data Date in the header. The Gantt chart feature does not currently include a legend, but this is planned for the next release. The Gantt chart also does not display relationship lines.
Create WBS
The WBS Organizer has a template that you can use to enter your schedule’s WBS. We chose WBS Organizer | Create | WBS to bring up the template, Figure 9.
Figure 9
In Figure 10, I entered the demonstration’s WBS and specified the DEMO_WBS01 project name.
Figure 10
You could use the WBS Organizer | Layout Settings feature to color the WBS element banners at this juncture. I chose not to do so as I intended to import the WBS from Excel to P6 Professional; Layout Settings from the WBS Organizer do not transfer to P6 Professional. Be aware that transfers from the WBS Organizer to P6 Professional come through an XER file, so if the XER file does not have your information, it does not input into P6.
The Excel WBS spreadsheet was exported to an XER file by choosing WBS Organizer | Export as XER. This XER was imported to Primavera P6 Professional and displayed in Figure 11 in the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) with the Project ID WBS_ORGNZR and my entered Project Name DEMO_WBS.
Figure 11
The WBS is displayed in the P6 Professional WBS tab, Figure 12.
Figure 12
You can modify the Project ID in the EPS for more suitable WBS codes. The start is the date the WBS spreadsheet is exported to an XER file, Figure 12. The Activities tab in Figure 13 displays the WBS using the Classic Schedule Layout.
Figure 13
I saved a Personal Layout in P6 Professional Layouts, which I now use to display the WBS in the Activities tab, Figure 14.
Figure 14
Remember that this Personal Layout was created in P6 Professional and does not come from the WBS Organizer Layout Settings. The WBS Organizer Layout Settings are only useful for presentation and printing in Excel; they do not transfer to P6 Professional.
Schedule Assessment
The WBS Organizer has a Schedule Assessment feature that attempts to replicate the same metrics in P6 Professional’s Check Schedule Report. The P6 Professional Check Schedule Report intends to inspect whether the schedule adheres to the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) 14-Assessments.
However, neither the P6 Professional Check Schedule Report nor the WBS Organizer Schedule Assessment reviews provide a complete DCMA 14-Point Assessment; some assessments are omitted: the Critical Path Test and Critical Path Length Index (CPLI).
Further, it is noted that the WBS Organizer’s Schedule Assessment feature is still in development; its schedule quality report does not include functionality to compare the current schedule to a baseline and therefore, does not properly compute the baseline execution index (BEI).
Currently, the data for the Schedule Assessment comes from an XER file, which does not contain baseline information. Plans are for a future WBS Organizer version to read in one XER for the baseline and another XER for the current schedule.
Summary
The WBS Organizer efficiently generates a color-coded activity table and Gantt chart based on information residing in an Excel spreadsheet. This information is transferred from P6 into Excel by copying and pasting data columns displayed in the P6 Professional Activities table. Include total float in the data columns so the WBS Organizer can plot critical and non-critical tasks.
To compare the current schedule to a baseline, include the baseline start and finish data columns. The capability to display a legend is forthcoming. It plots the Gantt chart using shapes; edit the chart using the shape feature options in the Excel Insert tab.
So, this Excel add-in is handy for presenting activity tables and Gantt charts. It also puts the Gantt chart in an Excel environment where you can leverage Excel shapes to make additional plot adjustments.
In the WBS Organizer/Excel spreadsheet, you can enter your WBS elements, i.e., deliverables. Then, export the WBS as an XER file, which you can import into P6 Professional. As the XER is the medium through which the WBS imports P6 Professional, the information is limited to that data in the XER file; your WBS Organizer layout settings are omitted. Therefore, the WBS imports into P6 Professional using the PLF files that come standard with P6.
Our demonstration imported the WBS into the Classic Schedule Layout PLF file. You can then open and apply a layout you created in P6 Professional. The WBS Organizer WBS template is beneficial as a WBS data entry medium, but when you import to P6, you are limited to P6 Professional standard PLFs or those created in P6.
So, the Layout Settings in the WBS Organizer are useful when transferring data from P6 Professional to the WBS Organizer and then PDF, but not from the WBS Organizer to P6 Professional.
Conclusion
The WBS Organizer utility efficiently colors WBS element banners and creates a Gantt chart from shapes for printout. Further, it supports data entry of a WBS in Excel for export to an XER file and then import into P6 Professional. More features are to come in the next release.
If you found the features presented in this article of interest, you should consider purchasing the WBS Organizer software at the website here.
This article took a look at the features that appeared most useful to me. Other features not fully investigated are the following:
- Distribution – This may provide a high-level resource distribution for the early stages of resource planning.
- Create Resources – While useful, the developer has hinted that future releases may include more resource attributes.
- Create Activity Codes – Larger projects with many activity codes may find this helpful.
- Print Calendars – This provides a high-level view of individual calendars.