Using The P6 Professional Spotlight Tool to Highlight Tasks

The P6 Professional spotlight feature highlights tasks on the Gantt chart and task table scheduled for the specified reporting period.

Progressing the schedule on large projects with many tasks can become tedious. The P6 Professional spotlight highlights tasks on the Gantt chart and task table scheduled that begin or continue in your reporting period. This way, schedulers can focus only on scheduled tasks in the reporting period, making entering the status of these tasks more efficient.

This article provides a quick tip on using the P6 Professional spotlight feature to highlight your reporting period in yellow on the Gantt chart and the associated tasks on the activity table.

Primers

The P6 Professional spotlight tool helps make the schedule progress update process less cumbersome. For primers on progressing the P6 schedule and data date, i.e., status date, refer to the articles at the following links.

Progressing a Schedule in P6 Professional

Data Date Timestamp in P6 and Schedule Progress

Demonstration

In Figure 1, we have our demonstration project schedule.

We are reporting progress at weekly intervals. We want to highlight the week of June 15, 2031, as the reporting period. In Figure 2, we begin by hovering our mouse arrow over the data date, the vertical blue line that separates completed work from the remaining work.

Horizontal left and right arrows should appear as we hover our mouse cursor over the data date, Figure 2. When the horizontal arrows appear, click with the mouse and drag right until the entire week of June 15^th is highlighted in yellow.

Note also that all tasks scheduled to begin or continue that week are highlighted in yellow. This includes the project management effort that began during the project’s first week and continues in the current reporting period. However, completed tasks not falling within the reporting period’s purview are not highlighted, even though task rows above and below in the task table are spotlighted.

Summary

On the Gantt chart, you can drag the cursor from the data date to the end of your reporting period to spotlight that period of performance. It is like having a transparent yellow curtain for your reporting period. The P6 Professional spotlight tool also highlights the relevant rows on the activity table for tasks scheduled in the Gantt chart spotlight region or curtain. In this way, the spotlight becomes a helpful tool to support the efficient schedule progress update process.