Monday, 17 October 2011 20:14

We have heard a lot of “experts” in forums talk about using SDK for uploading data quickly to your database . Butmost of us don’t know how to use them. In this post we will see how we can use SDK to upload data in Primavera.

Following are the per-requisites before you can start using SDK:

1) Install SDK using you Primavera installation CD2) Configure PMSDK connectivity to your Database

3) Primavera SDK Excel Sheets

a) Dictionary – Can be used to upload/edit Global Data in Primavera

b) Project – Can be used to upload/edit Project level data for multiple projects

c) WBS – Can be used to edit WBS for one Project in your database

d) Activity – can be used to upload/edit all activity attributes of your project

Note: I will not be posting any links to these sheets or send them by email. It’s against the Primavera support

agreement. If you have an Oracle Primavera support account then you can download it from the website or ask in

various forums.4) Your username should be allowed access to SDK in your security profile

Once you have done the above mentioned steps then you can use your Primavera username and password to

access the database via SDK. You will need to follow a certain workflow in order to use these sheets properly. Since

using SDK can potentially damage or corrupt your data, I would suggest that you backup your database every timeyou use SDK till you are not comfortable with the process.

SDK Workflow

The “Get” and “Set” commands are very important and you need to always ensure that you use ‘Get’ commandbefore you start adding/editing data in your excel sheet.

In my next post we will see how to edit large amount of activity level data for a project using the Activity Excel Sheet.

Saturday, 29 October 2011 13:44

In this post we will try and enter data in Primavera using SDK Sheets. In order to do this open Dictionary.xls and dothe following steps:

1) Enter Username and Password

2) Press on tab “Get Activity Codes”

3) Once the process is completed, open the Activity Codes Sheet and add data4) Press on tab “Set Activity Codes”

Open Activity Codes Sheet to add or edit data.

In case you need help regarding what data goes where, click on the “?” icon for help

Once your done click on the Set button to upload the data in Primavera database and then you can login toPrimavera and check if the data has been updated or not.

Don’t forget to follow the workflow explained in my previous post. Following the workflow properly would help you toavoid any mistakes while uploading your data in Primavera.

In this tutorial we explain how to use the Oracle Primavera P6 SDK to import a WBS from Excel to

Primavera P6. We are using the WBS.xls P6 SDK spreadsheet made available by Oracle Support. The

SDK is a very handy tool, but the data must exactly respect the required format, we used a sample

WBS and a step-by-step guide to prepare the data to be imported. We assume you already have the

Primavera SDK installed.Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

WBS-Import-P6-Tutorial.xls

WBS.xlsStep 1 – Copy the WBS from to Excel

For simplification, every step of the tutorial has its own Excel worksheet in the spreadsheet (see WBS-

Import-P6-Tutorial.xls in Tutorials Assets). I’ve numbered each worksheet appropriately.

For this tutorial, we’re using a sample WBS from this site. We’ve already cleaned-up and pasted it for you

into the WBS-Import-P6-Tutorial.xls on Worksheet 1.

I have modified the original WBS to add a root node (SAMPLE – the first entry in the WBS list) as the

project name.

Step 2 – Split the WBS Path into Distinct Levels

Copy the column WBS Code from “Worksheet 1″ to “Worksheet 2″ in Excel. We will use the Text to

Columns function on the Excel Data tab (Excel 2010), it a very easy tool to split one column by delimiters

into multiple columns.

Highlight the WBS Code column, and click on Text to Columns.

When the wizard screen comes up, select Delimited, and click Next.

Set the delimiter to a dot “.” .

Make sure to format the columns as Text (if your code is 01, Excel will keep it 01 as text, otherwise it will

change to 1.

Here’s the result.

Step 3 – Organize The WBS by Level.

Copy the new split columns to “Worksheet 3″ and paste each under the appropriate L1, L2, L3, L4 or L5

heading (use the yellow L columns, not the green ones). If you have more levels, just adjust the

spreadsheet to add them in.

The Level column on Worksheet 3 is not needed for this tutorial. I have just added it to show that we can

determine the level of each WBS by counting how many times the separator (or the delimiter) is repeated.

The green L-columns contain some text formulas that will recombine part of the WBS Path to build parent

and children fields that we’ll need for the import.

Step 4 – Organize the WBS by Parent & Child

We’re going to combine all of the green L-columns now on Worksheet 4. Start by copying the data under

green-L1 and pasting it to the Parent column on Worksheet 4. Copy the green-L2 data and paste it to

the Child column on Worksheet 4.

The next steps might seem unintuitive, but they are important to follow correctly. We’ll then clean things

up afterwards.

Copy the data as follows:

Copy the green-L2 data again and this time paste it to the bottom of the data in the Parent

column on Worksheet 4

Copy the green-L3 data and paste it to the bottom of the Child column on Worksheet 4

Copy the green-L3 data again and this paste it to the bottom of the Parent column

Copy the green-L4 data and paste it to the bottom of the Child column

Copy the green-L4 data again and this paste it to the bottom of the Parent column

Copy the green-L5 data and paste it to the bottom of the Child column

Essentially the column data should be combined like this:

Parent col Child colL1 data L2 dataL2 data L3 dataL3 data L4 dataL4 data L5 data

Actually that’s the most important step in this tutorial, in order for the SDK (a relational database)

to understand the structure of the WBS; this one must be presented as Parent and children table.Step 5 – Remove Duplicates

Copy the columns Parent and Child from Worksheet 4, and paste them to Worksheet 5.

Highlight both columns. On the Excel Data tab, click Remove Duplicates to clean up any duplicate

entries we’ve created.

Next, select ok

In the column “check the same relation”, I put a formula to check if there is the same item in parent and

child. Click the column Filter and select only “No”. This will filter out any other entries we don’t need for

the import.

Step 6 – Separating Child and Parent WBS Items

With the column filter still set to “No” highlight the Parent and Child columns, copy and paste them to

Worksheet 6 as follows:

Copy the Parent column and paste under Parent WBS ID

Copy the Child column and paste under WBS ID CHILD

The WBS Code column is automatically generated by removing from the WBS ID CHILD code the

equivalent Parent WBS ID.

Now our WBS is ready to be imported to Primavera P6.

Step 7 – Open Primavera P6

In Admin -> Admin Preferences, check the maximum WBS Code length that Primavera P6 can accept.

The default of 20 will work for this tutorial, however, you may want to increase this value to 30 or 40

characters for future imports.

You’ll want to have an empty project already setup in P6 that we will import to. If you don’t have one, login

to Primavera and create an empty project now, then come back to this step.

By default, the first level of the WBS is the name of the project.

In this case change the name of the project to SAMPLE, once you finish importing you can modify the

name.

Step 8 – Open The P6 SDK WBS.xls

As usual input the password, and click on Update Project List.

Select the empty project you created. **Make sure you select the right project.

Click on “Get WBS”.

As expected, only the WBS root node is imported into the spreadsheet.

Copy and paste from the Excel file the columns Parent WBS ID, WBS Code and the WBS Name

Don’t overwrite the root node that is already there.

Click “Set WBS”.

It will take some time to process the data (the SDK is famous for very being slow).

Step 9 – Enjoy

Wrap Up

We explained how to import a WBS dictionary to Primavera P6 using Excel and the P6 SDK. Here are

some examples as to why it is very useful for planners:

1. It is very easy to import a standard WBS into your schedule (perhaps your company Cost

breakdown Structure).

2. If your schedule is using activities codes, you can easily generate WBS in Excel and imported

back to P6.

3. You can design a first cut of your WBS outside Primavera, using many freely available WBS

utilities. Once it is approved, it can easily be imported to Primavera. We suggest you

try WBStool, a mind mapping WBS tool. All WBS or mind mapping tool can export the WBS

path to Excel, which means this file can be used as an integration tool to Primavera.

Things for you to try:

If you want to understand the logic behind all this data processing, google “hierarchical database

model”.

Using CTE recursive query in any Database you can generate the WBS Parent and WBS child in

one operation. But if you are just a planner, SQL might be black magic for you (as it is for me).

The approach discussed in this Tutorial will do the trick, and will you save a lot of time doing

what all planners hate the most – manual typing.

9 Votes

Mimoune Djouallah

Mimoune is a Project Controls Engineer with solid Planning and Cost experience in Oil/Gas EPC projects,

Drop him a line at mimoune.djouallah@gmail.com

Download Tutorial Assets

Download the files to complete this tutorial on your own.

Project Plan (.xer) : Apex xer.zip

P6 SDK Excel Tool : Dictionary6v7.xls (Please note that this tool was created by Oracle

Primavera and we do not provide support on its use)

WBS to Activity Code xls : WBS-To-Activity-Code-P6.xls

The idea of this tutorial was inspired by a question in LinkedIn forum, a planner have received a

primavera schedule using WBS, as in the oil and gas industry it is very useful to have different layouts to

present the schedule to different audience, and more importantly the Work breakdown structure is based

on geographic area in the construction phase, and systems in the commissioning phase, the tutorial will

use the APEX sample schedule to convert a WBS to activities codes, it is assumed you

have already worked with the Primavera P6 SDK.Step 1 – Open the schedule.

The APEX schedule organizedby the default “classic WBS layout”.

Step 2 – Export WBS Dictionary to Excel

In P6, goto the WBS screen. Customize the columns so only WBS code, and WBS name are displayed.

Highlight all WBS rows, copy and paste the two columns to the worksheet “WBS dictionary” of the ”WBS-

to-Activity-Code-P6.xls” file (see Tutorial Assets). Make sure that your WBS structure is well organized

(*). It means every level must have the same exact number of characters. In this regards P3 was more

rigorous, as the structure of the WBS is defined first. In P6, it is generated automatically. It is very easy

to edit the WBS Code, to have the same number of character for every level.

The excel formula in “column F” generates a unique list of the number of characters sort in ascending

order, it is an array formula (that’s why there is curly braces between the formula, if not, use

CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to execute it).

In this example, WBS code with four characters -eg “APEX”, this is level 1. WBS Code with 7 characters

– eg “APEX.AM”, this is level 2.

Of course, L1, L2 are just used as an example, in a real project, levels are usually defined as project,

phase, sub-project, area, discipline, items, etc.

Step 3 – Export WBS Activity Assignment to Excel

Remove the Group and Sort by WBS, in columns add WBS and Activity ID.

Copy and paste the two columns to the excel worksheet “Activity codes per Activity” in columns A and

B. Excel columns C through G will be generated automatically, by default, if no code is available, a ” -“ is

assigned.

Step 4 – Create Activities Codes Dictionary and Import to P6

First define the new project activity codes in P6 that will represent the WBS.

Back in your excel file, goto the “activity code dictionary” worksheet. Using an excel pivot table, the excel

file will generate an activities codes dictionary that we have to load back in P6 on this worksheet.

Using the dictionary excel utility (Dictionary6v7.xls – instructions on using this file can be obtained

fromhttp://support.oracle.com. Search for “dictionary6v7.xls”), click on “Get Activity Codes” (you need

the SDK to be installed and configured).

/p>

Copy and paste the activities dictionary from the excel file, for every level add a dummy “-“ without a

code description, so P6 will not show the ugly “no code” when you organize by activity code for activities

without a code assigned.

Now you can import back to P6 the activities codes dictionary (click “Set Activity Codes” on the Login

tab). Make sure you import to the right project.

Now your project is loaded with the activity codes dictionary.

Step 5 – Import activities codes assignment to P6

Make a new Excel export. Select the newly defined activities codes (L1-L5) as columns in your layout.

Open the exported excel file.

Use a Vlookup formula to retrieve the values of L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 from the excel sheet Activity codes per

Activity. In the Excel file, there is sample vlookup sheet to show how the formula works.

Import the updated export file back to P6. The WBS is now transfered to the L1-L5 project activity codes.

Step 6 – Enjoy.

Now, with a new layout the schedule is organized by activity codes.

Wrap Up

Primavera P6 has very strong activity codes capabilities. Unfortunately, many planners use only the WBS

as it is very easy and intuitive, but once you start tailoring the schedule, printing for a different purpose

and audience, in a way that make a sense to them, activity codes should be used as Primavera

only permits one WBS per project.

(*) : if your WBS has not the same number of character for every level, you can use alternative method,

explained here.

Reflection projects are a little known but very handy feature in Primavera’s P6 Power

Client. A Reflection is essentially a copy of a project but with one snazzy built-in trick – the ability to

merge the copied project back into the original at any time. If the genius of this trick hasn’t struck you

yet, it will.

This merging ability was designed to help planners work with scenario projects.

Let’s say you’re the planner for a large capital project that is a falling behind schedule. The boss wants

you to assess the impact of adding an extra shift to the work schedule. How much time can be caught up

with this approach (ie: scenario)?

The thing to do here is to create a Reflection of the project, add an extra shift and verify the finish

date. If the boss approves the extra shift, then you can merge this scenario project into the original

project along to keep the changes you made. This saves you the time of renaming projects, resetting

permissions and copying and pasting changes from one project to another. There are also some nice

options to help you create a backup of the original project in case you need to reference it again in the

future.

Step 1 – Creating a Reflection of a project

From the Projects window, right-click on the original project and select Create Reflection from the menu.

If the original project has any baselines you will see pop-up window where you can select whether or not

to copy those baselines along with the project. Simply mark the checkbox in the Copy column if you

want to preserve any baselines in the Reflected project.

You should now see a copy of your project in the Projects window. The copy will have the same Project

ID with “-1″ appended. This reflection project will also be marked with a Status of “What-If” which is

Primavera’s way of indicating the project is a “scenario” project and not a real project plan.

Step 2 – Open the Reflection project and Activity Layout

Now it’s time to run your scenario. ie: make changes to the Reflection project to test out your scenario,

hypothesis, etc.

In this tutorial, we’ll make a small change to the reflection project’s resources.

Open the Project and then Open the Activity Layout provided the tutorial downloads section.

Before we make any changes, you’ll need to make sure a key setting for working with resources is set

correctly in User Preferences. Go to Edit -> User Preferences, and click on the Calculations Tab.

Set the “Recalculate the Units, Duration, and Units/Time for existing assignments based on the

activity Duration Type” option. This will make sure that Primavera will perform the necessary

recalculations when resources are added or removed from an activity. Close the User Preferences

window.

Step 3 – Making changes to the Reflection project

Find Activity A1020 – Convert Legacy Data. You’ll be adding another resource to A1020 to see how this

will affect the project’s finish date. Since the activity’s Duration Type is set to “Fixed Units”, adding an

additional resource will have the effect of shortening the activity’s duration and spreading the units equally

over the 3 resources assigned. Let’s give it a try.

Add Tom Bell as a new resource assignment to A1020. Reschedule the project using the current data

date and check the project’s finish date.

The project should now finish on Dec 20, 2010 whereas before it was scheduled to finish on March 1,

2010.

Step 3 – Reviewing the Differences Report

Go back to the Projects window and right-click on the Reflection project. Choose “Merge Reflection

into Source Project” from the menu. You should now see the Differences Report window.

This screen is really nice. It provides you with a report on the differences between the original project and

the reflection. From here you can choose which changes you want to merge into the original, or leave out

by checking the box in the “Merge” column. Don’t like the updates on a particular activity? Just leave

them out.

P6 also gives you some options to archive the original project, either as a baseline or as an .xer export

file. This is essential as you’ll likely need to keep the original project around. And you can also choose

how to handle the reflection – keep it, delete it or replace it (update it) with the new merged project.

Step 4 – Merging the Reflection into the original project plan

If you agree to merging the projects, you can go ahead and set the options as above, and click “Merge

Changes” to finalize the merge. You may want to print this differences report first, or you might even

copy and paste it into a text document before you Merge. You can do either of these by clicking the

Display bar.

Wrap Up

The Reflection and merging features in Primavera are great features for the planner or scheduler who

needs to run project scenarios or hypothetical analysis.

Things for you to try:

Try making more than 1 reflection of the same project to compare multiple scenarios

What else you should know about reflections:

the Reflections features are only available in the P6 Power Client and not in P6 Web Access

A quote from the Primavera help file: “Merging will not necessarily remove items from the source

project that have been deleted from the reflection. If major elements of a project have been

deleted from the reflection, you will have to manually delete them from the source project if you

do not want to keep the elements in the source project. Elements that are not deleted during a

merge include Activities, Resource Assignments, WBS elements, Work Products and

Documents, Project Expenses, Project Issues, and Project Risks.”

Download Tutorial Files

Project .xer and Layout [Reflections-Tutorial.zip] – Don’t know how to import our layouts? Read

how here.

If you haven’t yet mastered all the shortcut keys and can’t yet write a 200 word essay on what “Store

Period Performance” does, then you’re probably still on your way to becoming a Primavera

SuperHero. To get your tights, cape and cowl, you’ll first have to master Primavera’s Activity Layouts

which are an invaluable tool that you will use incessantly. The fact that you can combine column layout,

filters, gantt chart options, and overall screen layout and save those setting for use again and again puts

layouts on every planner’s utility belt. The best part, unless you work “solo mio” is that you can share

your layouts with colleagues.

In this post, we’ll show you how layouts can be exported and emailed to a colleague who might work in a

different Primavera database. PS: This is handy for those who have multiple P6 environments or work

with external companies but need to look at the same data in the same way.

But more importantly, you’ll need to know how to work with layouts so you can download the

layouts we include in our tutorials here at www.plannertuts.com.Importing a Layout in P5 / P6

1. From the Activities window, open the Layouts dialog by clicking the View menu -> Layouts -

> Open. If you get a pop-up asking you to save changes to the current layout, select No (unless you

have unsaved changes you want to capture).

2. Next, browse and select the .plf file you’d like to import.

3. On the next screen, choose to rename the layout if you like, and how it will be

available. Choose, from the Available To dropdown, to make the layout private

(current user), global (all users), shared with selected users (another user) or saved

in a project for users of that project (project). Click the Save button.

The layout is now imported. Go ahead and open it to view the wonders of your project through your new

layout.

2. Exporting a Layout in P5 / P6Exporting a Layout is just as easy.

1. From the Activities window, open the Layouts dialog by clicking the View menu -> Layouts -

> Open. If you get a pop-up asking you to save changes to the current layout, select No (unless you

have unsaved changes you want to capture).

2. Select the Layout to export and click the Export button.

3. Choose what to name the file and where to save it.

4. Now you can email that file to your colleague or import it into another primavera

database for use there as well.

Wrap upMoving layouts around can be very helpful, especially when you need to transfer them across databases.

Keep in mind that all of the steps above also work for layouts on the Projects, WBS, Resource

Assignments, and Tracking windows.

Faster is better. That should be Oracle-Primavera’s mantra. Well, in this case it is!

When exporting data to excel from P6, it can take a while to choose which columns to export and what

filters to use when running the Export Wizard. Here’s how to export your Activities list only in less than 10

mouse clicks.

Step 1 – Open an Activities Layout

Go ahead and open a layout that has the appropriate columns and filters set already for your export.

Step 2 – Use the “Export to Excel” right-click shortcut

Right-click on any activity on screen. Choose “Export to Excel” from the menu.

Step 3 – Save the Excel file

Choose the appropriate folder and save the file.

Step 4 – Open and Edit

Find and open the excel file. Edit, and reimport.

Wrap Up

This is one of those times where a shortcut can save you a significant amount of time. Using the File ->

Export avenue to export data to Excel can take a some time and a lot of clicking to choose columns,

filters and basically setup an reusable Excel export template.

The right-click option is definitely faster.

However, if you need to export other Primavera data, like Relationships, Expenses, Resource

Assignments, etc., then you’ll have to use the File -> Export command as the right-click command only

exports the Activities list.

For some reason, the right-click “Export to Excel” shortcut is only available from the Activities

screen. AND it’s only available on the right-click menu, not the Edit menu…. so you’ll have to practice it a

few times until it becomes habit.

Things for you to try

If you export / import Activities data from excel regularly, set up an Activities Layout specifically

for that purpose. Set the appropriate columns and filters(*see reference to gotcha below) in the

Layout. Then you can quickly use the right-click “Export to Excel” shortcut to do the deed.

What else you should know

Filters Gotcha: rolling date filters do not work when exporting data to Excel in general. So be

sure your layout does not use a rolling date filters. Here’s a workaround to that gotcha.

Primavera’s custom Activity filters are great for focusing in on a subcontractor’s work list or even to hide

Activities that are already completed. But when it comes to filtering down a 5000 line project plan to

Activities in a specific timeframe, P6′s filters fall flat. Here’s the Gotcha: any filter that uses a rolling date

or P5 / P6′s built-in date variables will not work when exporting P6 data to Excel.

What variables are you talking about?

P6 has the following 6 built-in date variables that can be used when building custom filters:

PS : Earliest Project Start

PF : Latest Project Finish

DD : Data Date

CD : the current date (according to Windows)

CW : the current week

CM : the current monthThese variables come in real handy to create filters that display a rolling date range. With them, you cancreate the essential “Lookahead” layouts like “3 Week Lookahead” which displays only the Activitiesstarting within the next 3 weeks.

Lookahead filters are essential for short-term planning. They let you focus on work that is coming upsoon. And with large projects, they are essential.It’s common for a project planner to send a subcontractor an excel spreadsheet with all of his activitiescoming up in the next 3 weeks. But since the rolling filters don’t work during an excel export, we’ll need anew approach.Workaround

The workaround is pretty simple. Copy the filter to create a version specifically for use when exporting

data to excel. Replace the date variables with specific date values in your filter for the current time

period. Proceed with the export to excel.

Although you’ll have to edit the dates in this filter over and over during the project , it’s much easier to

filter Activities in P6 than it is to try to filter them in Excel.

Occasionally we revisit some of our reader’s favourite posts from the annals of the PlannerTuts

tutorial library, and today we’re revisiting a topic that is always hot – importing updates from

excel. This video tutorial was first published on September 30th, 2011 and was very

popular. Let’s take a look!

Often large projects demand many sub-teams or subcontractors update a portion of the master project

plan on an on-going basis.

If your subcontractors are not up to speed on their primavera skills, you may need a solution that

simplifies gathering updates and getting them into Primavera.

Enter Excel….and Primavera’s export- to-excel feature.

This video tutorial will walk you through the process of filtering and exporting a subcontractor’s activities

to excel and reimporting the updated spreadsheet into P6.