Have you ever had a critical piece of data deleted in your Primavera P6 database and needed to recover it?
A client of ours had just this sort of scenario.
The user reached out to us in a panic. This user had just been given increased access in P6 and had renamed an existing UDF. He realized it was renamed improperly and instead of changing the name of the UDF, he deleted it. The project level User Defined Field (UDF) had data assigned to many of their projects. They needed to recover it and ensure the values were reinstated on their projects. We were able to recover the data in less than and hour and a half.
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Friday, 25 August 2023.
Posted in P6-Auditor, P6-Loader
Recently, I was working with a client who was reorganizing. This client has many business units (BU) that work in the same database, so they have a prefixing standard for each BU.
When they reorganized, all the prefixing for several BUs needed to be brought into alignment with the reorganized BU structure. This involved moving their EPS structure around and updating the prefixes on calendars, codes, resources and roles. I had started moving the structures to accommodate the changes and updating the prefixes with P6-Loader, but I also did some updating directly in P6. I had completed roles and was partially through resources when the client realized their reporting may be effected by the changes. They wanted to revert all the changes I had made. While I did have several P6-Loader change files that I could use to revert the changes I made using P6-Loader, I wanted to be sure the manual changes I made were also restored.
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Thursday, 29 June 2023.
Posted in P6-Loader
A solution for common cases of accidental data deletion in Primavera P6
Accidental deletion of important data is something that happens. Everyone has done it at some point.
In Primavera P6 EPPM, some of the most common cases of accidental data deletion are:
- Deletion of the wrong resource
- Deletion of the wrong project
- Deletion of the wrong WBS node or nodes
Written by Ravi Wallau - Integration Specialist, Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Tuesday, 16 May 2023.
Posted in P6-Auditor, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
Your project schedule will be created in P6, and you are looking to provide the best schedule tools for your project team. What can you add to your team tool kit to assist the project team, address building the schedule, monitor schedule quality, utilize options for updating the schedule and make reporting quick and easy? Let’s look at a few examples for some food for thought.
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
on Friday, 10 February 2023.
Posted in P6-Loader, P6-QA, P6-Reporter, TAPS
In P6, identifying each specific project using each UDF in a quick, consolidated, easy to use manner can be very challenging. With ten subject areas where UDFs can be created and the ability to create an unlimited number of UDFs, the complete list of UDFs in a P6 database can be very large. The ability to quickly create a consolidated report telling you exactly which project each UDF is being used in can be very useful.
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
on Saturday, 21 January 2023.
Posted in P6-Loader
We all have had it happen in P6. Somehow, a project or global data goes missing or gets changed and we need to restore data from a backup. Usually, this means contacting the IT department and having them restore, at the very least, a previous version of the project or even the entire database. Our IT departments are busy, and often, P6 is not the only software they are supporting. Sometimes, this means we need to wait to get our data rolled back to a previous backup copy, which may not be convenient. In some cases, a full backup may need to be restored instead of just the one project we need which causes extra work to get the changes made to all those other unaffected projects.
P6-Loader now has the functionality to automatically create XML and/or P6-Loader XLXS format backups of projects and global data and provide a means in which to self-serve restoring data from a given time. The backups can be set to run daily, weekly or monthly and can easily be accessed and downloaded through P6-Loader.
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Friday, 09 September 2022.
Posted in P6-Loader
Recently, I worked with a client who is combining several business units (BUs) into one database on the Oracle Cloud. Several of the BUs were already working in Primavera P6 which made importing those projects the best solution for these groups; however, we had one BU who was working in MS Project. They were using predefined project templates based on the OPM lifecycle set forth by their organization in P6 to create the existing projects, so importing the MS XMLs would not work properly to get their projects into P6.
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Friday, 29 July 2022.
Posted in P6-Loader
Our latest version of the P6-Loader brings the ability to automate the backups out of P6 even from the Oracle P6 Cloud.
Written by Ravi Wallau
Our latest version of the P6-Loader brings the ability to automate the backups out of P6 even from the Oracle P6 Cloud.
New Features
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Automation! The P6-Loader can now export files to the P6-Loader Excel and P6 XML (or both) formats on a daily and/or weekly and/or monthly frequency.
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Global data automation - if automation is turned on for a given database, a full export of the database's global data is performed every day - it includes EPS, OBS, resources, roles, users, code dictionaries, UDF types, risk definitions, etc.
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The list of tasks is not cleared when the P6-Loader is restarted.
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P6 XML support - the P6-Loader can now export files to the P6 XML format.
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Restore and administer your data more easily - with the ability to download the project and global files for a database as it was at a given point in time, recovering lost data and administering the database becomes much easier.
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Resource assignment duplicate handling! It is now possible to load resource assignments even if you have duplicates in your P6 database. You can use the internal ID of the resource assignment or pick one or more UDFs to help the P6-Loader match the right one.
on Thursday, 14 July 2022.
Posted in News, P6-Loader
One of the most challenging things you can run across when administering data in your Primavera P6 environment is multiple User Defined Fields (UDFs) that have been created for the same information. This often occurs when users are working on projects that need a particular piece of information and don’t realize there is a UDF already created for another project for the same information. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to merge those duplicate UDFs without losing the data already in them?
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Wednesday, 29 June 2022.
Posted in P6-Loader
Our latest version of the P6-Loader brings a new user-interface with the ability to save extract definition and new version 20 support, as well as UDF merging.
Written by Ravi Wallau
Our latest version of the P6-Loader brings a new user-interface with the ability to save extract definition and new version 20 support, as well as UDF merging.
New Features
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New user-interface component with the ability to quickly search modules and projects
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Added the ability to save frequently used extractions
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Customizing columns to include in extraction files
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UDF merge utility - allows you to easily merge UDF values - useful when importing XER/ XML files from different sources
on Wednesday, 30 June 2021.
Posted in News, P6-Loader
Version 10 of the P6-Loader now uses the Cloud API, a programming platform developed by Emerald to allow our apps to work with either the P6 API or the P6 Web Services. It also streamlines restoring and reassigning baselines and initiated support for the new P6 v20 objects.
Written by Ravi Wallau
Version 10 of the P6-Loader now uses the Cloud API, a programming platform developed by Emerald to allow our apps to work with either the P6 API or the P6 Web Services. It also streamlines restoring and reassigning baselines and initiated support for the new P6 v20 objects.
New Features
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Restoring and reassigning baselines streamlined
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The P6-Loader now uses the Cloud API, a programming platform developed by Emerald to allow our apps to work with either the P6 API or the P6 Web Services
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The resource spread periods can now be imported correctly - in some cases, the spread information would not be imported correctly
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Baseline projects can now be moved across projects more easily
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A baseline can be assigned as the current baseline of the project in the baseline sheet itself
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New Primavera v20 objects - financial period calendars, new role rates, resource assignment and role codes
on Monday, 03 May 2021.
Posted in News, P6-Loader
We've all worked with frustrating, outdated software. It's a pain to try and get everything to work the way you want it to, and the task is usually just too important or time-sensitive to take a break from. Everyone knows where that leads - yelling, cursing, or just slouching down in your chair in defeat, bested by technology once again.
Written by Ian Nicholson, P.Eng. - VP Solutions
on Wednesday, 31 July 2019.
Posted in P6-Loader
In P6, identifying which projects are using each Activity Code in a quick, consolidated, easy to use manner is challenging. Especially when you consider some clients have a LOT of baselines.
But is this is r-e-a-l-l-y information we need to be able to capture? In my experience, there are a number of scenarios where that answer is a resounding “Yes”! One common example – the Activity Codes Dictionary needs to be cleaned up.
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
on Thursday, 29 November 2018.
Posted in P6-Loader, Primavera P6
Emerald Associates is well known in the US and Canada for our homegrown add-on tools for Primavera P6. We have assisted numerous companies in many diverse areas to get the most out of their P6 software. You may wonder how our tools can assist in the Department of Transportation (DOT) field to get more done in P6 with less time while still providing useful data to your stakeholders and remaining good stewards of the public's funds. Our tools will help you do more work in less time, so that your project management group has more time to analyze and perfect their schedules.
Written by Sue Fermelia - Implementation Specialist
on Friday, 27 July 2018.
Posted in P6-Loader, P6-QA, Primavera Cloud
We have all experienced at one point or another how tedious (and time consuming) setting or changing resource availability can be in the P6 resource dictionary. Particularly for an example like the one we will walk through where you are setting up or adjusting turnaround resources and the weekend rule happens to be ½ crews.
P6-Loader can ease the pain of these types of tasks.
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
on Wednesday, 02 May 2018.
Posted in P6-Loader, Primavera P6