Some new functionality has been added to the new release of Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) version 24.4.

The user can now export baselines and scenarios as projects in XER format. The P6 XER format does not support baselines, and Primavera P6 does not support scenarios, but both can be exported from OPC as projects to be imported into P6 though. This will assist with the Time Impact Analysis and any subcontractor status update processes when contracts require that data be exchanged in XER format.

The Export to P6 dialog now allows selection of baselines and scenarios when Export format XER or Compressed XER is selected. The Export Baseline or Scenario Only is auto checked and read only when a baseline/scenario is selected.

Commonly, new activities need to be added to your project as it progresses. What functionality does Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) offer to assist as new activities are not automatically added to the project baseline? You need to add the activities to the baseline, so OPC provides functionality to add them from the current schedule. OPC offers functionality to handle updates of the existing baseline with new activities without the requirement of creating a new baseline. When you must carry out this task, you need functionality to assist making the process easy to use as well as not labor intensive. Let’s have a look at what is involved.

Open the Activities page (Schedule App):

Reporting cycles in Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) are defined to create reporting periods used to plan and update progress on scope assignments and to store period performance for schedule activities. Reporting cycles can be set to occur daily, weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly depending on the reporting requirements for a project.

Workspace Report Cycles:

Below are a few of the many updates for Oracle Primavera Cloud (Prime) v24.2. This is not an all-inclusive list of the updates, but a few of the ones you may find helpful.

To start, you can now import a baseline or scenario of a P6 XML to create a new project or to create a scenario or baseline of an existing project. Any associated baseline categories will also be imported. Food for thought: this can provide additional flexibility on how baselines and scenarios are shared between owners, general contractors, and subcontractors.

Range Copy/Range Paste, Project Count, CPP Format Export, Import from Excel

There are several new pieces of functionality in P6 Professional v23.10. We will start with a high level look at a few of the elements. One of the new pieces of functionality added allows users to paste multiple data entries from Excel directly into P6 Professional using range copy/range paste. Copy/Paste of a range is available in both directions: Excel to P6 or P6 to Excel. From P6 to Excel select the range, right click and select Range Copy (or use Shift+Ctrl+C), and then paste the range into Excel.

From P6 to Excel select the range, right click and select Range Copy (or use Shift+Ctrl+C), and then paste the range into Excel.

Have you seen these new features? They were added in Primavera EPPM version 23.10.

Additions to Viewing Current & Recent User Sessions

By selecting the User Sessions page from the User Menu, users can view information about their recent sessions.

Financial periods must be created manually in P6. It is a tedious process mainly because it seems that it would be so easy to automate it! Well, with the P6-Loader, you can.

In the P6-Loader, the financial period is a global object you can export.

Let’s take a quick look at the Check Schedule Toolbar functionality in P6 v23.12.1. (This toolbar was put into P6 in v22.4.)



Enabling the Check Schedule toolbar displays the toolbar icons below.



Working across the Check Schedule toolbar, the functions behind the icons are shown.

Primavera P6 utilizes CPM or Critical Path Method Scheduling. Using the activity information in a P6 schedule file, the early and late dates are calculated when the project is scheduled. P6 uses the activity durations and the relationships between the activities to calculate schedule dates. The schedule calculations are completed in two passes: the forward pass in the scheduling process calculates the early dates of each of the activities and the backward pass calculates the late dates. If the activity information (durations or logic) in your P6 schedule is incomplete or incorrect, scheduling results will be affected.

Recently, a client of ours was using P6 Pro Client with P6 Pro Cloud Connect and had the caching option enabled. This user was using an older version of P6, 18.8, and in this version, problems with P6 Pro Cloud Connect were much more common than in the current version. The user would log into P6, logging in would take a few seconds, and then P6 would just crash. We checked the user configuration and disabled caching, and the user was able to login into P6 after that.

However, the user soon noticed that some of the projects he was working on were gone. What happened?

The Ideas functionality in Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) allows for the submission of ideas which are then tracked, processed and evaluated. This assists with selection from the submissions, ideas to accept and potentially implement as projects. Each idea is registered, submitted, and then the idea is displayed in the Idea List.

Have you ever been working in Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) and thought it would be nice if a specific piece of functionality was available? New functionality has been added to OPC v23.11. The below list highlights a few items you may find particularly interesting.

Swim lane displays can be created in the Tasks App under Work Plan in the Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC). Using Swim Lane displays allows the user another option to review and make changes to tasks. Swim Lanes can be grouped by company then user, user then company, or just company or user. Along with providing views of tasks (and activities) by whichever grouping you choose, you can reassign tasks to a different company, user or both using the task details or by dragging and dropping the task to the required group in the work plan.

Do you monitor the ‘What’s New’ information for new versions of Primavera P6? Here are a few things to keep in mind when working in the P6 Client. For those using P6 v20.4 (or higher), there are a couple of new pieces of functionality (introduced in v20.4 of P6 Professional) that can prove helpful. This functionality allows the addition of comments about relationships as well as the functionality allowing role prices to vary over time.

Regarding the functionality to add comments about relationships, I am not suggesting that every relationship line in your P6 schedule requires comments added; however, in some circumstances it can be a handy functionality. The comments column can be added in the relationship details tab (predecessors/successors or relationships) and then the comments required can be added. Perhaps you have a lag on the relationship, or, like below, you want to confirm a relationship. Relationship comments are plain text and can be up to 250 characters long.

Project issues can be very disruptive and expensive. In executing projects, issues can (and most often do) arise at various points. Having a good set of project control procedures and monitoring what processes are in place enables your team to identify issues and act quickly. Meanwhile, creating mitigation plans based on current, correct information is a must. Making decisions based on old data will not set your project and team up for success, and having your team endure long wait times to retrieve, assemble, and analyze current project information when you’re waiting for decisions to be made is not an effective approach either.

If your team’s struggling with time-consuming manual updates, there are tools that can help you automate the process. Emerald’s P6-Loader allows you to use Excel-based update sheets to load updates into your progress file. Another one of our tools, TAPS, facilitates updating P6 using activity barcodes (TAPS Classic) or process updates using TAPS Mobile from your phone. These tools make it quick and painless to get accurate updates into your P6 files. Your team will then have more time for analyzing your schedule instead of wasting time with tedious updating.