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Emerald Blog

Stories, Tips And Tricks From Our Team’s Experiences With Primavera Since 1995

The Fastest Way to Create New Users in Primavera P6

A step-by-step guide on how to create new users in P6 using the P6-Loader

The P6-Loader helps streamline and accelerate many processes, one of which is creating new P6 users. The P6-Loader is a flexible and secure solution that allows users with the correct security access on their P6 profile to extract and upload nearly every data element in P6 data. Let’s have a look at how easy it makes creating new P6 users.

How to Improve Primavera P6 API Performance

Huge potential for improvement in API performance in applications that create objects with uniqueness rules in Primavera P6 based on user-entered values

We have a client in the US who was reporting performance issues with a 3rd party client application that creates large numbers of activities in the P6 database using the Primavera P6 API. I was called to help isolate the issue.

When I joined the meeting, they already had Oracle Enterprise Manager up and running, and it was easy to isolate the query that was taking a long time to run (and using almost all the CPU in the server).

Keep Primavera Contract Management Without the Java Issues

Emerald Productivity Cloud Can Solve Your Java Problems

While Oracle is busy working on removing Java applets from Primavera P6-EPPM, the same cannot be said for Primavera Contract Management (PCM). With the announcement that PCM v14.2 is the last planned major release for PCM, the Java applets will potentially remain an ongoing issue.

Some creative solutions have been worked up over the years with CITRIX and controlled versions of IE, but all were problematic when other tools needed other versions of Java.

Top 4 Reasons Why You Would Consider Moving To The Primavera Cloud

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Since the earliest days of cloud computing technology, the question “why move to the Cloud?” has been asked over and over again. The truth is, every new technology faces doubt and suspicion at first, especially when it pretends to replace well established norms and infrastructures. But now, in 2016, more and more companies have already migrated over.

When working with the Oracle Primavera suite of products, scenarios vary a lot from one corporation to another, and each case must be studied carefully before decisions can be made.

Named User Vs. Subscription Licensing Models

The New Release of the P6-Loader and Other Emerald Tools Have a New Model

Selecting the proper software licensing model can be a rather cumbersome exercise. It requires IT administrator and project managers etc. to go through many different steps and ask questions such as:

  • Should I use Named User license model?
  • How many users will need access to the software?
  • What if more people will join our team down the road?
  • Can I decrease without penalties /cancellation fee number of licenses?
  • What if a user needs access to the software temporarily and may not need it later? How can I handle the cost of such scenarios efficiently?
  • How much paperwork will I need to fill in and how much time will it take to process an amendment request?
  • What if person is on vacation? Can I reuse a license for another employee?
  • How can I track who/when/how uses the system?
  • As a contractor I want to track usage on a per project basis so I can invoice my clients respectively?

Why I No Longer Dread Morning Management Meetings on a Turnaround Project

How to Quickly and Effectively Develop S-Curves With Primavera P6 Project Data

I was working on TA project and was asked to provide S-Curve (Units and Cost) reporting for every morning management meeting. The client wanted to observe project trends from a schedule and cost perspective for each unit, piece of equipment and also for various contractors.

Detaching and Reassigning Baselines in Primavera P6

The P6-Loader Saves the Day!!!

We are working with a client who is consolidating many separate P6 databases into a production database, turnaround database and an archive database. Along with the thousands of projects being exported from the old databases to the new ones, our client wants the baselines for projects exported, imported and reattached for a large number of the projects. If you have ever had to un-assign and restore baselines and then turn around and attach and reassign them for even a handful of projects, you know how tedious and time consuming it can be. First, the baseline has to be un-assigned, then restored to a project in the original database. Once the baseline has been imported into the new database, the baseline has to be converted back into a baseline and re-attached to the original project.

Data Integrity and Primavera P6: Detecting Problems Before They Cause Damage

What is it worth to have the best schedule if the data is corrupt and inconsistent for technical reasons?

Quality Assurance is a group of methods and processes ensuring that the quality of any work or creation matches established standards. In the project management world, many of such norms exist and are implemented on a daily basis.

But enforcing standards for schedules is only one part of the problem. While at Emerald we released a tool known as the P6-QA Tool to drastically increase the quality of P6 schedules, we also looked into a lower level aspect of the problem and came up with conclusions and solutions.

Primavera P6 v15.2 - Java Components Almost Gone

Over the last few years we have all been struggling with the applets in Primavera P6. Struggling might be an understatement if you are like me and you felt like you never knew what was going to happen when you opened your P6-EPPM web version. With browsers getting tougher on Java applets and Chrome not supporting them, this was becoming a bit of a nightmare for many IT teams supporting P6-EPPM. At Emerald I was lucky to have our tech team right with me, and when I would HipChat Dan “HELP, I don’t know what I did… but P6-EPPM is not working” he knew what was coming next.

You will all be happy to know that Primavera P6 v15.2 has really made some progress on removing the applets. They are not all gone, but several are, on the admin side as well as the user side.

Is My P6 Schedule Any Good?

The P6-QA Tool Helps Answer This Loaded Question For A Construction Project

We are currently implementing Primavera P6 with a New York development company and I was asked the dreaded question “what do you think about the construction managers’ schedule”? Well this is a loaded question at the best of times because, although I am familiar with the project, I have not been involved in the contracting strategies and execution discussions.

Backups – Make Sure Your Cloud Provider Has Them

A Cautionary Tale For Primavera Users In The Cloud

A few weeks ago we got a panicked call from a client needing their P6-EPPM setup internally. We were surprised to find out that they had put their Primavera P6 in the cloud. They said it was for a large project they were doing in Arizona and they had some other tools in the cloud as well.

We were even more surprised when they needed the environment turned around in 48 hours. We asked, why such a rush? Then the third surprise came...they told us they lost their entire P6-EPPM database!