{"id":29814,"date":"2015-04-16t21:35:43","date_gmt":"2015-04-17t01:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.deco-dalles.com\/?p=29814"},"modified":"2024-07-16t15:50:26","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16t19:50:26","slug":"primavera-p6-15-1-whats-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.deco-dalles.com\/primavera-p6-15-1-whats-new\/","title":{"rendered":"an in-depth look at what’s new in primavera p6 15.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

oracle announced new updates to the primavera p6 suite at march’s\u00a0oracle industry connect event. i wasn’t there, but i did recently attend a webinar about the recent release<\/a> and i’ve been playing with the new versions of primavera p6 professional and primavera p6 eppm. i’ve put together an overview of what new with primavera p6 15.1 to share with you all.<\/p>\n

this release has updates for both primavera p6 professional<\/a> and primavera p6 eppm (enterprise project portfolio management) so if you’re using either of these tools, read on to find out what’s up. but don’t be surprised that there’s been many more enhancements to primavera p6 eppm than to primavera p6 professional.<\/p>\n

1) new version numbers for primavera applications<\/h3>\n

if you haven’t read our last post, “all primavera products jump to version 15.1 – here’s why<\/a>” which explains oracle primavera’s new version numbering, then you probably should have a read. the short of it is that all products, including primavera p6 professional and primavera p6 eppm are moving from version 8.4<\/a> to this release, version 15.1. the new numbering will help you understand which products in the primavera suite integrate successfully with other products.<\/p>\n

2) primavera application integrations<\/h3>\n

as we mentioned in 1), oracle is continuing to improve on the cross-application integration of their primavera suite. one integration that’s been getting a lot of attention is primavera p6 to unifier. since the world is on mission to get cost and schedule data in a single system (or close, but it’s never really nice for users<\/a>), oracle has been focusing a lot on how p6 schedule data and unifier cost and business data can be passed back and forth. many companies are passing data from unifier to p6 (and back) using primavera gateway as a go-between.<\/p>\n

unifier allows for business processes to be managed and tracked as they move along various stages. in primavera p6 15.1, users can now associate a business process with a primavera p6 task. the result is that business process progress can now flow to primavera p6 and status an activity. you can pass % complete, actual dates and other progress data. the example karen pilla has given is for an rfi. you would associate an rfi in unifier with p6 activities which are\u00a0updated as the rfi progresses in unifier.<\/p>\n

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3) resource bucket planning in primavera p6 eppm<\/h3>\n

although primavera p6 professional and primavera p6 eppm<\/a> were often said to have the same functionality in terms of planning & scheduling, there were clearly some major gaps from the start. however, those gaps are continuing to be filled and the addition of resource bucket planning to primavera p6 eppm is a welcome one.<\/p>\n

in case you don’t know what resource bucket planning is, here’s a review. in resource management<\/a> with bucket planning, you can edit how a resource’s hours are spread out by editing the hours allocated in each “bucket” or time period on the resource assignments screen. by default, p6 will spread hours out evenly.<\/p>\n

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in primavera p6 eppm v15.1, you can now have the same control over your resource hour allocations on the resource assignments screen. this is a nice addition to primavera p6 eppm that many will take advantage of.<\/p>\n

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\u00a04) support for integrated master schedule format<\/h3>\n

companies that work with the us government and others governments\/companies that have adopted the un\/cefact<\/a> standards will find that primavera p6 has support for the ims (integrated master schedule) format in version 15.1. in p6 15.1, you can now export your project in a fully compliant un\/cefact ims format. apparently previous versions of primavera p6 had this features, but some of the data elements were missing in the export. the export is now fully-compliant to the standards.<\/p>\n

as part of this enhancement, you can now map p6 activity codes<\/a> and user defined fields<\/a> to un\/cefact fields, dates and durations. and you get this power in both primavera p6 professional and primavera p6 eppm.<\/p>\n

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5) import \/ export of baselines in the xml format<\/h3>\n

although\u00a0adoption of the xml<\/a> is slow and the xer format is still widely used (unless you’re only using p6 professional), i’m happy to see that in 15.1 you can now export both a project along with\u00a0it’s baseline(s) in the same file – (man we need this in the xer format too!).<\/p>\n

previously, there was a painstaking process to go through of detaching a baseline from it’s project, making a copy, reattaching the copy, then exporting the project and it’s baseline. ….well, i guess we still have to do this on the p6 professional side. but not in eppm anymore. this will make some lives much easier.<\/p>\n

6) better support for database auditing<\/h3>\n

primavera p6 eppm has had auditing support from previous versions, but oracle has made things a bit easier. the auditing controls have been moved into the application settings area within eppm, making it easier to manage. the auditing reporting are available in bi publisher.<\/p>\n

as you can see here, inside eppm, you can set which tables you want to audit. i’ve set the first table “chgtask” to audit insert, update, and delete. what this should essentially do is track which users have made changes to the activity table in p6 (or basically to any project activities). unfortunately, you’ll need to both understand p6’s db table structures and unravel how to use bi publisher reports to view the auditing reports.<\/p>\n

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7) improved integration configuration for gateway<\/h3>\n

there are few improvements to primavera gateway configuration. previously p6 had 3 hard-coded integrations – unifier, an erp system and primavera prime<\/a>. in version 15.1, you can now setup\u00a0as many integrations as you choose. and you can include multiple integrations of the same type. this is handy if you want to integrate with 2 unifier installs, for example – a staging install and the real production install. this flexibility will make life a lot easier for the enterprise with more than a few test \/ staging environments.<\/p>\n

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8) move project-level p6 data between databases with gateway<\/h3>\n

i like this feature, and apparently it was around in 8.4, but i didn’t realize it. like 7) this feature is meant for those enterprises who have\u00a0test \/ staging databases. you can set up your p6 enterprise data (global data like 世界杯时间比赛时间 , obs, eps, activity codes), in a staging db. prior to go-live, you can use gateway to transfer that global staging data to your production database. nice!<\/p>\n

in primavera p6 eppm 8.4, you could transfer these fields between databases:<\/p>\n