{"id":38374,"date":"2017-04-20t10:12:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-20t14:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.deco-dalles.com\/?p=38374"},"modified":"2019-10-18t11:33:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18t15:33:56","slug":"primavera-p6-global-project-data-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.deco-dalles.com\/primavera-p6-global-project-data-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"a guide to primavera p6 global & project data"},"content":{"rendered":"

i’ve always had difficulty explaining\u00a0the concept of global and project data to new users of primavera p6 in my training courses<\/a>. it’s a bit too much for some, and why should you even care? you seem to be able to use primavera p6 just fine without any knowledge of global or project data.<\/p>\n

you can, but you can also get into trouble once you start moving data around, especially back and forth between databases. if you’ve ever sent or received a primavera p6 .xer file<\/a> then this guide is for you. it will help you to make sure your primavera p6 project data is making it to it’s destination when you send a file. but it’s also good knowledge to have for any user of primavera p6 professional or eppm.<\/p>\n

primavera p6 global & project data<\/h2>\n

it’s important to remember that primavera p6 was initially designed<\/a> as an enterprise project management system. even though many of us use primavera p6 as a standalone tool, shunning\u00a0all of the enterprise bells and whistles, at it’s core is a database initially designed for the enterprise’s needs. if primavera p6 was truly a standalone tool, you’d find it to resemble a tool like microsoft project, where you deal with files only and projects don’t share data between them.<\/p>\n

primavera p6, both the professional version and eppm<\/a>, have a more complex data structure that enables them to be in the realm of enterprise software tools. the goal was to design a system that\u00a0could be used by an organization’s many departments. so it would have to be flexible enough to be configurable for each department’s needs. but also, the organization would want some over-arching corporate\u00a0assets that could be set up and available to any department.<\/p>\n

\"different<\/p>\n

with primavera p6, a primary enterprise distinction is that we have this concept of “global” data objects and “project” (or embedded) data objects.<\/p>\n

if you consider that any company that sets up primavera p6 will\u00a0want to reuse and share data objects across their p6 projects, then you have just revealed the difference between global and project objects. global objects can be shared and used on more than one project, while embedded objects cannot.<\/p>\n

primavera’s global objects are linked and not embedded in projects<\/h3>\n

going a bit deeper, we encounter how global data objects are actually shared by multiple projects – it’s a concept i call “linking”. by the way,\u00a0these concepts exist everywhere in databases, and are not unique to primavera p6….just sayin’.<\/p>\n

global objects are p6 constructs that are used on or linked in to a project, but never wholly become part of the project. for example, a\u00a0global calendar<\/a> exists in p6’s database where it can be shared and used on multiple projects. thus, a global calendar gets linked to a project and used on activities in that project, but the calendar never becomes wholly owned by the project nor is it embedded inside the project.<\/p>\n

the same concept always applies to 世界杯时间比赛时间 . a resource can be assigned to a project’s activities, but the resource (and it’s associated attributes, like price\/unit hourly rate) are never embedded into a project. that same resource can always be assigned to the activities of another project at the same time, applying the linking concept or the sharing of 世界杯时间比赛时间 across projects.<\/p>\n

when you start to thing about all of the many global objects that can be linked to a large project, the list starts to look like this:<\/p>\n