Tutorial Info
- Program: Oracle Primavera P6 Professional
- Version: 7
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Time to Complete: 15 minutes
Featured this week is a great way to use Primavera P6 Reflection projects. If you’ve perused our other Primavera P6 tutorials, you may already know reflection projects are great for working with and managing scenarios. But they can also provide a way to preview and selectively approve activity updates from sub-contractors or other groups.
The key to getting project updates to merge back to a master project is in the setup. Make sure you’ve created your reflection projects before you export them to .xer and send them off for an update by the subcontractor. However, if you missed this key setup piece, I’ll walk you through a workaround so the reflection merge will still work.
Approving and merging updates is ideal for larger projects where there might be multiple subcontractors providing updates. This video tutorial walks you through exactly that situation and walks you through some of the pitfall as well.
We’d love to hear your feedback. Is this approach helpful to you? How else are you using Reflections? What did you learn? What’s missing?
Drop us a line in the comments! Enjoy!
21 Responses
Your Comments
Michael geat job. You are very clear and your teaching tools are great. Keep on going
Jose,
Many thanks! We plan to forge ahead.
Michael
Great teaching michael. Keep the tutorial coming..
Ziq, thanks for your comments. If you have any topics you’d like to see, just put them in a comments section and we’ll add them to our growing list.
Michael maybe you can share a tuts how to generate the s-curve and manpower loading graph from the p6, global function, and maybe cost tracking in p6. I think this website has a great oppurtunity to be a one stop learning centre for a newbie planner like me to enhance the knowledge and to maximise the use of the scheduling tools & planning stuff.
good luck & all the best,
ziq ahmad
Ziq, Thanks again! We’ll add these to our list.
Great lessons!
Your Comments
Michael,
The reflection tutorial is very helpful. I am trying to use this method on a large project I am currently working on. I have a few questions if you would not mind;
1. Do you copy the activities from the subcontractor’s original submitted schedule into your master schedule? Or is a merge done to initially capture these activities.
2.Does the source project and relfection project have to have the same data date to import and update properly?
3.Do both the source project and initial subcontractor xer file have to have the same Global, EPS or Project Codes?
Thanks,
Jim
Hi Jim,
Answers below:
1) Copy the subs activities into the master schedule. The merge will not do this for you. Merging only provides “updates” so the activities need to be in the master schedule before the merge part can happen.
2) It may be possible for them to have different data dates, but ideally these should be the same.
3) That depends if you want to maintain any activity coding that the contractor put in place. If so, then Global Code may be the easiest solution.
Just to be clear. I’m suggesting putting all subcontractor activities into a master project. Then, creating a reflection of the master project and sending it to the sub for updates. Merging the updates and rescheduling. For some, it may not be allowed to send the sub the master project and asking them to update their piece. Although it may not be allowed, it is the easiest way to maintain a master project and get updates via export from a sub.
Hope that helps Jim,
Regards,
Michael
Excellent reminder…another reason to encourage subcontractors to purchase Primavera….thank you
Regards,
Faye
I appreciate you taking to time to contribute That’s very hlefpul.
Hi Michale,
Can you help me to know how to open two project in one window to compare, as i am using bottom layout option but it is opening the same project.
Hi Chandrakant,
When you open 2 projects at the same time in P6, the projects will show up in the Activity List one after the other – all in the same screen. When you use the bottom layout to show the Activity List again (on top and on bottom), then you can scroll to one project in the top and scroll to the other project in the bottom. That should allow you to compare both projects visually.
If you need a detailed project comparison, you could also try using Claim Digger (from the Tools menu). Claim Digger will provide a very detailed report comparing 2 projects. I won’t say it’s fool-proof though. Sometimes it doesn’t work well because it runs outside of P6 using a java applet. But give it try.
Hope that helps. Happy Planning!
Michael
Michael:
Thanks for your insight. I am curious, though, what you think is the best way to integrate multiple contractor schedules into the master when you don’t want the contractors to have the ability to view the entire schedule (which they will have with a reflection as you mentioned above).
I’ve used a couple of methods – individual contractor projects in the EPS with interproject links to the master, copy and paste contractor WBS into master – and they all have their own pitfalls.
Regards – AJ
Hi AJ,
A good question with no simple answer. If I had to rate best approaches, I would put this first
1) Allow contractor access to your database to update their section of the master schedule (reflection) directly. Using P6 permissions you can limit what part of the schedule a contractor can see. The reason I suggest this as best, is that it provides you with the most control over the entire process – eliminates problems importing schedules, problems with multiple data dates, copying and pasting and other conumdrums. I know it’s not always possible – but I think there should be a trend in this direction.
2) Individual contract schedules (reflections) that combine into a master schedule. In P6, it’s not always necessary to build a master schedule. You can open multiple schedules at once and link them and manage them as though they are all 1 schedule. Video tutorial I did on this over at CPM’s site http://www.cpmsolutions.ca/learning/flash/linking-projects-together . Still some challenges with data dates and linking, mind you, but this can work.
3) Individual contractor schedule that drive a summarized master. The master can be just a summary of the contractor schedules – using Level of Efforts and Milestones, etc. Some clients won’t like this, but it does work.
4) Individual contractor schedules (reflections) that get cut and pasted into a master. Less than ideal because cutting and pasting is soo much fun, but it gets the job done too.
So, I come back to 1) where you get the best control. 2 – 4 offer a lot of work and a lot of challenges too.
Hope that helps.
Michael
Thanks for your great response Michael, and for the CPM Solutions link. More stuff to teach an old dog new tricks!
I’ve used variants of 2, 3, and 4 above. Admittedly I hadn’t really considered 1. But why not – I use P6 permission rights and the OBS to control Project and WBS access for internal employees. It would seem to make sense for contractors too, especially in this day and age with cloud computing and viable remote access. Got to think through some of the logistics, but excellent food for thought.
hi mike
your tutorial on reflections is the same here as it is on youtube.
i want to knw how to use the reflection functionality from the start.
is there any tutorial you can refer me
thanks
@Alton, did you look at our other reflection tutorial? http://www.plannertuts.com/primavera-p6-tutorials/use-reflections-primavera-p6-to-merge-scenarios-32/ Is there something specific you are struggling with?
Your Comments
Thanks for the link you provided it was a great help to me.
can you plz give a brief description about the baseline feature in P6
Hi Michael,
Is it possible to merge the the subcontractor scheudle to my master schedule, which is basically the same but with change in the layout structure and many filtering and reporting format. The problem I am facing is that subcon gives me every week their update. Each time I need to change the filtering, since no two project takes same id, which mean the WBS value is lost.
The refelction project can it be added to a different source project, in my case is a schedule with my layout and filtering and reporting formats..
Please help me
Hi Jeevan,
I’m not sure I completely understand your issue, but in response to the question of whether a reflection can be merged into a different source project, it cannot.
If you can clarify some more on your issue, we’ll see if we can make a recommendation. Usually filters and layouts only affect how the data is shown on the screen and they do not affect the data of the project itself. So I’m not sure I understand what trouble you are having with losing the WBS.
Michael