Yes, you're right, there are other more important issues as well. I had some experiences like having two days activity starts on Monday, shall finish on Tuesday, but somehow it shows the finish date as Wednesday. When you show the hours in dates using user preferences, it shows start date as Monday 9:00 AM instead of 8:00 AM, there fore it finishes on Wednesday 9:00 AM instead of Tueday 5:00 PM. I double checked the calendars, scheduling time, etc. but no clue, it calculates the start of activity always at 9:00 AM. I manually changed the start hour as 8:00 AM, then it calculated correctly. A bit weird.

Another thing is using labor resource. Today I prepared a small work plan. I had one activity with 2 days duration, I assigned a labor resource to it. I changed in user preferences to show the durations as hours instead of days. Strangely, when I checked the resource tab, I saw that the original duration of assignment is 15 hrs instead of 16 hrs! When I changed it to 16hrs manually, it has changed the duration of the activity to 17 hrs.

I really have difficulty to follow how it works now. Maybe I do something wrong but, I don't think so. I will test tomorrow once more.

Ahmet Cetin

Graham,

I know that Primavera calculates the sum of durations in grouping bars according the default calendar setting. If you have selected the standard 5 days workweek calendar, primavera will calculate 1.3 days instead of 2 days because the default calendar has an 8 hour workday. Even if you select a 5 hour working day calendar, primavera will still calculate its sum through the default calendar values.

We have had the same problem explaining this issue to our contractors but we decided to set a 24/7 calendar as default so that the durations will always calculate the exact amount of hours elapsing between the earliest start and earliest finish.

grtz, inscore...

P5 (6) uses finest hour. In Graham's example I would say that Primavera is calculating correctly. In the user prefs set the display units to days instead of hours and you should see the following. When you added an activity on calendar 1 day, it was really 10 hours (the duration of the working day for that calendar). The second activity was added as 1 day on cal 2, which is really 5 hours. Since activities can have different calendars, and multiple projects can have different calendars, Primavera has made the summary info show based on the Global Default cal as inscore says. I say turn off Primavera's summary and use a WBS summary bar instead, then you choose the calendar.

For Ahmet, your first paragraph is probably a software glitch that would have been fixed if you exit and re-enter the program (there are a few bugs in P6). The second is likely due to a difference in calendars between the resource and the activity. For example, if the activity calendar works 8-5 with 1 hour lunch at noon, and the resource calendar works 8-4:30 with a 30 min lunch @ 12:30, that would make 15 hours as follows:
-Both days, the resource and activity work from 8:00-12:00(8 hrs total)
-From 12:00 to 12:30 the rosource sits idle, unable to work because the activity cannot proceed during this time.
-From 12:30-1:00, both the activity and the resource are at lunch and no work continues.
-From 1:00-4:30 both the activity and resource are working (7 hours total).
-From 4:30-5:00 the resource is idle while the activity is ongoing.

This leaves 15 hours for the resourve (8+7), and 16 hours for the activity (2 8-hour days). Changing the resource to 16 hours restrains the resource to its work calendar, thereby pushing ou the duration of the activity to work that additional hour the following day. Of course this may not be the specific scenario you are dealing with, but I suspect it is something similar.

As a final check (if you are not interested in making all celendars match, or they cannot because of other projects etc.) Try selecting Fixed Duration & Units/Time, this should keep the hours the resource works from extending the duration of the activity - on the bad side, it my cause overallocations to your resources - there is always a trade-off.

Sorry to be long-winded but I hope someone finds this useful.

-Steve

I assigned a 5d-8h working global calender to an activity with 10d duration that starts on 1st Apr 08 and Primavera calculates upto 14th Apr 08 which is fine.

On the second Activity that starts on 1st April 08 with 30d Duration and 24hx7d project calendar, Primavera is calculating 11th April 08.

Can anybody tell me why i am getting this error?? Please................

I assigned a 5d-8h working global calender to an activity with 10d duration that starts on 1st Apr 08 and Primavera calculates upto 14th Apr 08 which is fine.

On the second Activity that starts on 1st April 08 with 30d Duration and 24hx7d project calendar, Primavera is calculating 11th April 08.

Can anybody tell me why i am getting this error?? Please................

Yeah, that's simple The reason is, Primavera calculates the schedule by minutes (ok, easier to think as hours, 1hour=60 mins). Check Admin->Admin Preferences then select Time Periods tab. There you will see that 1d is defined as 8 hours. When you enter 30 days as duration, Primavera calculates the duration as 30 days x 8 hours/day = 240 hours. Then, as the calendar of the activity is 24x7, then it calculates the duration of the activity as 240 hours / 24 hr/day = 10 days So, as you see, the calculation of Primavera is correct

And yes, it is known issue, and one of most important reasons why people are not moving from P3 to P6 still. Normally, when you enter the duration to an activity, it shall use the calendar of the activity when converting to hours. On the other hand, Primavera thinks it is not too important issue it looks.

Hope this helps,

Ahmet Cetin

Thanks Cetin...

How to run Logic Report by WBS in P6. i tried to modify the report setting but failed.

To make group summary bar durations match the 365 day calendar, set the Default Global Calendar to 7 day (work) week, with each day's work hours set to match the Hours/Day Time Period under Admin Preferences (such as: 8hrs = 1 day). No holidays!

If you want your summary durations to match the wall calendar which has 365 days/year. You have to use a matching default global calendar in Primavera P5/6. That is It's that simple.

The key is the default global calendar is the key.

The default global calendar must be set to 7-day work week, and the default global calendar's work hours/day must match the "Hours/Day" under Admin Preferences|Time Periods. It works!

Guys are there an difference betw P6 and P6.1?

I submitted my baseline plan to clients which was prepared and exported as "XER" file by P6.1.
Where as the clients are using P6. and now they claim that they cannot open the file and to submit in P3 file format.
This is strange for me.

Hence i never used P6, and even i have no idea about the error that clients are getting while opening the file.
I am completely lost. Maybe they have to install service pack.

Could anyone help me to know the actual cause please.

There shouldn't be any problem, they shall open it, I don't expect such error. Anyway, tell them to install sp1, therefore both of you will have p6.1

Thanks Cetin.....i just informed them.

Deepak,

If SP1 does not work and workaround that primavera told me to use was to export the file to your desktop or a file drive location then right click the file and select "open with" and select notepad.  When the file opens in the top left hand corner there will be a version 6.1.0  Change the .1 to .0 and save the file, this should fix the problem 

Cetin & A.D,

I was discussing the above issue with our clients. their actual problem is they are using Primavera 6 with Oracle data base system and till now they don't have an upgrade for Primavera 6.1. (I mean if they upgard to P6.1 they cannot work with Oracle).They also said that if i export the P6.1 file to Primavera Contractor 5.0 xer, that will work fine with P6.0.

Also guys..i have another problem....may be i am stupid here, When i generate the reports, like Resource & Expense Costs by Cost Accounts or by Activity. I get the report from the open project and also the closed projects including the sample projects. i am really getting crazy while i see the reports.

Kindly help me to fix this proble.

I am not using the ready made reports, and generally using layouts when I want to prepare some report, if it is not possible to prepare using layouts, then I create report from scratch. What I know on the other hand, that you can prepare report for open projects only or for all projects even if they are closed. It looks the reports that you are running (resource & expense cost by cost accounts or by activity) are prepared for all projects. Try to prepare these reports for open project only.

Hope this helps,

Ahmet Cetin

I am creating reports from scratch now. seems to be much better than the readymade reports.

Thanks Chetin.

hi. can any body tell me why my project percent complete ?
I enter the duration % to my activites but my project show in the schedule % complete zero

hi. can any body tell me why my project percent complete is always zero?
I enter the duration % to my activites but my project show in the schedule % complete column zero

Why is Schedule Percent Complete equal to 0 on the summary band when values exist on the activities?