Wednesday, May 03, 2023

Five Must-Know Setting Tips for Primavera P6 Professional Project Management


Primavera P6 Professional (or simply Primavera P6) is a robust project-portfolio management software tool. It’s a widely used tool in professional project management (PM). In this article we know five must-know settings when you work with the Primavera P6 Professional software. 

You can learn the step-by-step approach to install the latest Primavera P6 Professional in the following link:

Step-by-Step Guide: Download, Install, Run and Test Primavera P6 22.x

Now, let’s straight dive-in to the tips for Primavera P6 Prof PM. Going forward, I’ll be simply using Primavera P6, instead of the longer name: 'Primavera P6 Professional Project Management'. 

[This Series - Part - 2]


Tip – 1: Removing the First Warning Message of Appropriate Industry.

When you open-up Primavera P6 for the first time, you’ll find the following warning message. It informs that the industry setting has not yet been done. 

To remove this message, simply go to Primavera menu > Admin > Admin Preferences… and in the opened Admin Preferences screen, select Industry on the left. Next, choose the industry in which Primavera P6 will be used. 

After you’ve made the selection and clicked on the Close button of the above screen, another message will pop-up. Simply click on the “OK” button and proceed.  

Tip – 2: Adding a New Currency to the list of Currencies. 

While United States Dollar (USD) is the default/base currency used in the software, this can be changed from the very beginning during the installation. Did you check the installation steps before? If not, it’s a good time to check them.

To change the currency, go to Primavera menu > Admin > Currencies… and in the opened-up Currencies screen, add your needed currency by clicking on + Add button to the right. You have to give the:

  • Currency ID: Below one, I’ve added INR
  • Currency Name: Indian National Rupee (or INR Rupee)
  • Currency Symbol: ₹ (Rupee symbol)
  • Exchange Rate: 80.000000

After you add the above fields, it will come as shown below. 

Tip – 3: Adding a New Unit of Measure. 

If you are changing the currency, then you’re likely to change the units of measure. For example, while having material resources, you may want to use a new unit of measure. 

To do so, go to Primavera menu > Admin > Admin Categories… and go to Units of Measure on the left side of Admin Categories screen. Next, click on + Add.  

Next, you can add the:

  • Unit (Unit Abbreviation): ₹ (Rupee)
  • Unit Name: ₹

After you make the above changes, you can have a new unit of measure as shown.
                   

Tip – 4: Change the Units Format and Durations Format.

As a seasoned project/portfolio management practitioner, you may want to change the units and durations format for the activities in your project. This is useful when you plan, track and analyze your schedule. 

To do so, go to Primavera menu > Edit > User Preferences… and select Time Units on the left side of the User Preferences screen.  


As shown, I’ve done the following changes:

  • Units of Time are in Hours with two decimal places.
  • For Units of Time, the Show Unit label checkbox is selected.
  • For Durations too, I’ve enabled the Show Duration label.

These are all good practices, which of course depends on the type of project being used.

Tip – 5: Coming from MS Project? Then, change the Units/Time Format!

If you are coming from the MS Project world, then you’d have noticed the Units/Time format is in %, not in h/d (hour/day). For example, a resource is assigned at 50% or 100%. In such a case, you can change the Resource Units/Time format.

To do so, go to Primavera menu > Edit > User Preferences… and select Time Units on the left side of the User Preferences screen. 

Next, in the Units/Time format area, change the Units/Time format and enable the Show as a percentage (50%).  


This will ensure your quick understanding and grasp of Primavera P6 software and its usage when compared with MS Project.

[This Series - Part - 2]

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That’s it! These five must-know tips that you need to have while starting-off with Primavera P6. I’ve used Primavera P6 R22.12 for demonstration. The software was released in November/December of 2022. 


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