Enterprise Reports

Enterprise Reports Module

The Enterprise Reports Module contains a collection of reports that analyze, monitor and report system wide and Global related issues in your P6 environment.

The Global Activity Code and Global Calendar reports ensure that these Global entities are not propagating or inheriting down to the Project level. Most construction specifications categorically state that Global Calendars and Global Activity Codes are not included as part of any Project CPM submittals.

Other issues that may negatively affect your P6 System wide environment include the POBS and Risk Categories Record Count, Orphaned Baseline Projects,

Projects with No Tasks, Project Templates and Projects with Baselines Using the Enterprise Reports Module will help keep your P6 Network “lean and mean” and help you keep overall systems files at a minimum and below maximum file size limitations on certain database environments.

In addition, the Enterprise Reports Module contain the Zümmer Insights Topics reports for those who prefer a hard copy of the extensive help module.

To print or preview reports from the Enterprise Reports Module, simply use the mover command buttons to move the reports from the Available Reports list to the Selected Reports list. Then used the Preview or Print command buttons to print or preview the selected reports.

20 Total Enterprise Reports

5 Global Checks

3 History Reports

9 Project Checks

3 Zümmer Insights

Global Activity Code Usage By Code

For those of you who routinely receive and/or submit P6 schedules, chances are you will eventually wind up with more Global Activity Codes that you can account for.

This is due to importing/exporting P6 schedules that are assigned to Global Activity Codes. If the Global Activity Code does not exist in your database, P6 creates a new Global Activity Code with the same name. Over time, your list of Global Activity Codes can grow to an unmanageable amount. For this reason, many project specifications prohibit schedule submittals containing Global Activity Codes.

In P6, it is exceedingly difficult to determine which Global Activity Codes are used by which Projects. In Zümmer, there is a much more efficient way to determine Global Activity Code usage. From the “Enterprise Reports” menu, select “Global Activity Code Usage by Code”, then either Preview or Print (See illustration below).

To eliminate Global Activity Code usage, open the Projects listed, and then reassign the Global Activity Code to a Project Activity Code. Later you can delete the Global Activity Codes you no longer need.

Global Activity Code Usage By Project

For those of you who routinely receive and/or submit P6 schedules, chances are you will eventually wind up with more Global Activity Codes that you can account for.

In P6, it is exceedingly difficult to determine which Global Activity Codes are used by which Projects. In Zümmer, there is a much more efficient way to determine Global Activity Code usage. From the “Enterprise Reports” menu, select “Global Activity Code Usage by Project”, then either Preview or Print (See illustration below).

Global Activity Calendar Usage By Calendar

For those of you who routinely receive and/or submit P6 schedules, chances are you will eventually wind up with more Global Calendars that you can account for.

This is due to importing/exporting P6 schedules that are assigned to Global Calendars. If the Global Calendar does not exist in your database, P6 creates a new Global Calendar with the same name. Over time, your list of Global Calendars can grow to an unmanageable amount. For this reason, many project specifications prohibit schedule submittals containing Global Calendars.

In P6, you can determine which Global Calendars are used by Projects by selecting Enterprise->Calendars; highlight a Global Calendar, then clicking on the “Used-By…” command button. This method although effective is exceeding time consuming since you will need to examine each Global Calendar usage individually.

In Zümmer, there is a much more efficient way to determine Global Calendar usage. From the “Enterprise Reports” menu, select “Global Calendar Usage by Calendar”, then either Preview or Print (See illustration below).

To eliminate Global Calendar usage, open the Projects listed, and then reassign the Global Calendar to a Project Calendar. Later you can delete the Global Calendars you no longer need.

Global Activity Calendar Usage By Project

For those of you who routinely receive and/or submit P6 schedules, chances are you will eventually wind up with more Global Calendars that you can account for.

In Zümmer, there is a much more efficient way to determine Global Calendar usage. From the “Enterprise Reports” menu, select “Global Calendar Usage by Project”, then either Preview or Print (See illustration below).

To eliminate Global Calendar usage, open the Projects listed, and then reassign the Global Calendar to a Project Calendar. Later you can delete the Global Calendars you no longer need.

Orphaned Baseline Projects

When a Project is assigned or Maintained as a Baseline Project, and later, the Original Project is deleted, the P6 database does not always trigger the deletion of the associated Maintained/Assigned Projects. As a result, the Baseline Project and all its associated information including tasks, logic, resources, expenses, Project Calendars etc. can be retained in the P6 database. In addition, the Baseline Project will not be seen and cannot be deleted from inside the P6 Application.

If you are trying to delete an unused Global Calendar, P6 may deny the request indicating that the Global Calendar is being used by a Project. However, when you click on the “Used By” command button, no Project(s) appear. This can occur when the Project using or inheriting from the Global Calendar is an Orphaned Baseline Project.

In P6, deleting or detecting Orphaned Baseline Project is nearly impossible. Fortunately, Zümmer’s “Orphaned Baseline Projects” report lists the P6 Project ID, Project ID, Project Name and Data Date for all Orphaned Baseline Projects.

In the illustration below, the P6 database contains 1 Orphaned Baseline Project.

To delete Orphaned Baseline Project, follow the procedures detailed in P6 Oracle Doc ID 2216405.1 - "How to Delete Baseline in PROJECT Table When the Original Project Has Been Deleted."

POBS Record Count (Performing Organizational Breakdown Structure)

The POBS Record Count report checks for an anomaly within the P6 database systems where the POBS table is populated with possibly thousands of unusable and useless records.

An early warning sign for the POBS anomaly is to check large .XER file sizes. Typically, even a large CPM network exported to an .XER file is typically less than 10MB in size. If you receive an .XER file that is more than 10MB in size and previously .XER from the same Project were well less than 10MB, then beware for the POBS record issue. For .XER files larger than 10MB, it is strongly recommended to open the file using a text editor such as Notepad to browse and inspect the file for any possible POBS records. Look of an entry line starting with %T POBS then multiple entry lines beginning with %R.

This anomaly appears to have be resolved in recent P6 releases. However, it is possible to inadvertently import an .XER containing thousands of useless POBS records. It is important to resolve this issue within your P6 database. Especially if you submit .XER to outside entities. The POBS Record count anomaly acts like a virus possibly depositing itself into other unsuspecting P6 Users.

In the illustration below, the POBS Record Count indicates that the P6 Database contains multiple POBS Records. If you encounter this issue, contact your Database Administrator to remove all records from the POBS table. There are third-party tools that will also assist in removing POBS records from any .XER file.

Project Calendars Inherited From Global

Whenever you create a Project Calendar, P6 displays a dialog box asking you to “Select a Calendar To Copy From”. By default, a list of Global Calendars is displayed. When the Global Calendar is selected, P6 automatically assigns that Global Calendar as the Calendar to inherit holidays and exceptions from. In other words, the Work, Nonwork and Standards days for the new Project Calendar are the same as the selected Global Calendar.

Since the new Project Calendar is now inheriting holidays and exceptions from an assigned Global Calendar, changes to that Global Calendar will automatically be reflected in the Project Calendar. This may have unintended consequences since recalculating a previous schedule update may yield different dates if the inherited Global Calendar is later changed.

Furthermore, if you routinely import P6 schedules from others, this may be another reason why you have more Global Calendars than you can account for.

To prevent Project Calendars from ever changing, the setting for “inheriting holidays and exceptions from Global Calendars” must be changed to “<none>”.

Finding Projects with Project Calendars inheriting from Global Calendars can be a very time consuming and arduous process using P6 alone.

In Zümmer, from the “Enterprise Reports” menu, select “Project Calendars Inheriting from Global”, then either Preview or Print (See illustration below).

To eliminate Global Calendar inheritance, open the Project(s) listed in the report. Then from the P6 Main Menu, select Enterprise->Calendars. Then click on the Project radio button to display Project Calendars. Then select the Project Calendar(s) listed in the report; then click Modify… and select “” from the “Inherit holidays and exceptions from Global Calendar:” pull-down menu.

Project Templates

When P6 is installed, it usually populates the data tables with default settings, records and other information. Some of this default information is Project Templates for various industries. Therefore, there are records that exist in multiple tables across the P6 database that are never used and cannot be deleted or seen directly from P6. These additional records only take up space and should be deleted especially where database space is limited.

Fortunately, Zümmer’s “Project Template” report lists the P6 Project ID, Project ID, Project Name and Data Date for all Templates existing in the P6 Database.

In the illustration below, the P6 database contains 4 Project Templates.

To delete Project Templates, apply the same procedures detailed in P6 Oracle Doc ID 2216405.1 - "How to Delete Baseline in PROJECT Table When the Original Project Has Been Deleted." To remove Project Templates.

Projects with Baselines

In P6, analyzing and reporting schedule variance is generally performed by using the Baseline Maintain & Assign Modules (See Fig. 1 below). However, there are certain nuances to consider while maintaining and assigning Project Baselines.

After a Project existing in the EPS has been assigned as a baseline to another Project, the assigned Project disappears from the EPS list. Therefore, you must remember where the assigned Project is maintained if you decide to restore the original Project.

Baseline schedules are duplicates of the original schedule. Therefore, items such as notepad, logic and WBS that are not pertinent to variance analysis are retained. This is a consideration for users managing large-sized/long-term projects on databases with file size limitations.

Since P6 allows Projects to be copied along with their assigned baselines, database file size can increase exponentially as update are routinely copied repeatedly. The result is multiple versions of the same Project in the P6 database.

For these reasons and others, many P6 professionals prefer to minimize Project Baselines. In other words, the preferred procedure is to “Restore” an assigned Baseline to the EPS immediately after the variance analysis complete.

Zümmer's "Projects with Baselines" report, lists all Projects containing Baseline Projects including the Baseline Project's Project ID. The report helps users find missing Projects and identifies which Projects have Baselines that can be restored or deleted. In Fig. 2 below, Project MST-BL1-UP13 is maintaining 5 Baselines while MST-BL1-UP14 is maintaining 2 Baselines.

Projects with Global Default Calendar

Every Project has an assigned Default Calendar. The setting for the Default Calendar for a Project, can be seen in the Project’s Default Page in the Project’s Details window as shown below.

When a new Project is created from scratch, P6’s designated Default Project Calendar is automatically assigned as the Default Calendar for the Project. When a Project has a Global Calendar as the Default Project Calendar, then that Global Calendar will be saved in the exported .XER file.

In order to prevent a Global Calendar from making its way into the .XER as a result of Default Calendar settings, first, open the Project, then select a Project Calendar as the default Calendar. Zümmer Enterprise Report – Projects with Global Default Calendar lists all Project with a Global Calendar assigned as its Default Calendar.

The report is sorted by Project ID and displays the Project ID, Project Name, Data Date, Default Calendar Name and Default Calendar Type.

Projects with No Tasks

In P6, adding a new project for the first time is typically performed via a P6 wizard. However, at the completion of the wizard process, no tasks are automatically added to the newly created project. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the P6 immediately proceed to opening the new project and inserting tasks.

If adding tasks to new projects is overlooked, the EPS could contain multiple instances of Projects with No Tasks. Finding project with no tasks using P6 alone is a difficult task especially if there are scores of Projects in the EPS module.

Periodically running the Enterprise Reports – “Projects with No Task” report helps keep the P6 database “lean and mean. Project with no tasks should be either deleted immediately or tasks inserted as required.

In the illustration below, 2 Projects exists in the P6 database that have not tasks. Item #1 is a Template Project that needs to be removed as well.

Resources with Global Calendar

If you are sending or receiving Schedule to or from another party, then it is important to make sure that Resources from the Enterprise level should not be assigned to Global Calendars.

When Global Calendars are assigned to Resources and those Resources are assigned to activities, then sending or receiving a Schedule will cause the receiving party to inherit that Global Calendar into their P6 System. This is bad protocol and should be minimized as much as possible. To avoid this issue, Personal (or Resource) calendars should be created for each Resource.

Parties who typically receive Schedule Updates or Baseline will quickly find an unmanageable number of Global Calendars. Deleting these Global Calendars is a painful and time-consuming exercise. It is incumbent on both parties to ensure that Global Calendars are not transmitted from one party to another. Many Project Specifications insist that Global Calendars (and Global Activity Codes for that matter) not be submitted.

Unfortunately, not submitting Global Calendars is harder than you may think.

This report "Resources with Global Calendars" is one step that helps prevent transmission of Global Calendars to another party.

Risk Categories Record Count

The Risk Categories Record Count report checks for an anomaly within the P6 database systems where the Risk Categories table is populated with possibly hundreds or even thousands of unusable and useless records.

For large .XER files, it is strongly recommended to open the file using a text editor such as Notepad to browse and inspect the file for any possible Risk Categories records. Look of an entry line starting with %T Risk Category then multiple entry lines beginning with %R.

It is possible to inadvertently import an .XER containing thousands of useless Risk Categories records. It is important to resolve this issue within your P6 database. Especially if you submit .XER to outside entities.

In the illustration below, the Risk Categories Record Count indicates that the P6 Database contains multiple Risk Categories Records.

If you encounter this issue, contact your Database Administrator to remove all records from the Risk Categories table. There are third-party tools that will also assist in removing Risk Categories records from any .XER file.

Suspect Project IDs

In general, Project ID's should use generic filename characters. Characters like: "\ / : * ? < > |". Nor should Project ID's contain "#" or blank spaces.

The Project ID name is often used in "behind the scenes" SQL queries and in some isolated instances, the SQL Query can fail if they contain blank spaces or the special characters mention above.

The Suspect Project ID report list possible offending Project ID's sorted by Project ID and list the Project ID, Project Name and Data Date. For each suspect offending Project ID, a comment is provided to explain the offending issue.

The Comments listed explain the first found offending character. When revising the Project ID, make sure other character are not offenders as well. If any Project ID appear on this list, consider changing the Project ID so that only generic filename characters are used.