What’s New in Oracle

Primavera P6 PPM
Professional Version 23
1 Introduction
Oracle Primavera releases new updates most months, and
this paper outlines the updates that Oracle has introduced
in 2023.
This paper focuses on the changes that PPM users will
use and to see a full list of updates please refer to the
Oracle documentation, links below.
The information in this paper will be included in my new P6
PPM Version 23 books that will be released in the coming
months.

2 Oracle Primavera Update Information

Readers may find the following Oracle documents which include the upgrade information:
 P6 Professional 22.12 - 23.12 Release Feature Overview document downloaded from:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E64687_01/EPPM/EPPM_CFO.html
 P6 Version 23 documentation downloaded from here:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/F74771_01/102193.htm#t102193

3 Summary of PPM Updates

This is a list of the enhancements documented in this paper:

Para Enhancement Title Page

4 Resource Analysis Role Limit Calculation Refinement 2

5 Project Checker Improvement 2

6 Paste Data From Excel Directly Into P6 Professional 4

7 DOE - CPP Export Feature Enhanced 6

8 Projects Window Column to Count the Number of Projects in a Group 6

9 Add Curtains to Timescale Logic Diagrams and Gantt Layouts in P6 Visualizer 7

10 Any User can Import Projects from Excel Spreadsheets 7

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4 Resource Analysis Role Limit Calculation Refinement
This option a allows a user to conduct a resource
analysis without the inclusion of Inactive
Resources.
In the Edit, User Preferences, Resource
Analysis for there is now an option to Exclude
inactive resources for possibly more accurate
reporting:
Note: This is a User Preference and thus
different users may have different results if they
use different Resource Analysis settings.

5 Project Checker Improvement

The Project Checker asses the health of the project data within a database and conducts check
such as ensuring all the Primary Keys within a database table are unique. In other words, makes
sure the database tables for the projects being checked are not corrupt.
Admin Superusers, Project Superusers may run the Project Checker for projects that they have
Project Superuser access.
During database configuration Project Checker must be enabled for all database types except
SQLite database connections by selecting the parameter Enable Project Checker on installation.
To do this a user must select from the Login form Edit database configuration, and check the
Enable Project Checker box:

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To run the Project Checker select Tools, Project Checker:

The next form allows the user to select which projects to check, the rules to be checked and report
content:

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The Project Checker dialog box has two new options:
 To restrict the check setting to only severity 1 (important) and 2 (significant) checks, and
 To run a report on the errors.
The report now includes:
 At the top a table allowing report drill down for types and severity and
 You may view the whole report.
The report looks like the picture.

6 Range Copy and Paste from Excel and P6 into the Resource Usage Profile
Users may copy a range of cell from the Resource Usage Profile by selecting a range and then
right clicking and selecting Range Copy:

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These may then be pasted into Excel, but the author found that this option did not bring over any
timescale dates, activity and resource names found in columns or summary data, so the data copied
in the picture above was pasted as per the picture below:

You may also copy and paste values within the Resource Usage Profile and the cells below were
copied:

The 5 cells were selected and then Range Paste selected to paste the values into the next week:

The ability to paste from Excel into a spreadsheet using Range Paste was not functioning on my
system, although the Oracle Primavera P6 Cumulative Feature Overview stated it would. This
could be fixed with a patch at a later date.

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7 DOE - CPP Export Feature Enhanced
The US Department of Energy had mandated that the current CSV, and MDB upload formats for
PPD (Project Performance Data) upload will be migrated to the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
format in early 2023. Primavera P6 Version 22 had to be connected to an EPPM to export to a CPP
format, now a user may export in CPP format from P6 Professional connected to any database. The
mapping for a CPP format must be manually created:

8 Projects Window Column to Count the Number of Projects in a Group

A new column is available in the Projects window that counts the number of projects in a Group:

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9 Add Curtains to Timescale Logic Diagrams and Gantt Layouts in P6 Visualizer
There is a new Curtains tab in both the Timescale Logic Diagrams and Gantt Layouts in P6
Visualizer allowing curtains to be created in the same way as in P6:

A curtain is added, deleted and formatted as in t the Windows tool.

The author received an error message and was unable to create a curtain in an existing view
supplied with P6. This issue has been reported to Oracle Support and should be corrected in an
update and the pictures were created by importing a Layout from P6 PPM.

10 Any User can Import Projects from Excel Spreadsheets

In P6 Version 22 and earlier a user had to be a assigned a Project Superuser to import from Excel,
and in P6 Version 23 this right may be assigned to any User.

11 Comments
These enhancements will assist some users in some circumstances but none of these
enhancements address many of the longstanding issues I have with Oracle Primavera P6 including
some of the more serious ones below:
 Baseline bars displaying the Planned Dates when no baseline has been assigned,
 The way the Planned Dates and Budget fields operate, I would personally remove them
from the software and only compare progress with a Baseline,
 The inability to see any individual baseline resource and expense data because baseline
resource data is summarised by resource type.
 The inability to see most late baseline data,
 Lack of date and duration formatting, each view and table column should have their own
formatting,

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  Lack of the ability to see each activity calendar on or behind the activity, P6 will only
display the Global Default Calendar for all project in all views,
 The lack of project resource pools, and other sub-project functions,
 The inability to allow resources assigned to an activity to be assigned as Fixed Units or
Fixed Units/Timeperiod enabling mining and civil construction earthworks operations to be
modelled.
 The removal of User Preferences and make these Project Preferences so all users will see
the same results when opening a project.

Paul E Harris
Director Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd
6 January 2024

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