Upgrading from Oracle 11g to 12C took approximately an hour with the Oracle Database Appliance
The Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is part of Oracle’s flagship Engineered Systems that are designed to optimize the entire hardware and software technology stack to deliver extreme performance, reliability and high availability. Now while there are many advantages, we want to highlight how much this system reduces deployment and database provisioning time down to a few hours compared to the multiple weeks it would take using traditional legacy systems.
on Monday, 31 August 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Oracle Engineered Systems
How to easily change UDF titles on multiple project layers and in multiple environments with the P6-Loader
As we get ready to launch our P6-QA tool we were doing our final QA of field names, usability etc. and I was just not loving Ravi’s Portuguese or programmer naming convention, (Sorry Ravi). But before I went crazy and just started to change the names and break everything, I used our P6-Loader to extract all the Primavera P6 UDFs (User Defined Fields) from our demo environment.
Written by Nicole Jardin, P.Eng. - CEO
on Monday, 13 July 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
Integration versus P6-Loader - when each is appropriate
While working with a client the other day I was asked “when should we look at integration versus using a loader?”
I am not sure I answered the question particularly thoroughly in the moment, but thought it would be good to share some of Emerald’s surprising experiences related to both in our blog.
Written by Nicole Jardin, P.Eng. - CEO
on Wednesday, 24 June 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
Materials Delivery Documents Added to Emerald's PCM Loader
Recently, we were asked by a potential customer about adding support for Materials Delivery documents to the PCM Loader. Because the development of the PCM Loader has been customer driven, we always welcome the opportunity to consider adding support for new document types.
on Friday, 12 June 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera Contract Management
Installing and Evaluating Instantis EnterpriseTrack Version 9
We had the opportunity to install and evaluate the latest version of Instantis EnterpriseTrack Version 9 in our demo environment. Instantis EnterpriseTrack is a cloud based project portfolio management solution provided by Oracle Primavera with the key feature of quick and easy deployment.
on Thursday, 04 June 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Other
Create layouts in Primavera P6 and populate columns with data that is normally unavailable
When creating reports using the current layout for the activity table in Primavera P6, we know that layouts can be customized depending on the information we want to display. These types of reports can be modified as they are built; they can be grouped, filtered, sorted and summarized for reporting purposes. You can also view summary information for the displayed columns per your criteria or your specific job requirements. But what happens if we want to merge different information into a single column? Or when we need information in the detail window that is not available as an option to be displayed as a column in our layouts?
Through the learning process there are always requirements that are not as obvious or easily implemented as we may think. For instance, neither relationship type nor lags are available as columns for our layouts. How can we make this process happen and do it in the most efficient way possible?
on Tuesday, 19 May 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
Solving complex scheduling difficulties by integrating Primavera P6 with the leading fleet management software
In chatting with a colleague, they expressed some of the difficulties they were experiencing in properly scheduling fleet maintenance shop work using their fleet management software. Our discussion centered around their maintenance process and the information they needed to track in order to streamline servicing/maintenance on the units in their fleet.
There were many difficulties being experienced with pain points such as (but not limited to) misplaced vehicle. For example, a vehicle was brought in for service, but did not arrive when it was scheduled to be in the shop (sometimes arriving early, sometimes late), or once in the shop, part requirements were discovered which necessitated the vehicle having to wait (the bay was needed for other servicing activity). In moving the vehicle out and back into the service bay, the actual tracking and confirmation of status was getting lost.
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
on Tuesday, 12 May 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera P6
P6 Loader functionality to help with P6 security profiles...without all the checkboxes
Maintaining the same Security Profiles across multiple databases (or Primavera P6 instances) within your organization can be a huge pain if you want to keep everything in sync. You need to define your OBS structure, global and project profiles, and the association of users to global profiles and OBS nodes, and replicate that manually across your organization.
Creating matching security profiles is particularly tedious because the information is presented in P6 in checkbox lists which are hard to follow and very difficult to compare from one P6 instance to another. Version 8 is even more convoluted than Version 7, since the checkboxes are now tabbed.
Written by Ravi Wallau - Integration Specialist
on Wednesday, 06 May 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
How to Modify Thousands of Activites in a WBS Structure in Less Than Half the Time
I have been involved in scheduling a turnaround recently, and I was assigned the task of making changes to the existing Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). One of the changes consisted of adding a repetitive new element to existing nodes of the WBS. I started this task by utilizing the features in Primavera that add and indent elements to a WBS, including the add plus sign and the navigation arrows on the Move tool bar.
on Monday, 20 April 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader
CAPPS, TAPS, P6-Loader, and P6-Reporter (previously EP-datawarehouse) Are P6 15.1 Ready
Last week, Oracle Primavera announced the latest release of Primavera P6, Primavera Unifier, Primavera Analytics and Primavera Gateway v15.1. The Primavera P6 EPPM API is a powerful set of Java API libraries that allow applications to interact with a P6 EPPM database while adhering to most of the business logic that one would encounter in P6 Web or in the P6 Professional Client. As a result, most of the P6 Service Packs and Fix Packs released include a matching version of the P6 API.
Written by Ravi Wallau - Integration Specialist
on Friday, 10 April 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera P6
How To Set Your Language Preferences In Unifier 10.1
Unifier 10.1 has given each user the ability to customize their user experience based on their region. Users are able to select which language, time zone, date format, and number/currency formats they wish to work with. There are currently 11 different languages available for a user to choose from.
Written by Nicole Jardin, P.Eng. - CEO
on Wednesday, 18 March 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera Unifier
Preventing Current Period Actuals from Bleeding into the Previous Period
Many of our clients use Primavera P6 as one part of an integrated solution involving other systems. One common scenario is to bring labour actuals from a timesheet system or cost actuals from an accounting system into P6. This allows the projects team to see all of the project data in the tool they are familiar with and orients them around a project-major axis.
Written by Dan MacMillan - Integration Specialist
on Wednesday, 25 February 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera P6
A nightly cost and labor integration from a cloud hosted accounting system and P6
For one of our modular manufacturing clients, we built a nightly cost and labor integration from their cloud hosted accounting system into Primavera P6 EPPM. The integration loads actual hours and actual costs onto the P6 resource assignments from all internal office and shop team members’ timesheets. It also integrates Purchase Order line item costs onto the P6 expenses for externally procured services and materials, as well as internal product costs from bulk purchased inventory transfers.
Written by Nicole Jardin, P.Eng. - CEO
on Thursday, 12 March 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera P6
How A 'P6 Level 4 Schedule Reloader' Was Born
When working with a client who engaged Emerald to assist with developing a detailed schedule for piping tie-ins on a major SAGD oil sands expansion project, we found that the old way of building field installation work package( FIWP) templates or fragnets (for those P3 users) and copying them in P6 was just not effective. We had built resource loaded templates in P6 and started replicating them by hand by ISO and FIWP. We had to develop the typical sequences, overlay the manpower loading, and coordinate for limited camp space through resource loading as well as handle shop limitations and deliveries from Ontario and the US.
Written by Nicole Jardin, P.Eng. - CEO
on Friday, 06 March 2015.
Posted in All Articles, P6-Loader, Primavera P6
A quirk when selecting values in the report filter drop down menu
Oracle has introduced a new feature to EPPM 8.4 that allows “multiple selection” on report filters. This is a great feature that adds a new dimension to the filters that can be created on reports. At Emerald Associates, we have already used the “multiple selection” capability on BI Publisher reports that we developed for clients recently.
One of the quirks we discovered when testing the multiple selection feature is that the user that runs the EPPM report has to be careful about how they select the values in the report filter drop down.
on Friday, 27 February 2015.
Posted in All Articles, Primavera P6