Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) - Are You Familiar with These New Additions?
New features have been added to both Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) V25.1 and V25.2.
Additional navigation icons have been added to allow easier navigation to the project’s workspace when viewing projects in the object selector. You can also now click on the Oracle icon to return to the Home page of whichever object you are currently in.
You now have the ability to run reports on notebook topics with projects as the subject area. You can generate reports on every notebook topic defined for a project, add notebook topics as a column in project reports, and filter projects by notebook topics as required.
You can now hide or rename budget and resource planning scenarios directly in the Actions menu without having to go to Manage Scenarios.
On the Resource Planning page, scenario menu items have been moved to the Actions menu. There, you can add a scenario or choose Scenario Options to rename or send a scenario for review. Print and Manage Scenarios is also now located under the Actions menu.
On the Activities page, new FTE (Full Time Equivalent) options are available when viewing resource or role usage. You can specify a single value to use for all FTE calculations to quickly estimate a head count of upcoming for projects or to report resource projections.
When viewing the Stacked and Not Stacked Histogram, click Project Usage Settings and view the FTE tab. The new options include the ability to display the values based on calendar, hours, or a custom value. You can also specify a custom unit of measure and/or a customizable title at the top of both histograms and spreadsheets to provide full context for FTE data.
A new setting is now available for resource assignments. The setting ‘Update units when costs change on resource assignments’ will recalculate the units when you edit the cost values.
Selecting this option results in the units being recalculated when you change the planned, budgeted, or remaining costs, regardless of the project-level setting for updating units when costs change on resource assignments. If the project-level setting is also selected, the planned, budgeted, or remaining units are re-spread when the costs change for the assignment.
When the option is not selected, the costs and units are handled independently, regardless of the 'Update units when costs change on resource assignments' project-level setting.
On the Activities page, when viewing the resource and role usage spreads with ordinal dates on the timescale, the option ‘Download Entire Spreadsheet’ now includes ordinal dates as well. The downloaded data will include spreads based on project planned start and finish, with the timescale interval set to week & month.
On the Task List page, all the grouping bands for Assigned User and Company Fields will be displayed even if these bands are empty. This allows you to easily add tasks to empty groups, and manage tasks. The ‘Hide if Empty’ setting will be available in Settings to hide the empty bands.
A new risk type has been added to OPC called Risk Factor. Risk Factors are a way of linking the uncertainty on an activity to one or more reasons, or factors. Risk factors are often related to productivity - such as resource skill level - and impact an activity's schedule and cost as percentages.
The maximum limit of projects imported through XML has been increased to 30 projects, including projects, baselines, and scenarios. The first 30 projects – or any combination of projects, baselines, and scenarios — will automatically be set to import, with the remaining projects, baselines, and scenarios being set to Do Not Import.
For example, if an XML file contains three projects, and the first project contains 29 baselines, they will be set to import, and the two remaining projects will be set to Do Not Import, and will need to be imported separately. The ‘Import As’ setting can be changed as needed, but only 30 can be selected for import.
Resource scenarios that have the status of Under Review, Proposed, Under Approval, or Approved can be renamed in the Manage Scenario window. In previous versions, scenarios with these statuses could only be renamed from the Actions Menu.
On the Assignment List page, resource spreads can be displayed using Full-Time Equivalent (FTE). At the bottom of the page, select the toggle for FTE, or go into Settings and use the FTE tab to enable and configure how FTE is calculated.
Some additional functionality to be aware of:
Full Time Equivalent (FTE):
Are you using the FTE display functionality in OPC? Now, when downloading the entire spread data with FTE displayed on the Assignment Lists or Activities page, the total values for the spread data will be blank.
A new message will display on the Work Plan page when using swim lanes to assist when no tasks are displayed. Swim lanes may be filtered when quick filters, named filters, Hide Empty Lanes, or Hide No Value Lanes toggles are on.
The message – ‘Adjust your filters or add values for the select swim lane attributes’ — will direct you to the Manage Filters page.
On the Hand-offs page, the constraint and discussion icons will be displayed on task cards.
You may find some pieces of OPC’s new functionality more relevant to your specific requirements than others, depending on what kind of projects you are working with, and how you are handling them in OPC. It is useful to be aware of new functionality, as it may be something that can assist with completing tasks with increased efficiency, as well as reducing frustration.
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You now have the ability to run reports on notebook topics with projects as the subject area. You can generate reports on every notebook topic defined for a project, add notebook topics as a column in project reports, and filter projects by notebook topics as required.
You can now hide or rename budget and resource planning scenarios directly in the Actions menu without having to go to Manage Scenarios.
On the Resource Planning page, scenario menu items have been moved to the Actions menu. There, you can add a scenario or choose Scenario Options to rename or send a scenario for review. Print and Manage Scenarios is also now located under the Actions menu.
On the Activities page, new FTE (Full Time Equivalent) options are available when viewing resource or role usage. You can specify a single value to use for all FTE calculations to quickly estimate a head count of upcoming for projects or to report resource projections.
When viewing the Stacked and Not Stacked Histogram, click Project Usage Settings and view the FTE tab. The new options include the ability to display the values based on calendar, hours, or a custom value. You can also specify a custom unit of measure and/or a customizable title at the top of both histograms and spreadsheets to provide full context for FTE data.
A new setting is now available for resource assignments. The setting ‘Update units when costs change on resource assignments’ will recalculate the units when you edit the cost values.
Selecting this option results in the units being recalculated when you change the planned, budgeted, or remaining costs, regardless of the project-level setting for updating units when costs change on resource assignments. If the project-level setting is also selected, the planned, budgeted, or remaining units are re-spread when the costs change for the assignment.
When the option is not selected, the costs and units are handled independently, regardless of the 'Update units when costs change on resource assignments' project-level setting.
On the Activities page, when viewing the resource and role usage spreads with ordinal dates on the timescale, the option ‘Download Entire Spreadsheet’ now includes ordinal dates as well. The downloaded data will include spreads based on project planned start and finish, with the timescale interval set to week & month.
On the Task List page, all the grouping bands for Assigned User and Company Fields will be displayed even if these bands are empty. This allows you to easily add tasks to empty groups, and manage tasks. The ‘Hide if Empty’ setting will be available in Settings to hide the empty bands.
A new risk type has been added to OPC called Risk Factor. Risk Factors are a way of linking the uncertainty on an activity to one or more reasons, or factors. Risk factors are often related to productivity - such as resource skill level - and impact an activity's schedule and cost as percentages.
The maximum limit of projects imported through XML has been increased to 30 projects, including projects, baselines, and scenarios. The first 30 projects – or any combination of projects, baselines, and scenarios — will automatically be set to import, with the remaining projects, baselines, and scenarios being set to Do Not Import.
For example, if an XML file contains three projects, and the first project contains 29 baselines, they will be set to import, and the two remaining projects will be set to Do Not Import, and will need to be imported separately. The ‘Import As’ setting can be changed as needed, but only 30 can be selected for import.
Resource scenarios that have the status of Under Review, Proposed, Under Approval, or Approved can be renamed in the Manage Scenario window. In previous versions, scenarios with these statuses could only be renamed from the Actions Menu.
On the Assignment List page, resource spreads can be displayed using Full-Time Equivalent (FTE). At the bottom of the page, select the toggle for FTE, or go into Settings and use the FTE tab to enable and configure how FTE is calculated.
Some additional functionality to be aware of:
- Budget and resource scenarios that have a status of Retired can now be deleted from the portfolio. Using this functionality allows you to remove scenarios that are no longer needed.
- When creating a published view, the grid and chart now include the option to filter on portfolio proposed budget.
Full Time Equivalent (FTE):
Are you using the FTE display functionality in OPC? Now, when downloading the entire spread data with FTE displayed on the Assignment Lists or Activities page, the total values for the spread data will be blank.
A new message will display on the Work Plan page when using swim lanes to assist when no tasks are displayed. Swim lanes may be filtered when quick filters, named filters, Hide Empty Lanes, or Hide No Value Lanes toggles are on.
The message – ‘Adjust your filters or add values for the select swim lane attributes’ — will direct you to the Manage Filters page.
On the Hand-offs page, the constraint and discussion icons will be displayed on task cards.
You may find some pieces of OPC’s new functionality more relevant to your specific requirements than others, depending on what kind of projects you are working with, and how you are handling them in OPC. It is useful to be aware of new functionality, as it may be something that can assist with completing tasks with increased efficiency, as well as reducing frustration.
About the Author
Mary Lynn Backstrom, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-BA – Implementation Specialist
Mary Lynn spent many years filling a variety of project controls duties such as planning, scheduling, analyzing, training and continuous improvement in the Aerospace Industry. Since joining Emerald in 2008, she has been a tremendous asset to the Emerald team. She has worked as a lead scheduler for turnarounds, led sessions for review and troubleshooting of scheduling and reporting, created and given custom training courses for clients, and is a sought after Primavera P6 trainer.
Mary Lynn enjoys some very diverse spare time activities. Along with a variety of outdoor activities such as gardening, she also enjoys making life size lawn ornaments for special holidays like Christmas. Mary Lynn is known for her participation in the community as well. You may have seen her walking in fundraisers in Edmonton and Calgary for the Cancer Society.
