Calendars in Primavera P6 is a very important concept, yet highly misunderstood and widely misused. When applied correctly, it brings immense value to your schedule and resource management as well as visualization in the grpahical side, e.g., Gantt Chart view. In this post, content of which is taken from Primavera P6 Pro Live Lessons course, we will learn the fundamentals of Primavera P6 Calendars.
If you’re using the above course, calendars and associated concepts are used across the lessons in a variety of ways. Now, let’s start with the need of Calendars.
We all work within a calendar, which you may or may not realize, but it happens daily! For example, the day has a calendar – a 24-hours calendar. Projects are no different. Resources are no different either. Calendars can also be used for activities.
Hence, you now can say calendars can be created and assigned to:
- Each project (can be within a portfolio),
- Each resource within a project (or shared across),
- Each activity within a project.
Like our day has a 24 hours calendar, similarly a project calendar will have work hours, e.g., 8 hours a day. Like we have holidays, off-days, or partial working hours, so also will be for a project and/or its resources and activities.
Calendar assignments are important to have a proper schedule management, resource management, tracking and scheduling. It’s also used in resource leveling.
Types of Calendars
Primavera P6 software comes with three types of Calendars:
- Global Calendars: Can be applied to all projects within a portfolio or the enterprise.
- Resource Calendars: Can be Personal Resource Calendars or Shared Resource Calendars.
- Project Calendars: Specific to the project under consideration and execution.
Primavera P6 calls these calendars being parts of Calendar Pools. For example, the Global Calendar Pool will have calendars that apply to all projects. Similarly, Resource Calendars are informed as Resource Calendar Pools and Project Calendar is informed as a Pool of Calendars for each project.
To visualize the calendar, go to Enterprise > Calendars. This will launch the Calendar Dialog Box.
Global Calendars
As shown below, the opened Calendar dialog box has three types of Calendars and the Global is the default selected one.
Under Global, you’ve a number of calendars such as 5×10, 6×24, 7×24, Corporate – Standard Full Time, among others.
As you can see, we also have our own Project Calendar, which is WebMS Project Calendar. To make it as the default calendar, double on the check box shown next. This calendar has been made global so that resources, which are enterprise specific, can inherit the properties of this calendar.
To see the content of this Calendar, click on the “Modify” highlighted button shown to the right of the above figure.
As shown above for WebMS Project Calendar:
- Week starts from Sunday (this can be changed).
- Total work hours/day = 8 hours (this can be changed).
- Two holidays = Oct 11 and Oct 29.
- The holidays and non-working days are greyed out.
- It’s not inherited from any other calendar.
This Calendar is a Global Calendar and all Resource Calendars will inherit the properties such as holidays, partial working days, specific non-working days etc. from this Global Calendar.
Resource Calendars
This is our next Calendar to understand. In our case, we have two resource (labor) specific calendars as shown below. Both are Personal Resource Calendars.
Considering CatherineR – Catherine Rice Personal Resource Calendar, you can see the content by clicking on the “Modify” highlighted button shown to the right of the above figure.
As you can see, this Resource Calendar:
- Inherits its properties such as holidays and exceptions from WebMS Project Calendar.
- The project holidays of Oct 11 and Oct 29 are also the holidays for this resource calendar.
- The daily work hours, however, have been changed to 4 hours/day.
One can not only change the daily work hours, but also other aspects such as resource holidays, work timings (e.g., from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM), among others.
Project Calendars
When we created the WebMS Project Calendar, it was first a Project Calendar with project specific holidays, non-working days (e.g., organization’s off days), working hours and work timing.
I’ve made it to be a Global Calendar so that resource calendars can inherit the properties.
Video Demonstration
For a better understanding, a video [duration: 03m approx.] related to calendars, has been made available using Primavera P6 and a live project. This video is directly taken from Primavera P6 Pro Live Lessons. Plug-in your headphones and go full-HD to have a better experience.
Additional information has been given in the above video. Watch and listen to learn more.
Conclusion
Now, we have created the calendars, but when did you apply this Calendar to our project?
This is a very important question. In fact, many miss this part! You’ve to apply the created Calendar to the project. This can be done by going to the Projects window > Project Details (bottom part) > Defaults tab > Calendar. Click on the image to enlarge.
As shown above, our WebMS Project Calendar has been applied to the project.
To learn in-depth about Calendars and many tricky areas, subscribe to the course of Primavera P6 Pro Live Lessons.
Check Videos (Before Subscription):
References:
[1] Primavera P6 Pro Live Lessons Online Course, by ManagementYogi.com
[2] Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – Primavera P6 Pro Live Lessons Online Course
[2] Practical PMP with Oracle Primavera P6, by ManagementYogi.com
