Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management: For project managers and consultants, this book will help you master the main elements of Primavera P6, together with the new features in Version 8. Lots of screenshots and clear explanations make for an easy ride.

When you log into P6 Web Client, you will see a screen similar to that shown in the following screenshot:

The screen can be divided into four main areas:

Application menus

The Application menus are always present. Administer lets you manage your own application settings. If you have the right privileges, then you may also use this menu to access application-level settings and data.

Print will print the current screen. In Appendix B, Reporting, we will discuss screen printing and reporting in more detail.

The Help menu offers three options:

• P6 Help is a set of web documents describing how to use P6. The content of that help is much like the content of this book.

• P6 Library is a set of web documents that describe how to set up and administer P6.

• Support takes you to the main website for Oracle Support.

  

Logout logs you out of the system and returns you to the main login screen.

Let's start with logging into the system. If you have installed the windows client, you may already have a shortcut icon to it on your machine. If not, go to Start | Oracle | Primavera Professional.

You should see a screen as shown in the following screenshot. If you have an account, enter your login name and password in the displayed boxes:

If you do not already have a connection set up, click on the Database ellipse button near the bottom of the screen to add and edit database connections. This will show the database connections that P6 knows about. If you are running the client for the first time, it is likely that there will be no items on this list.

Click Add and you will get a dialog asking for two pieces of information.

Database alias: This is a name for your own use to identify the connection. It can be anything. It is helpful to make the alias descriptive enough to remind you to which system it connects. A good practice is to identify the name of the server...

When you log into P6 the first time, you should be presented with a screen similar to the following screenshot:

At the very top is the set of application menus that are standard to most Windows applications, such as File, Edit, View, and Help, plus a few that are specific to P6: Project, Enterprise, and Tools.

In the Professional Client, there is also an Admin menu:

The main screen also contains toolbars across the top, left, and right-hand sides. These toolbars contain icons which provide quick ways to access parts of the program. They are highly customizable. You can move any set of tools to any other toolbar, create a toolbar across the bottom of the page, or even detach a toolbar from the side and make it float!

Floating toolbar: This toolbar will remain on top of the screen while you work on the main screen, and can be moved around as desired.

The central portion of the screen is filled with a set of screens which appear as tabs as you open up different modules. These are...

Before we begin our overview of the menu items, let's address the issue of what shows up in the menu. By default the menu items only include recently chosen items with a set of arrows at the bottom which you can click on to see the menu items that have been hidden. This can be convenient if you have a small screen or if you don't use certain items. Personally, I prefer that the menu always shows all of the items every time.

If you desire this behavior, you can set it easily. Right-click on any toolbar or on the menu bar, and choose Customize…. Then choose the Options tab as shown in the following screenshot:

Simply uncheck the item Menus show recently used commands first.

Then you will see the exact same menu every time, which is convenient if you want to use the application quickly.

This menu also allows you to use larger icons, which can be helpful when learning the application and the smaller icons may all look the same to you. The menu animations are cute, but not worth bothering...

There are a number of ways to view P6 data. In order to help make it easy to compare "apples to apples", P6 allows you to create and save customized views that can be shared by one or more people.

At the top left of almost every screen is an inverted triangle with the label Layout.

This feature lets you alter the appearance of the data screens. While the specific items in the list will change depending on the kind of data you are viewing, there are some common elements.

When you save a layout, a screen appears offering a number of options:

Layout Name is a name to assign to this layout.

Available to lets the user choose who may use this layout. Layouts can be saved at three levels:

In this chapter, we have given a grand overview of P6, from how to log into the system, to all of the main menu items, and to customizing screens. Although there is much more depth in following chapters, we hope that the reader will now have a feel for what capabilities are present in the product and where to find things.

At this point the experienced P6 user who is mainly interested in how things have changed in version 8 may wish to skip ahead to specific topics of interest. Novice users will wish to continue to the next chapter, where we begin to lay out the foundations for managing projects in P6.

In Chapter 3, Organizing your Projects with EPS, OBS, and WBS, we discuss three key structures for organizing information across and within projects: Enterprise Project Structure, Organizational Breakdown Structure, and Work Breakdown Structure.