In Oracle Primavera Cloud, dashboards allow you to visually display project, workspace, and activity data. Dashboards allow you to zone in on specific parts of the project plan – such as upcoming activities, or resource allocation. OPC dashboards are compositions of tiles, letting you show a variety of information. One of the more customizable tile types available is Charts. Charts let you display information visually through histograms, graphs, or tables. Additionally, charts feature drill-down capabilities – letting you dive deeper into a data set with just one click. Using drill-down charts, you can dive further into data to gain more insight on how your projects are progressing.

In this article, we will look at how to create drill-down charts for dashboards in Oracle Primavera Cloud. These tools are available to any OPC user assigned either the Schedule or Portfolio Management license type.

What are Dashboards?

As mentioned above, dashboards allow you to visually display project, workspace, and program data. You can create a variety of different dashboards for the sake of different audiences. For every object within the program, you’ll have access to a Dashboards app, where you can create and view your dashboards.

Dashboards are compositions of tiles, showing different project or workspace information. The program comes with several default tile types, allowing you to add custom images or text for display. One of the default tile types available is Charts, which allow you to create dynamic displays of information. You can create charts to show a variety of different types of data. For example, you could create an activity chart to show all upcoming activities, or a resource chart to track overall resource costs.

For a more in-depth guide on creating Dashboards, please refer to this article here.

What Are Charts?

Charts are graphical representations of project, workspace, and activity data. These are the essential building blocks of dashboards – they allow you to display any information, in any manner needed. Oracle Primavera Cloud allows you to create a variety of different charts, such as Pie Charts and Bar Graphs. You could create multiple charts for any one single dashboard. For a workspace dashboard, you could create a pie chart to track the number of projects managed by each user. For a project dashboard, you could create a bar graph of costs per activity within the project. Charts also allow you to use custom data, such as codes and configured fields.

You can only create charts at the Workspace level. However, you can use these charts on any Dashboard within that Workspace – including Project and Program dashboards.

As mentioned earlier, charts support drill-down functionality. This allows you to create sub-charts within charts. When you select a specific value within a chart, the drill-down function will link you to a sub-chart where you can view further information. You can create multiple chains of sub-charts. If desired, you can have the sub-chart drill down into another sub-chart showing further information. There is no limit to the number of sub-charts that you can create for a chart.

In the following example, we’ll be creating a bar chart for the workspace to show the planned costs for each project within it. To drill down this information further, we’ll create a subgraph showing the costs for each activity within the selected project. This will let us quickly see a distribution of project costs over time.

Creating a Chart

Before applying a chart to a dashboard, you will first need to create it. To create a chart, open the desired workspace. Within the Main Menu, select the Charts option under the Dashboards app.

Within the Charts page, select Add to create a new chart. 

Chart Settings

First, you’ll need to give your chart a unique Name and ID. In this example, I’ll name my chart Project Planned Costs and keep the default ID. 

Next, you’ll need to choose a Chart Type. There are 13 types of charts available here, including common ones like Pie Chart and Bar Chart, and less common ones like Bubble and Tree Map. For my chart, I’ll choose Vertical Bar. 

Lastly, you can choose a Subject Area for the chart – this is the type of data the chart will focus on. You can choose from a variety of subjects, such as Activities and Risk – but in this case, I’ll select Resource Assignments. This will focus the graph on specifically the resources I’ve assigned to the project.

Optional Chart Settings

There are optional settings here under History Range, Filters, and Chart Settings. 

Under History Range, you can choose to Enable Trending, which will allow you to view the graph’s values’ trends over a certain period of time. 

Within Filters, you can choose to add a filter to filter down the chart’s values further. For resources, I could choose to filter my resources by the project they’re assigned to, or the type of resource. 

Lastly, under Chart Settings, you can choose how the chart displays – such as if you want to add labels or a legend. Again, these are all optional settings – and I’ll leave them all as they are for this chart.

Chart Fields

Within the main work area, you can choose fields for the chart. The options available will depend on the subject area and type of chart created. Here, I can choose what displays within the Y Axis, the X Axis, and how the values are grouped. 

Under X Axis, I’ll choose Project Name and under Y Axis, I’ll select Planned Cost. This will let me see the planned cost for each project within the workspace.

Select Apply to view a preview of the chart. If it looks good, select Save to exit out of the menu and save the chart. I can now assign the chart to the dashboard – but because I want to use this chart to drill down, I’ll want to first create a sub-chart.

Creating a Sub-Chart to Drill Down

To create a drill-down chart, you first need to create another chart. You do not have to associate this chart with the prior one. Instead, you’ll connect the charts together when applying them to the dashboard. For the chart I just created, I want to drill down to see the activities associated with the selected project’s costs. To do this, I’ll create another chart by selecting Add.

I’ll name this chart Activity Planned Costs, set the Type as Vertical Bar, and the Subject Area as Resources.

For the X Axis, I’ll select Activity Name. Under Y Axis, I’ll select Planned Cost. 

Once again, select Apply to view a preview of the chart, and Save to save the changes. With both charts created, we can now connect them together within the dashboard.

Applying Drill-Down Charts to Dashboards

In this example, I’ll apply these charts to a dashboard I already have created – although you could create a new one from scratch as well. To create or edit a dashboard, select the Main Menu > Dashboards > Manage Dashboards. Select Add to add a new dashboard, or select an existing one from the list to edit it.

First, you’ll need to add a chart to the dashboard by clicking and dragging the Chart tile onto the screen. Within the settings window, select a Chart from the list. I’ll start by adding the Planned Project Costs chart, the first one I created. You can adjust the size of the chart by clicking and dragging the lower right hand corner.

With the chart selected, the settings menu will give you an option to Enable Drill Down. If you select this checkbox, you’ll be able to link this chart to a related subchart. Select Link Sub Chart and choose another chart from the list – this time, I’ll choose Activity Planned Costs. If needed, you can drill down even further by connecting additional subcharts to the added subchart.

Then, select Save and View in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The dashboard will automatically open, showing your added charts. Currently, this chart is showing me the costs for each project within the workspace. If I select a specific project bar, the drill-down functionality will take me into the second chart. In the second chart, we can now see where those costs are spread over the project’s activities. You can always get back to the main chart by selecting the Back button in the lower right hand corner.

Now, we can dig further into the chart’s data with just a click of the mouse.

Summary

In Oracle Primavera Cloud, Dashboards allow you to create customized displays of project and activity data. Composed of a series of tiles, they allow you to dive into specific aspects of the project plan – such as resource usage or cost. To use dashboards to their full capabilities, you’ll want to create Charts. Charts allow you to show any information desired, in any manner – allowing for full customization. With charts, you can even dig deeper into data by using the Drill-Down functionality to access subcharts. When selecting a value in a chart, drill-down will link you to an associated sub-chart, showing further information. Using dashboards, charts, and sub-charts to drill-down, you can create a dynamic display of project data for a variety of different user types.

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Lauren Hecker is an Oracle Primavera Cloud, Primavera P6, and Microsoft Project instructor who teaches onsite and virtual scheduling courses. To see her next open enrollment course, please visit our calendar. To schedule an onsite or custom course, please contact us!