In project management, you often need to compare different project versions. For example, you may need to compare your baseline schedule with your actual schedule. Or you might have two projects working simultaneously, and need to compare overlapping dates.

In older versions of Primavera P6, you could compare schedules using the Claim Digger tool. Claim Digger let you compare both different schedules and versions of the same schedule. These comparisons would display in a report, allowing you to analyze activity variances.

With the release of Primavera P6 R8.3, the Claim Digger tool was replaced with the Schedule Comparison tool. Schedule Comparison allows you to perform comparisons from the P6 Visualizer. Although accessed differently, this tool lets you run the same comparisons you could with Claim Digger.

This article will outline the process of using Schedule Comparison in Primavera P6 Professional. The following examples are from Primavera P6 Professional 20. However, this tool is available in all versions of P6 from 8.3 up. 

Opening the Schedule Comparison Tool

To access the Schedule Comparison tool, select Tools > Schedule Comparison.

This will open up the P6 Visualizer in another window. The Primavera P6 Visualizer is a reporting-tool within P6. Along with Schedule Comparisons, you can use this tool to create customizable Gantt Charts and Time Scale Logic Diagrams. The Visualizer will install to your computer alongside P6 by default. However, your administrator will need to give you permission to access the program. If the Schedule Comparison option is not available, contact your application administrator for assistance. 

Within the Visualizer, the Create or Open Schedule Comparison box will display.

Creating a New Schedule Comparison

Here, you can choose to create a new comparison, create a comparison based on an existing one, or open a prior comparison. If you haven’t created a comparison yet, you will only have the option to Create New. If you had created a comparison prior, it would appear in the box below under either User or Global – depending on how you saved it.

In this example, I’ll be creating a new comparison, so I’ll keep Create New selected. In the Name field, give your comparison a name.

Before you can create the comparison, you have to tell the program which projects to compare. To do this, select the Options button.

Adjusting Schedule Comparison Options

First, you’ll need to choose two projects from your database to compare. You can compare two separate projects, or a single project with a baseline. 

In the left box, you’ll select the Revised project – this will generally be the updated version of the project. Here, projects will display based on where they are in the Enterprise Project Structure. You will have to expand the EPS layers to find the desired project. 

On the right side, you’ll do the same thing for the Original Project, which is generally an older version of the project. If you want to compare a project to its baseline, you can use the top dropdown menu to switch from Project to Baseline.

In this example, I’ll be comparing two versions of the same project. I’ll choose the original baseline schedule as the Original Project and the latest update as the Revised Project. With this comparison, I’ll be able to see how far ahead or behind the current project is from the original plan.

Once you have two projects selected, press the Add button. Both projects will appear in the bottom box.

Before running the comparison, you may want to adjust how the report displays. You can do this using the General and Advanced tabs at the top of the screen.

General Options

In the General tab, you can choose how to group and save the report.

Under Grouping, you can choose to group the report by activity. If you keep this option deselected, the report will instead group values by data type (such as WBS, Activities, etc).

In the Send Report To section, you can choose how to save the comparison report. You can either save this report as an HTML text file, a CSV spreadsheet, or an ASCII text file. 

Lastly, in the Output File field, you can choose where the report will save on your computer. To adjust this, select the ellipses button and choose a new location for the report.

Advanced Options

In the Advanced tab, you can choose which data to include in the report. The comparison report will show everything that has changed between the two projects. This can lead to a very large and comprehensive report, so you may want to customize exactly what data to compare. Here, you can use the check boxes to choose which Project and Activity information to include in the report.

For my projects, there are several data types I’m not using, such as Notebook Topics, Activity Steps, and User Defined Fields. To make my comparison report easier to comb through, I’ll deselect all these items.

With your options set, you can now choose to either Save the report or Save and Draw it. Selecting Save and Draw will both save and open the comparison report simultaneously. 

Viewing the Report

After pressing Save and Draw, the schedule comparison report will open. The report will divide each data type or activity into different rows. Each row will display both the original project’s data and the updated project’s data.

At the top of the report, you can quickly review project dates, such as the data date and start/finish dates. Continuing down, you’ll see both original and new values for each data type or activity – depending on the report settings. Not only can you compare dates, but also durations, resource assignments, and any other data that has changed between the two projects. Any field that was not found in one of the compared projects will display with Value not specified in the database. At the very end of the report, you’ll also find a list of data items that hadn’t changed between the two projects. 

It’s important to remember that this report is only identifying changes. If any data does not display, that indicates that the values stayed the same between the projects.

One limitation to Schedule Comparison is that it will not tell you anything about project or activity calendars. Instead, you’ll need to track this information manually within the Activities table.

Saving the Report

When you’re done working with the report, you can choose to save it or print it. By default, the report will save as a User report when you create it. If you close out of this report without saving, you’ll still be able to personally access it again. If you want other users to be able to access the report as well, you’ll want to save the report globally. To do this, select Save As. Here, you can choose to save the report Globally, giving all users within the database access to this report.

To exit out of the report, select Close Layout.

Reopening the Schedule Comparison Report

With the comparison report saved, you can reopen it at any time. To get back to the Schedule Comparison screen, once again press Tools > Schedule Comparison in P6. If you’re already in the Visualizer, press the Plus button and select Schedule Comparison.

You can now access the saved comparison report by selecting either Create new from existing or Open from existing. Create new from existing will allow you to create a new report from the same projects, but with different settings. Open from existing, on the other hand, will simply open up the previous comparison. Select the desired comparison under User or Global and then press Draw to reopen the report.

Summary

When working on a project schedule, you will often need to perform comparisons. If delays occur or the schedule gets off track, you may want to compare your updated data with your original planned data. Similarly, If you have two separate projects working simultaneously, you may want to compare overlapping dates. In Primavera P6, you can perform schedule comparisons with ease using the Schedule Comparison tool. This tool, previously called Claim Digger, allows you to create schedule comparison reports to quickly analyze changes. Using Schedule Comparison, you can easily review variances between a project and its baseline, or two separate projects all together.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please use the comment section on the bottom of this page, and don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to get more Primavera P6 tips & tricks directly in your inbox!

Lauren Hecker is the instructor for the Primavera P6 Professionals training courses. To see her next open enrollment course, please visit our calendar. To schedule an onsite or custom course, please contact us!