Primavera P6 Updates & Upgrades

Welcome to our new Primavera P6 Updates blog! Our goal is to review and distill information about all Oracle/Primavera software releases and summarize for our subscribers. As you may be aware, there are two editions of Primavera P6, Enterprise and Professional. Additionally, both editions can be deployed on-premise or in the Oracle Cloud. Oracle releases updates on a monthly basis and the nature of the revisions and which edition and deployment model the update applies to vary. This initial blog entry is a primer about Oracle’s release information and how we will compile for your review.

First it is important to understand Oracle’s numbering convention. “P6,” is a brand name, not a revision number. The current on-premise version of P6 is 17.12.4 where “17,” refers to the year released, “12,” to the month released (December) and “4,” is the month of the subsequent year that a minor update was released (April). So in this case, the major revision (upgrade) was released in December of 2017, and a minor revision was released in April of 2018.

When Oracle issues an update, they will sometimes include a brochure, video, or other media about the release. We will post all relevant media to our P6 Updates and Upgrades Page along with other helpful tools, one of  which is the Primavera Cumulative Feature Overview Tool which allows you to produce a report that itemizes all of the changes that have been released for either edition between any two releases.

Finally, we will provide a summary of the changes with each blog posting so you can make informed decisions about if and when you should apply the update to your environments. Although we will keep our P6 Updates and Upgrades Page and matrix current, we will not issue blog posting with every minor release.

Oh, and we can perform the update for you; it’s one of the many services that we make available to our clients, just give us a call to discuss.

So, let’s get up to speed. As you can imagine, there have been many updates and upgrades throughout the years, but let’s focus on the changes that have been released in version 17.x:

Oracle has been on a mission to replace Java based applets with quicker, more secure and reliable pages written in HTML5. With each release, more Java applets have been retired. This is great news since Java is notorious for causing application conflicts and degrading performance. Anyone who’s had an automatic update to their operating system has likely seen the dreaded Java out of date error message will be happy that Oracle is moving in this direction.

Notable improvements include:

Release 17.12

Import the Owner field with Primavera XML files if the destination database includes the same users as the originating database.  (P6 Enterprise and P6 Professional)

Options are added to Team Member Web preferences, allowing you to display WBS ID and Name on the My Tasks and Timesheets pages. (P6 Enterprise)

Chose whether to update actual units and costs when updating baselines.

Introduced in 17.12.1: The Activity Data tab of the Update Baseline dialog box allows you to choose whether to update actual units and costs when adding resources and roles to the baseline. You can still choose to update budgeted or planned units and costs when adding resources and roles to the baseline. (P6 Professional)

Release 17.9

Zoom to Fit is added for the Activity Network and Trace Logic on the Activities page. (P6 Enterprise)

New code display setting. On the General page in Application Settings, you can now control whether names or descriptions are displayed for project, activity, and other codes. (P6 Enterprise)

Release 17.8

New code display setting. On the General page in Application Settings, you can now control whether names or descriptions are displayed for project, activity, and other codes. (P6 Enterprise)

Release 17.7

Direct XML File Download.

When exporting an XML file from P6 Professional, the file can be downloaded directly, avoiding browser-related issues. (P6 Professional)

Release 17.4

Date and time are now displayed using your local time zone on the Scheduled Services and View Service Status pages. This feature allows you to accurately schedule, troubleshoot, and view the status of your services. And it is particularly helpful in a cloud environment, where the P6 server is on a different time zone than your local workstation. (P6 Enterprise)

Tasks are renamed activities in Team Member and P6 mobile apps. (P6 Enterprise)

The EPS page now contains an option to Delete Published Data for a project. This is useful for projects that you wish to retain, but no longer require published reporting data. (P6 Enterprise)

Release 17.3

Direct XML File Download.

When exporting an XML file from P6 Professional, the file can be downloaded directly, avoiding browser-related issues. (P6 Professional)

For a complete listing of the enhancements included in the 17.x edition, use the Primavera Cumulative Feature Overview Tool found here.

We expect an upgrade to be issued for on-premise deployments in August and will be issuing a blog posting shortly thereafter.

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 Basics course. To see her next open enrollment course, please visit our calendar. To schedule an onsite or custom course, please contact us!