Merging the Wrong Tasks into a Chart for Version 7.1 - OnePager Bundle - Oracle Primavera P6
Contents
- 1 Merging the Wrong Tasks into a Chart for Version 7.1 - Oracle Primavera P6
- 1.1 About Merging the Wrong Tasks into a Chart
- 1.2 Warn of merging tasks
- 1.3 Related Links
- 1.4 OnePager Blog Posts
Merging the Wrong Tasks into a Chart for Version 7.1 - Oracle Primavera P6
About Merging the Wrong Tasks into a Chart
OnePager Bundle (OPB) can consistently create snapshots from period to period with updated information from an Oracle Primavera P6 source plan. The activities and milestones that are imported to OnePager in UPDATE mode should be the same set of activities and milestones with, perhaps, some added or removed as the project moves forward.
Oracle Primavera P6 ObjectID Field
OnePager Bundle Standalone tracks activities and milestones from snapshot to snapshot though the Oracle Primavera P6 ObjectID field in the source plan. The ObjectID is created by OnePager Bundle from the Oracle Primavera P6 General Category Column called Activity ID and is part of each .xml or .xer file. The ObjectID field and its associated values are:
- Displayable by Oracle Primavera P6,
- Automatically imported by OnePager Bundle Standalone with other activity and milestone related data.
- Used by OnePager Bundle Standalone to match activities and milestones from one snapshot with updated source plan data imported to either replace the snapshot or to add a snapshot consistent with previous snapshots.
ObjectID is not a field that is visible from Oracle Primavera P6 but is useable by OnePager Bundle Standalone as described above. The concept used in OnePager Bundle Standalone for Oracle Primavera P6 is parallel to the concept use in OnePager Pro for Microsoft Project/Project Server and Microsoft Excel where the field UniqueID is used. The OnePager.com Blog Posts for Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel provide additional information and can be found at the links show at the end of this article: OnePager Blog Posts 7.11.1-71
Setting Your Warning Thresholds
Sometimes you can make the mistake of accidentally updating a chart with activities and milestones from the wrong Oracle Primavera P6 source plan. Or with the wrong set of activities and milestones from the right Oracle Primavera P6 source plan if you are making several charts from the same Oracle Primavera P6 source plan using several different Flag fields. When these situations arise, OnePager detects them by using the ObjectID field from the source plan to determine if additional activities and milestones are being imported or if activities and milestones are missing from the imported source plan supporting the update. Additional or missing activities and milestones can cause the chart to suddenly appear messed up because it now displays many added new activities and milestones that reside in many new rows and swimlanes. Even the earlier snapshots are affected by these new rows and swimlanes.
A similar messed up chart can result from missing activities and milestones as well. When this happens, the best idea is to immediately press the Undo button above the OnePager Bundle ribbon. This action immediately restores the chart to how it was before all the unfamiliar activities and milestones were merged. Or you can simply close the messed up chart without saving it. When you reopen the chart, the erroneous update is gone.
To avoid this problem in the first place, OnePager Bundle can warn you before the wrong activities and milestones are incorporated into the chart. To receive this warning, there is a checkbox in the Template Properties and Chart Properties form's Advanced tab that when checked ON assures that the Warning message shown below is displayed. The Chart Properties form's Advanced tab with the Set warning thresholds form is shown here:
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The settings in the Set warning thresholds form are expressed in terms of percentage of extra activities and milestones added and activities and milestones that are missing. If, during a merge operation these thresholds are exceeded, the warning message is displayed. You also have the option to set the warning thresholds in the Template Properties form's Advanced tab. The article links below provide more information on these topics:
| Template Properties Form's Advanced Tab 24.1.1-71 |
| Advanced Tab for OnePager Pro - Warn Of Merging Tasks 21.13.1-71 |
Warn of merging tasks
About Merging Tasks
Setting Warning Thresholds
The Advanced tab of the Template Properties or Chart Properties forms has a checkbox titled Warn of merging tasks as shown in the previous section. This checkbox is accompanied by the Warning options button to the right. When this checkbox is checked ON, the button is active and when the Warning options button is clicked it accesses the Set warning thresholds form where you can set the percentage of extra and missing activities necessary to provide you with the warning message discussed below.
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Extra activities are activities that are present in the imported source plan but are not present in the current chart. Missing activities are activities that are present in the current chart but are not present in the imported source plan. Setting these percentages to 100% has the impact of turning the fixes and warnings off. Setting the percentages to 0% provides an assurance that any extra or missing activities triggers the fixes and warnings feature.
When Merging Activities Exceed the Thresholds
When the Warn on merging activities checkbox is checked ON and your workflow involves merging activities, OnePager looks to see if extra activities are being imported or if missing activities are not being imported when updating a snapshot. After making the calculation, OnePager Bundle shows a Warning form asking if you want to proceed with the update, cancel the update, or try to fix activities that have been misidentified.
Warning Message Form
The Warning message also gives you access to the See Extra and Missing Activities form, shown below, so you can actually see the extra and missing activities and milestones and make a fix, if possible. OnePager Bundle is configured to issue the warning shown below if either of the thresholds in the Set warning thresholds form are exceeded. In this example, the threshold is exceeded because either 100% of the imported activities and milestones are extra or 100% of the existing activities and milestones are missing:
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At this point you have three (3) options:
Continue Import
Click the Continue import button to proceed with the import. By doing so you are accepting the differences between the current chart and the imported data that are about to update the chart. This can lead to both new rows with new activities and milestones and empty rows in the snapshot.
See and Fix It
Click the See and fix it button to take a look at the specific extra and missing activities and milestones before deciding to whether to continue or not. You can sometimes also fix the issue if you notice that an extra activity is actually a missing activity in disguise. In that case, you can tell OnePager Bundle Standalone to map a missing activity to the extra activity. These actions are explained in the See Extra and Missing Tasks form discussed below.
Cancel Import
As the final option, you can click the Cancel import button to close the OnePager message form above and stop the import process.
Continuing to Import Regardless of Extra or Missing Activities
Clicking the Continue import button tells OnePager Bundle to proceed with the import and disregard any differences between the set of current activities in the chart and the set of selected activities in the source plan being imported. At the end of the import operation, you have an updated snapshot that was either added to the snapshot list or replaced. You can expect to see some new rows containing the extra activities or milestones and some empty rows corresponding to the missing activities or milestones. The latter can be automatically hidden if you have chosen the option Hide newly-empty rows on import on the Advanced tab page of the Chart Properties form.
For more information on hiding empty rows, please see section in the article at: Hide Newly-Empty Rows On Import Checkbox 21.13.1-71
Using the See Extra and Missing Activities Form
Clicking the See and fix it button in the message form accesses the See Extra and Missing Activities form that lists the extra and missing activities in two grids as shown below. Usually a missing activity is just an existing activity in the chart that is not in the current import set because you decided you did not want to flag it for import. Likewise, an extra activity is usually just a activity in the import set that you did not flag previously but now want to include in the updated chart. In these cases, there’s nothing to worry about, and you can safely ignore the rest of the discussion below.
Wrong Source Plan or Wrong Flag Field
There’s also the case in which you have accidentally started an update using the wrong source plan or the wrong flag field. To continue can give you a big, unpleasant surprise! There can be lots of activities that lost all of their formatting. If the See Extra and Missing Activity form shows lots of extra and missing activities that don’t seem to belong together in the same chart, you probably need to cancel the update so that you can go back and choose the correct activities to perform the update correctly.
Mapping Extra Activities to Missing Activities
However, there are cases in which an extra activity is actually a missing activity that is misidentified because its ID has changed in the source plan between when the chart was first created and the current moment when source plan data are being used to make the update. When this happens, you are able to recognize the missing activity that is really just the extra activity with a different ID. In this situation, you almost always want the extra activity to inherit all the properties of the missing activity so that it retains the right formatting (i.e., color, shape, row assignment, and so on). You can do this by mapping these two activities to each other. If you see an extra activity and then find a missing activity that you recognize to be the same activity but with a different ID, use the Map button in the form below to map the extra activity to its corresponding missing activity.
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The form above has two grids (Extra Tasks and Missing Tasks), each of which has four columns. The left-most column contains the row cells for selecting a grid row. The ID column contains the ObjectID for the extra or missing activities. The Task name column contains the activity's name label. The right-most column displays check marks for both members of a mapped pair. When the vertical scroll bar is present in the form it means there are more entries in the grid than displayed in the form's Extra or Missing Tasks window. For convenience, clicking the column headers for the ID and Task name columns reverses the sort sequence for the column and it's associated grid rows. To map an extra activity to the missing activity that goes with it, follow these steps:
- 1) Use your mouse to select one activity from the Extra Tasks grid row by clicking the extra activity’s selection cell.
- 2) Then go to the Missing Tasks grid row and click the selection cell of the missing activity that goes with extra activity.
- 3) Once two rows are selected, the Map button is enabled. Click the Map button to map the two activities to each other.
Notice that check marks now appear in the Mapped column for both grid rows. Also notice that the name of the button changes from Map to Unmap, indicating that you can change your mind and remove the mapping you just created. You can repeat the procedure above as many times as needed provided there are pairs of activities available in the Extra Tasks grid rows and Missing Tasks grid rows. After matching a pair and clicking the Map button, when you select the second activity in the next pair notice that the button labeled Unmap is relabeled to Map thus enabling the mapping function once more. To review all your mappings, select any mapped activity in either grid. Notice that it's paired task in the other grid is automatically selected and that the Unmap button is now enabled. This lets you see what is mapped to what and to remove mappings that should not be there.
When you are satisfied with all the mappings between extra and missing activities, associated missing activities, click the Done button to confirm and go back to the Warning message form where the process started. When you finished this matching process and returned to the Warning message form, click one of the three buttons as described below:
- Clicking the Continue import button tells OnePager Bundle to proceed with the remaining import process and use any matched missing and extra activities or milestones to preserve formatting.
- Clicking the Cancel import button stops the import process and returns you to where you started the update process (i.e. chart or Start form).
- Clicking the See and Fix It button takes you back to the See Extra and Missing Activities form so that you can review, add, or remove mappings.
Notes
During any import and update operation, OnePager Bundle can find extra activities and no missing activities. Or it can find missing activities and no extra activities. In these situations, the Warning message is still displayed and the option to click the See and fix it button is still available. However, there is no way to fix anything because one of the grids in the See Extra and Missing Tasks form is empty. When you view the See Extra and Missing Tasks form in such situations, it shows you the extra or missing activities, but it does not instruct you to map anything. In this case, the form is for informational purposes only.
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Related Links
Basic Workflows (Portal) 7.0.1-71
Advanced Tab 21.13.1-71
Template Only Features for OnePager Pro 24.1.1-71
OnePager Blog Posts
These links to the OnePager.com Blog are articles pertaining to Microsoft Project/Project Server and Microsoft Excel with regard to their used of Unique ID for the purpose of managing the merge process. These Blog articles may be useful to you with respect to managing the merging of activities and milestones in charts created from Oracle Primavera P6 source plans.
What’s a Unique ID and Why Should I Care?
Unique IDs in Microsoft Project
Unique IDs in Project Online and Project Server
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