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Material Units

7 replies [Last post]
Thu, 2006-11-23 02:23
Dayanidhi Dhandapany
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Dear PP’ers,

There is no direct variable available in P5 to display budgeted material units on the activity layout columns. So i have to use global change to hold this material units using user_integer1 variable, but got another problem, in global change I can see the effect, but in the activity layout I can’t see any changes under this user_integer1 column.

can any one find the reason?.

Thanking in anticipation.

Cheers!!!

Daya
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Replies

Wed, 2006-11-29 06:21
#1
DANG CORP
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Hi,

well what u can do is, get your data out somehow, (your activit4.xls) as you suggested,

then import it back into the activity under the choosen UDF fields in your activitiy, and you are done mate.

Vu
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Tue, 2006-11-28 18:54
#2
Alex Wong
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Joined: 12 Feb 2003
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Daya

My question to you is if there is a multi material resource activity, which quantitiy should the software display.

I understand you are a end user, however, we cannot expect a software is clever enough to read our minds.

May be one day it will...

Cheers

Alex.
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Tue, 2006-11-28 07:44
#3
Dayanidhi Dhandapany
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Hello Alex and Vu,

I know that materials are having different units, so we can’t sum up like labour hours. if i have detailed breakdown of activities for an example steel, concrete etc. its units can be displayed against their activities in an activity layout, if it not possible then what is the purpose of providing? user defined fields. i don’t want to care of where these variables are residing either different tables or in a single table, i am just an end user.

Any how we have Activity4.xls workbook(VBA programs are there), we can display the material units in that excel book along with early start/finish dates. i am not sure whether i can copy and paste this material units under userdefined field in Excel and able to display it in P5 Activity layout. I think it is possible using the Activity4.xls workbook to achieve it.

anyway thanks for your feedback gentlemen.

Cheers!!!

Daya.
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Mon, 2006-11-27 15:13
#4
DANG CORP
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Hello,

I hope this information can help you in getting the information to the activities view columns.

as some users do need to show material units on the activities columns, because there companies uses a lot of material and want to report on them etc.

my client is a contractor to a construction company in aus, and reports on how much units on beans they use etc. and require it to view the units on the activites like you, as not all users have access to the resources tabs to see the material units etc.




-- this is how they archieve it.

1. each month, they export a report that has the material units to an excel file. (they save this report earlier, so they can reuse it every month).

2. they use this excel file and with the "DangCorp ToolBox" i build for them, they import it back into P3e, but this time, they import it under a user defined fields, , they called that "Material Units UDF". and done!

3. in addition to that, they have another UDF fields called "Material Indicator" which is a udf indicator fields, that indicate if the units is over budget or under budget etc, and that value is calculed in the excel file - with a business rules that they have apply on there company, (like greater than 100 is good, and less than 100 is ok etc), and imported using the same tools as number 2.


more info is on my website ok.

but other is right, if P3e the company can bring the labour units, why not just bring the material units too, to save users from doing all these other stuff to get it up here.

--- i suggest you put in a function request to P3e, and they might consider it, i have put in a few, and it sometimes do and sometimes don’t add, depends. yeah.



kind regards,

Vu Dang
www.dangcorp.com
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Sun, 2006-11-26 20:30
#5
Alex Wong
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Daya

You can have a trick to do what you wanted in the activity level by using import and exporting.

Of course it is more time consuming but it will give you the desired result. (Any you can automatic this if you know a bit of programming)

And to answer you why you cannot display material unit in the activity column, because they are in different table in the database. But you may ask why then the labor hours is in there. The answer is they need that to calculate the EV Labor in the activity table thats why the labor hrs columns is in activity level as well

HTH

Alex
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Fri, 2006-11-24 14:31
#6
Rashid Iqbal
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Naraj,

A few days back i replied to a similar question and am pasting the same answer here.


"User defined fields are ‘Subject’ specific. UDF can be for activities, resources, expenses and they can be only populated for the values that belong to that subject area. Budgeted quantity is under resource area and so a UDF for resource can be only be populated via global change. Even, when you populate a resource UDF then to show it in activity view would be another issue (If my memory serves me right, I was unable to show a resource UDF in activity view). I think, somewhere in the past I accomplished it via import and export where I mapped an Activity UDF to resource quantity."

Regards
Rashid



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Fri, 2006-11-24 04:00
#7
C Nagaraj
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In my opininon it is a flaw in the P3e/c, after a close scrutiny i came to understand this.
if you see the actvity table the tab summary gives us a summary of only the labour and non labour units only.

P3 should not given the additional option of material to its resources.

I only came to know this after adding resources close to 3000 activites spread across 3 projects, then i came to know that summary of material resources is not possible.

So while developing the schedule never ever select the material resource classification and end in trouble.
Regarding user_integer1 variable, still i am splitting hair to find out why it is not appearing in the layout. No answers
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