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Duration display

5 replies [Last post]
Sun, 2007-02-18 19:20
george karam
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Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Can anybody tell me if in P5 the duration can be displayed to match the the esdate and efdate, regardless of the calendar. The user pref are set to match one calendar settings for the time units. Is there a way to match all calendars and to show the exact calendar days, i.e the difference between the finish date and the start date for any activity.
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Fri, 2007-02-23 15:02
#1
Rashid Iqbal
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Joined: 3 May 2005
Posts: 94
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I will tell what I do.

The duration is first dependent upon the hours that you entered as the duration. And when you want to see the no of days, then it dependent upon the no of hours per day under user preference and the activity calendar. And finally the summary duration which you want to see on a WBS or an Activity Code band is dependent upon the default calendar.

If my activity is using a calendar that is having 10 hours a day then I will select 10 hours per day under user preference. Now, to make the summary duration on the WBS bands reasonably matching with the activities underneath it, I will have to select a calendar that is almost same to what the most activities have in the project i.e. 5 days or 4 days workweek with 10 hours working each day.

After doing all this, I can still see that two activities having the same start and finish dates have different durations. For example one is showing 10 days and the other is showing 20 days and both are starting Jan 1 and ending on Jan 10. The reason being one is a double shift (20 hrs per day) and the other is single shift (10 hrs per day.

To close this discussion, what I have seen that you can’t be accurate in this issue 100 percent so try to achieve 95 % accuracy.

Man this what this P3e/c is .....I do have doubts that it can be ever used on an enterprise level. I read a primavera guru saying that it is better to manage each and every project in a separate database............

Regards

Rashid
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Mon, 2007-02-19 16:46
#2
george karam
User offline. Last seen 4 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi Rama,

This was my suggestion, not Rodel’s. However, the problem remains. There should be an online and direct way to convert calendar Vs. Working Days. the user defined field will need updating each time there is a change!! which is all times.

Best regards

George

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Mon, 2007-02-19 08:06
#3
Rama Krishnan
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Joined: 2 Nov 2006
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Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi George ,

Rodel is correct. If you just want a display, why not create a user def field & use your own formula to set the days such as (EF-ES +1) in a global change
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Mon, 2007-02-19 05:52
#4
george karam
User offline. Last seen 4 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 13
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi Rodel,

The point here is that one need not compromise with only one calander in a single project. (need not talk about mutiproject schedules).

I know that in P5 the duration is stored in hours. the way the duration is "displayed" depends on the "user preferences" which will change the hours to any duration setting format wished. This is done by simply dividing the hours by the number of hours per day / week / month etc. that are defined in the user preferences.

However, the start and finish dates are controlled by the calendar. i.e. when a time analysis is done, the duration in working hours is added to the ESDATE and by using the calendar of the activity or also of the lags, the EFDATE is found.

I cannot change all the calendars to suit the 7 days a week as this will change the basic concept of calculating working and non-working days.

I was thinking, since it is simply a display matter maybe it is still something that need to be provided by Primavera as an additional service pack: i.e. in the user preferences there should be an option to display durations as calender units (days, weeks, months, etc.) and not as working units (days, week, etc.), by simply subtracting the ESDATE from the EFDATE and adding 1.

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Sun, 2007-02-18 20:00
#5
Rodel Marasigan
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Joined: 25 Oct 2006
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Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas
Hi George,

Activity duration will always follow your activity calendar. If you required matching all of them to ES & EF date then create a 7days calendar and used it on all your activity calendar regardless of time unit setting. You might set time unit to match your 7days calendar for your calculation and reporting purposes.

Cheers,

Rodel
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