Hi Gaurav

Sorry, it was rather difficult for me, to understand your post, but it seems to be back to the headline of this thread.

This is out of Primavera’s help function:
Level of effort activity
A level of effort activity’s duration is dependent on its predecessor and/or successor activities. Level of effort activities cannot have constraints assigned to them. Level of effort activities are not included when leveling resources.
Use level of effort activities for on-going tasks that depend on other activities. For example, you could assign level of effort activities for clerical work, a security guard, or even some aspects of project management.
A level of effort activity uses its assigned calendar to summarize its dates.
Any type of relationship can be assigned to a level of effort activity.
A level of effort activity’s duration is calculated from the earliest early start of its predecessors/successors (linked to the start end of the level of effort activity) to the latest early finish of its predecessors/successors (linked to the finish end of the level of effort activity).

But there are some additions to be made:
- No need, that the LOE-Activity is in the same project as the activities from which it depends - but all related projects must be open during scheduling.
- The first predecessor activity, started, automatically starts the LOE. The last successor activity finished, automatically finishs the LOE.
- A LOE cannot drive another LOE

Regards

Dieter
You have

In my opinion, Primavera created the “Start” and “Finish” columns to keep the customers happy and to stop them calling for technical support. If you look closely at the Early/Late Start/Finish columns, you will note that completed activities also have these calculated dates. This is correct according to CPM theory and practice but not what the ‘average user’ expects to see.

The Start and Finish columns contain the early start and finish dates, minus those dates for the competed activities. This is a “P3-compatible” listing. I hope that this helps!

Hi Anoon,

Each activity can has the following dates:
Actual dates, Anticipated dates, Early dates, Late dates & Planned dates.

I believe that they invented the "Start & Finish" fields in order not to cause confusion for the users.

Regards,
Karim

Karim,

I can understand it, what I cannot understand is that why do you need to use it (Start/Finish) when there’s a straight forward Early/Late and Actuals? And what if you’re in the process of updating, meaning you’re comparing with your Baseline? I think too many options doesn’t make things easier.

Dieter,

Would you mind elaborating the meaning of "Physical Progress"? (from P5)

cheers

Hi,

You start the "Hint Help" (under "VIEW") --> move your mouse into the table area --> click right button --> "Columns" --> "dates" --> one click with the left mouse button onto the item you are interested. A window will open with a good explanation. Alternatively have a look into the reference manual. there is an excellent overview on the different dates.
The bars of LOE activities: it is the same behaviour as in P3: --> move your mouse into the Gantt/bars area --> click right button --> "Bars" --> The firs column is "visible" --> you mark it with the left mouse button.
Resources/expenses: you assign them activities. P3-curves for resource assignments still exist in P3e.
Behaviour of steps-weighting is similiar to that of the WBS-milestones. Don’t forget the parameter for a project, that the steps are used for %-complete and duration type "physical".
But you wrote that you attended a training?! These items belong to its content.

Regards
Dieter

All,

I need to clarify important things like Dates - in P5, there were lots of things like: Start; Finish; BL Start; BL Finish; Early Start; Early Finish; Late Start; Late Finish; and so on...

In reality I only need the following: Early Start & Finish; Late Start & Finish (For my Current Schedule); and the same for my Baseline or Target Schedule. I wonder why P5 has descriptions such as Start and/or Finish only, where does these descriptions apply? It is not specifying whether it is early or late or intended for Baseline or Current Schedules?

Another thing: I wonder why LOE activities doesn’t have bars? Is there an option to show Bars for LOE activities?

Resources and Expenses: I would like to refer to costings of these two functions, I suppose there are differences in the calculations, Do I need to be always consistent to get reliable results? Why is it that accrual function is only applicable to expenses? And what’s the effect of this function to Step Weighting?

I think P5 is a powerful tool when it comes to costings if it really functions properly.

Hi Anoon,
did you learn the "hint help" function during your training?

It is excellent, after you switched on you can use it in two ways:

- You move with your mouse into any table area and a small window appears with an explanation of that column
- You have a selection window and are confused on the different %-complete or dates. Then you click once on one of the data items and you can read the meaning of this item.

Hopefully your admin creates a test area in a test database for you to "play" with the system.

Good luck and be confident: you’ll learn it.

Dieter

Anoon,

the summarizations do work, but for some attributes they are recalculated - weighted, sometimes they are calculated on a different basis, e.g. durations with the default calendar and not those in the activities.

The functions you assume redundant: they aren’t but it depends from the environment if you’ll need them.

Much success and good luck!

Dieter

Thanks All,

I found that P5 is more similar to MSP (at least I used ver. 2000) than P3. Yes you got choices for percent complete, one is they called Physical percentage (which I supposed you have to input manually), others are based on Duration and Resource units (I prefer to use the latter two choices). Filters I think are working fine (sorry for my previous comment).

Regarding Summarization - I haven’t checked all, but I found that some labels are not working properly, and I presume that calculations are not working properly as well!

Resources; OBS; Roles; Labor; Non Labor; Primary Resource; Strategic Priorities; Risk Level - I guess some of these functions are redundant or unnecessary! I have no idea if what’s the driving resource!

One thing I cannot stand straight is Task Relationships - Please note that you can define relationships for the same task several times (which is not allowed in P3), for exanple: activity A was assigned as predecessor for activity B with FS relationship and you can assign it again with SS or whatever you want without removing the previous relationship, for me this is B**L S**T!!!

anyway, i’m enjoying to learn it, so I hope there’ll be positive results

Anoon,

A LOE activity is a hammock in P3.

At a project level, you can set the activity performance %complete calculation to be based on steps for all activities that have a physical % complete type. Performance % complete for activities based on Units % complete or Duration % complete type will not be affected. P5 offers great flexibility but the advise is to use it consistently.

You should forget how P3 works and concentrate on how things are done in P5 (at least that worked best for me)

The Windows client of P6 will not be different from P5; it will just have a few additional features, like bucket planning.

H.T.H.

Andrew,

What often happens is that LOE activities are not properly connected (i.e hanging). If this happens, the duration will become 0 days (when you reschedule) and you lose the assignment.

H.T.H.