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Activity Codes vs UDF’s in P5

12 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2007-10-02 03:52
Colin Adam
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What’s the benefit of using activity codes over UDF’s ? Used to think you couldn’t group/sort by UDF but it would appear you can. Any thoughts greatly approciated.
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Thu, 2007-10-04 22:49
#1
Rodel Marasigan
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Colin,

You can use XER to import Activity Codes and use Excel to import assigment per activities. If you need assistance on how to do it, send me a PP with your email address.

HTH,
Rodel
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Thu, 2007-10-04 10:14
#2
Paul Harris
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Colin

I agree, we just stick numbers or letters in front of the description to order them.

SDK is the Software Developers Kit, it is on one of the disks that is sent with the software, I can send you a Excel spread sheet that will do the rest which originates from Primavera that does the rest. It works in a similar way to the Excel import, email me directly if you want it.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers & Consulting
www.eh.com.au
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Thu, 2007-10-04 09:36
#3
Colin Adam
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Oh and whats SDK ?
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Thu, 2007-10-04 09:35
#4
Colin Adam
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Paul,
I think the fact that you can’t import activity codes from excel drives me to use UDF’s. Part of the process we’re using us to import/export data from/to excel. I believe you can define the sorts you require with activity codes but have to stick with alpabetical with UDF’s. Other than this can’t really get too excited about it.

Cheers

Colin
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Thu, 2007-10-04 09:24
#5
Paul Harris
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I understand Auto-calculated UDFs are in project level only in P6 in the web interface only and with many companies finding it simpler to port out Primavera through Citrix or Terminal server there will be many users missing out.

One interesting thing about Activity Codes is that, unlike P3, it is not possible to import Activity Codes assigned to activities from Excel unless they are existing in the database before the import.

It is possible to load the SDK and then import Activity Codes and their descriptions.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers & Consulting
www.eh.com.au
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Thu, 2007-10-04 03:37
#6
Edderic See
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Hi Ahmet,

I think for filtering sake, it is much advisable to have the tree structure available in activity codes. I am using UDF’s ONLY for specific purpose only.

Regards,

Ed
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Wed, 2007-10-03 07:49
#7
Ahmet Cetin
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Unfortunately not yet. Auto-calculated UDFs are in project level only in P6. I hope they will be for others also in next release.

Hope this helps,

Ahmet Cetin

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Wed, 2007-10-03 04:29
#8
K D
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Hi Ahmet.
In Web application, can we have auto-calculated UDF at activity level.
Thanks
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Tue, 2007-10-02 15:27
#9
Ahmet Cetin
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Actually, I would say, it depends. Both UDF and activity codes can be used for group, sort and filter. Two advantages of using activity codes are:

- You can assign only predefined codes to the activity; using UDF, you can freely type, which may cause typing errors.

- You can define tree structure using activity code, which is not possible in UDF. In that way, You can define Country-State-City type structure and group acitivies in a tree structure as well, which is very useful in many cases.

On the other hand, UDF is quite powerful especially when you are using together with Global Change. You can calculate many things, which don’t exist in Primavera by default and assign to UDFs. For example, VAT of total cost of the activity.

You can also use indicator type UDF (blue, green, yellow, red icons), and changing them using Global Change. You can set it to red when At Completion Cost is higher than Baseline Cost for example.

UDFs are also used quite frequently when integrating Primavera with another software packages.

In P6 Web interface, one of my favourite is, you can define auto-calculated UDFs, which means auto calculated Global Change :)

Hope this helps,

Ahmet Cetin

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Tue, 2007-10-02 08:18
#10
Edderic See
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Hi,

I agree with Karim. UDF was created not to group and sort activities but to define a customize value or status for a particular activity.


Regards,

Ed
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Tue, 2007-10-02 07:58
#11
Karim Mounir
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Activity codes created especially to sort, group, filter activities whilst UDF can be used in many functions other than coding of activities (eg. resource assignment).
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Tue, 2007-10-02 07:41
#12
Edderic See
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Hi Colin,

I believe that activity codes are more flexible for it can be assigned to 3 nodes( global, eps & user-project). I am also using these codes to group and sort any programs coming from P3 without WBS.

Regards,

Ed
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