The Most Common Primavera P6 Reports

Generating reports in Oracle P6 is an amazing, efficient way of maintaining control and oversight in your project. The potential report combinations in Oracle P6 can easily compile into the hundreds, if not more when considering custom reports.

Although powerful, these reporting capabilities are useless if you do not know which reports will generate the greatest insight. To help make these decisions and increase your productivity, try to stick with the top five most common reports in Oracle Primavera  P6.

1. Functional Group Summary Report in P6

For large, complex projects, defining all of the activities to be completed for a specific role, such as GMAW welding, can be of great benefit when determining future staffing needs.

If you generate a functional group summary report, you will be able to see all of the planned activities for a given role. This allows you to better understand what staff members will be needed for what purpose.

2. Baseline Gantt Chart Layout

Extensive projects should always be broken down into a work breakdown structure. This allows you to see what project deliverables are going to be impacted by your current schedule.

Furthermore, the most important aspects of your project are defined on this chart with a red bar. As a result, you will be able to prevent catastrophic delays to your project, which is essential to maintaining your expected deadline.

3. Program Review Report

If your project includes multiple smaller projects, or if your project is actually a program of multiple projects, the program review report will quickly become your newest friend.

This report is specified to a given project range, such as the district in which your project takes place, and allows you to review all planned activities, as well as potential activities. Ultimately, this report focuses on combining the planned with the unplanned aspects of your projects into one arena.

4. Baseline Relationships Report

Occasionally, the relationships between corresponding project activities may be hidden when generating a baseline Gantt layout chart. If you run a baseline relationships report, you will be able to identify the logistic patterns between similar activities. For example, the lowest level of the work breakdown structure will be evident, and the logic for that specific work breakdown structure is listed in immediately afterwards.  

The next line indicates the activity that will occur before the project activities you have currently selected, and the subsequent line identifies what activity will succeed that project activity. Furthermore, you will be able to see how these nearby activities relate in start and finish time to your selected activity, and the owner of the given activity will be identified.

5. Three-Month Look-Ahead

Identifying baseline relationships is useless if your project includes hundreds, if not thousands, of the smaller activities within a single month.  This report will identify what planned activities have a 60-day or less total float and can be started within the next 90 days. Therefore, you can alter your schedule to ensure adequate staff and resources are available for projects beyond the scope of smaller reports.

Knowing what report to use in Oracle Primavera P6 is a critical part of creating a viable schedule. By knowing and using these top five reports, you can improve the productivity and efficiency of your project management team and keep your schedule accurate and reflective of project expectations.

Key Takeaway

• The functional group summary report is best used when highlighting activities for a specific role.
• A baseline Gantt layout chart Identifies critical pathways in red bars.
• Use the program review report when monitoring the schedule of incredibly complex projects, especially when smaller portions of the project could be considered whole project, such as in a program.  
• The baseline relationships report helps you to identify key information about a specific activity while reviewing the overall scope of planned activities.
• A three-month look-ahead report is beneficial when daily or weekly activity logs are inconceivable to view within the baseline relationships report.

Resources: docs.oracle.com, www.drmcnatty.com, docs.oracle.com