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What is Primavera P6 Visualizer?

APRIL 30, 2013 BY NADER KHORRAMI RAD 6 COMMENTS

The new version of Primavera P6, r8.3, has been released

recently, and one of the new features is a stand-alone

software, called the Primavera P6 Visualizer. This software

provides you with a visual, read-only version of the plans

youve stored in the P6 database.

The Primavera P6 Visualizer is a good choice for those team

members who are not supposed to change anything in plans,

but need to review them. You wont needto worry about software capabilities of

those team members, because working with Primavera P6 Visualizer is rather easy

and you can also customize it for them, so that they can easily open and explore t

plans even without setting up anything themselves.

Good news is that the settings you create in one computer, which are all containe

layouts, are stored in the Primavera P6 database, so you can access them in eve

computer connected to the same database. Its even possible to only install Prima

P6 Visualizer in a specific computer, without Primavera P6 Professional.

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https://www.plannertuts.com/primavera-p6-visualizer/ 2

Now lets take a quick look at P6 Visualizer.

Installing the Primavera P6 Visualizer

If you dont have a copy of the latest version of Primavera P6, goto

edelivery.oracle.com, and download it. The process is simple: you create a free

account, read and accept the user agreement, and download a free, full-functiona

not-limited version of the software, for your non-commercial use. If youd like to us

in your real-world projects, you should ask your responsible department to obtain

license and install it.

Once you have the installer, its easy and straightforward to install the software. If

youre going to use it on a single computer, you should choose the Stand Alone op

in the installation wizard; by this, the P6 Visualizer along with P6 Professional will binstalled on your computer, and you can start using it right away.

If you are using it in an enterprise environment, you should choose the Server opt

Aterwards, you can choose between the full installation, or a P6 Visualizer only

installation.
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Opening Primavera P6 Visualizer

The Primavera P6 Visualizer is a stand-alone tool. You can run it like any other

software from the Windows Start Menu, a shortcut, etc.

You can also click on Tools | Visualize inside P6 Professional, and it will run the

software.


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The Primavera P6 Visualizer should connect to your server, and this needs

authentication. When you run it from inside the P6 Professional, the same userna

and password that youve entered when you were opening P6 Professional will be

sent to P6 Visualizer, and you wont need to enter it again; the main window of the

software will be opened instantly.
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If you run it from outside the P6 Professional though, a dialog box will appear, ask

you for your username and password.
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The main window will be available after you log in with your username and passwo

That is the same username and password you use in P6 Professional.

The same privileges, user preferences, and admin preferences that are assigned t

your account, will govern your P6 Visualizer, the same as P6 Professional.

Opening a Project in Primavera P6 Visualizer

Once youre logged into the server, you can access all the projects that are availab

your user account in P6 Professional. In order to open an existing project, we can

on the plus sign at the top of the Visualizer window.

This will provide us with two options: TSLD and Gantt.

Gantt option will create a normal Gantt view of our project. TSLD stands for

Timescaled Logic Diagram, and its a similar diagram, that doesnt show the left-sid

table of activities (called Grid in P6 Visualizer), and its capable of showing sequent

activities in a single row. You, as a planner, are probable not to like TSLDs so much

but many managers prefer this kind of presentation.

By choosing either of the two options, the similar dialog box shown in the figure

bellow will be opened.


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Its time to choose the project(s). The list on the left side of the dialog box shows t

projects in their hierarchy, EPS. Open the EPS and find the project(s) you want to

visualize, and then click on the left-to-right arrow to add it to the list on the right siYou can choose one or more projects. However, theres only one visualized

presentation open in any given time, and if you want to open another project or

another set of projects, you should close the previous one.

When were done choosing the project(s), we can click on the Next button. This wi

open the next step of the wizard, as is shown in the following figure.


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There are lots of settings involved in any visualization; all settings are stored in a

layout, and all layouts are saved in the P6 database. There are three kinds of layou

Global: available to all users

Project: only available to this specific project

User: only available to the current user

And of course, you need respective privileges to create non user layouts.

There are two previously created layouts in our sample, both of which are of User

type; thats why it shows User (2 items) in the previous figure.

Were going to enter a name for the layout (test in our sample), and select Create

New option, to create a new layout with default settings. We can click on Draw but

and the visualization will be available.


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This is a TSLD of a sample project. The next figure shows the same project in

Primavera P6 Professional.

As you can see, some activities are shown in the same row.
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There are lots of formatting options available (that will be stored in the layout). E.g

can change the formatting of bars.

Lets increase the height of the bar of the critical activities, to create a more comm

view. To do so, we can click on Options, and choose Bars & Labels tab in the optiowindow.

The list on the left side of the window shows all the bar types. When we click on

Critical Remaining Work, the options for this bar type will be available on the right of the window, and a preview will be shown in the middle.

Lets scroll down the window and find Height option. This has a value of 5 at prese

Other bars have a value of 15, and were going to enter the same value for this

particular bar, followed by clicking on Draw & Save. The next figure shows the resu


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This setting is saved in our layout, which was named test. We can use this layout

future, and the same settings will be applied.

Saving a Layout in Primavera P6 Visualizer

You cannot edit projects in Primavera P6 Visualizer; its only used for viewing the

projects. The only thing we can save here is the layout, which is a collection of visu

settings.

We can click on Save As button, on the upper right corner of the window, and the

following dialog box will be opened:


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We can enter the name and choose the category. The category actually determine

the availability of the layout to other projects and other users; the three options o

Global, Project, and User, which were explained in the beginning of this article.

Opening a Project, Using an Existing Layout

There are two ways of opening a project:

Clicking on the plus sign, on the top of the window: this will open the project

creates a new layout for it (the method described earlier in this article). This n

layout can be a duplicate of an existing one, or based on defaults.

Clicking on the folder sign, on the top of the window: this will open the projec

using one of the existing layouts, without creating a new one.

So, well be using the folder sign more frequently than the plus sign, because we

prefer to create a number of layouts and use them all the time, rather than creatin


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layout each time. However, you can still edit and save the layouts when you use th

folder sign to open the project with an existing layout.

When we click on the icon, a dialog box appears, asks for project(s) to be opened,

for the layout, and creates the output.

Editing a Layout in Primavera P6 Visualizer

There are lots of options available in Primavera P6 Visualizer, and you can certainly

deal with them easily, based on your experience in Primavera P6 Professional. We

only going to mention the zoom option, which is specific to Primavera P6 Visualize

Primavera P6 Visualizer uses a timescale similar to the one in Primavera

P6 Professional. However, we can choose a period of time, and visualize it with a

different scale right inside the normal timescale. This feature can be handy; e.g. w

can display the whole project in months, and display the coming week(s) in days in

the whole timescale.

Lets click on Options button on the upper right corner of the window, and open

Timescale tab of the options window.


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Theres a sub-tab inside Timescale tab, called Primary, which shows settings used

display the main timescale. Now we can click on the plus sign next to Primary tab,

create our first zoom area.


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We can set the period in General section, and its different scale in the lower sectio

Our main timescale is based on years/months in this sample, so were going to cho

months/days for this zoom area. Well choose another color for the heading of thetimescale, to make the difference more visible and outstanding.
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Just be careful with this zoom option; it can easily lead to misunderstandings if the

zoom area is not visually differentiated from the normal timescale. A good use of

vertical lines, as in the previous figure, is probably the best solution.Other tabs in Options window provide you with settings for:

Bar types, including labels

Lines used to show relationships, connections, data date, and activity groups

Group and sort

Filter

Page setup (of course you can print layouts or make PDFs from them)

Automating Primavera P6 Visualizer

Another interesting feature of Primavera P6 Visualizer is that it accepts command

parameters needed for printing the layouts or creating PDFs. This enables a lot of


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automation options for us.

You can create a batch file, containing the input parameters. Whenever you run th

batch file, the output will be produced without any interactions with the user. You

also use Windows Task Scheduler to run this batch file in specific intervals/times.

These are the parameters you can use (they are case-sensitive):

username: the username of your account

password (optional): the password of your account

alias (optional): the database alias; the last accessed alias will be used if none

entered

actionScript: the path and name of the an XML file, containing the main settin

logfile (optional): the path and name of a log file, which will contain the result

running the batch file

language (optional): the language!

for example:

Primavera.Visualizer.exe /username=nader /password=nadpass

/actionScript=c:actions.xml

You should replace all values with your own specific ones. This command is based

the assumption that the batch file and the ActionScript are both stored in the sam

folder as the P6 Visualizer; you should add their paths before the filenames otherw

As long as you need to enter your username and password in an unprotected bat

file, its a good idea to ask your system administrator to secure the folder that

contains this file.

The inputs needed for an automated script is too much for a simple command lin

therefore, its designed to accept them in an XML file. This file is addressed in

ActionScript parameter in command line.


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The following code displays a sample ActionScript file:

Parameters for the first action should be here

Parameters for the second action should be here

Parameters for the third action should be here

You can have one or more action tags in a single ActionScript. Each action opens o

or more files in a pre-existing layout, and prints them.

These are the tags required for each action:


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TSLDReport

Global

test

sample1

sample2

ToPrinter

p1200

Be careful with tag names; they are all case-sensitive.

This ActionScript opens two projects, named sample1 and sample2, with a global

layout named test, and sends the output to an imaginary printer named p1200. W

you run the batch file for this ActionScript, P6 Visualizer will run in the background

and your printer starts printing the output.

These are the ActionScript tags, and their explanations:

reportType: it determines the type of report; TSLDReport for TSLD and

GanttReport for Gantt charts.

reportCategory: you should enter the category of the layout youve planned t

use here; values are Global, Project, and User.

reportName: and this is the name of the layout.

projectId: you can enter as many projects as you wish, each inside a projectId

tag. Enter the ID of the project here.

outputType: there are two options available; ToPrinter, which sends the outp

to a printer installed in your computer (including virtual PDF printers), and To

to create an image file of type XPS.


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outputName: you should specify the name of the printer, or path and filenam

for the XPS output in this tag.

If youre not comfortable with batch files and XMLs, just ask your IT department to

it for you. They dont need to know how P6 works; the short explanation in this pa

the article is enough for them.

Summary

Primavera P6 Visualizer, the new stand-alone software from Oracle Primavera P6

collection, is a useful tool for two purposes:

Being an easy way of viewing and exploring schedules for non-planners

Being a new way of presenting and printing schedules, when youre going to

hand them in to managers

You can set up your desired layouts, make them global, and use them in as many

computers as you wish. These computers only need a connection to your Primave

P6 database, and a working Primavera P6 Visualizer; theres even no need to insta

Primavera P6 Professional. Primavera P6 Visualizer provides users with a simple, r

only presentation of the schedules, and theres nothing they can mess up.

Finally, you can automate the reporting process by using Windows Task Scheduler

batch file, and an ActionScript.

Have your sayWhat are your thoughts on Primavera P6 Visualizer? Is this a worthy enhancement

Primavera P6? Will you use it? Will you not? Leave us your thoughts in the commen


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Filed Under: Analysis, P6 Professional, Project Controls, Reporting Tagged With: Primavera P6 Visu

Comments

Ehsan Pazokisays

May 2, 2013 at 2:11 am

Very well

Thanks

Reply

Arlansays

July 24, 2013 at 3:45 am

Excellen and I will download later, Primavera P6 Prof. Thanks for your great

information.

I am reading your articles in Planner Tuts, inluding the Book rule of Scheduling .
http://yourwebsite/https://www.plannertuts.com/primavera-p6-visualizer/?replytocom=928#respondhttp://yourwebsite/https://www.plannertuts.com/cpm-banner/?hs_redirect_2048=http://offers.plannertuts.com/cpm-scheduling-examplehttps://www.plannertuts.com/tag/primavera-p6-visualizer/https://www.plannertuts.com/reporting/https://www.plannertuts.com/project-controls/https://www.plannertuts.com/p6-professional/https://www.plannertuts.com/analysis/


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Looking forwaard for more articles..

Arlan-

Project Controls

Reply

Alexandersays

November 15, 2013 at 2:52 am

IMHO: Visualizer is unuseful for project scheduler and for customers. Just bright

charts. It doesnt help me to create simple report with datagrouping/sorting/filtering.

Reply

NicholoAntoniosaysJanuary 23, 2014 at 12:47 am

Just What We Needed.

Hi Nader,

Would like for your help on how I can save this as a PDF file.

Ive done both the batch file and ActionScript using notepad. However I dont know

whether it is generating a pdf file. It doesnt even ask for a file name for the PDF fi

Hope you can help me.

Regards,
http://yourwebsite/https://www.plannertuts.com/primavera-p6-visualizer/?replytocom=930#respondhttp://pmoffice.by/https://www.plannertuts.com/primavera-p6-visualizer/?replytocom=929#respond


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Reply

Doneth Morgan says

July 1, 2014 at 12:43 pm

I discovered the Visualizer when attempting to develop a TSLD for a specific mgm

request. I was successful in downing and following most of the steps to develop t

report, but ran into serious issues (took me too much time & frustration) when

trying to show tasks under a particular WBS. The Visualizer provided the parent W

with few child WBS. Some how it missed one of the children WBS (and a critical o

that). I have refreshed, recreated and rewrote filters after filters and still this one

child does not show up on my report. Yes, I can see the WBS id when creating the

filter, but even when that one specific child WBS is selected, it still DOES NOT sho

up.

My verdict is still out on this feature:-(

Reply

Paul says

July 2, 2014 at 5:30 am

I tried to open Visualizer after logged into P6.. And it is asking for username &password.. After entering the log in id and password i cannot log in.. the window

remains same with log in arrow in red orange colour..

Could you please suggest how to fix it

Reply
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