How do you display a window of opportunity Gantt chart bar in Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM)? Let’s look at a simple example.
Your project has a brief period of time when the inspector is onsite and available to perform a final quality assurance inspection. This is your project’s window of opportunity. The goal is to schedule your project, so that the final quality assurance inspection effort takes place during this prime time period.
You also want this window of opportunity clearly identified on your Gantt chart. In Primavera P6 EPPM it is feasible to display an opportunity date range on the Gantt chart, so you can track schedule performance in relation to this important and opportune block of time.
Displaying a Window of Opportunity Gantt Chart Bar in P6 EPPM
This article demonstrates how to insert a window of opportunity Gantt chart bar in Primavera P6 EPPM, release 16.1, Standard view.
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration project, which is a brief pipe repair project.
Figure 1
The final quality assurance inspection is scheduled for 13-June-2019. This planned inspection date fits well with the inspector’s schedule. The inspector plans to be onsite and available the week of June 9th, 2019. We want to highlight the inspector’s availability on the Gantt chart so we can track schedule progress in relation this opportune period of time for the final inspection.
To create a window of opportunity Gantt chart bar we first must define a few user defined fields (UDFs). To define our required UDFs select Administer | Enterprise Data, Figure 2.
Figure 2
In the Enterprise Data dialog, Figure 3, choose Activity UDFs and add three activity UDFs: prime period start, prime period finish, and prime period label.
Figure 3
Assign each UDF an appropriate data type, again, Figure 3. Great! All UDFs for our window of opportunity bar are defined.
Continue and add three columns to our activity table to display our UDFs, Figure 4.
Figure 4
Select the Final Quality Assurance Inspection activity and provide the specified inspector availability dates in the prime period start and prime period finish fields. Additionally, include the label, inspector availability. Now that we have populated our UDF fields we are ready to define our window of opportunity Gantt chart bar.
Choose the custom view icon, Figure 5.
Figure 5
In the custom view dialog insert a bar, Figure 6.
Figure 6
Select the user defined bar type, Figure 7.
Figure 7
Provide a suitable name. Set the start date field to prime period start and the finish date field to prime period finish. Also, find your preferred bar color. Save your bar definition. Proceed and add a bar label, Figure 8.
Figure 8
Locate the prime period label UDF for the label field. Drag and drop the label to the right side of the bar, Figure 9.
Figure 9
The final schedule, including the inspector availability window of opportunity bar, is displayed in Figure 10.
Figure 10
Summary
Sometimes it helps to identify a favorable date range on the Gantt chart for certain activities to execute. Primavera P6 EPPM provides Gantt chart features to specify a window of opportunity bar on the Gantt chart. This is a passive bar that remains static while other bars indicate schedule progress. In this way the scheduler monitors project progress to support alignment of critical efforts with ideal periods of time.