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[Interactive] How to Build Lookahead Filters in Oracle Primavera Using Date Variables
On 02.07.12, In Tutorials, by Michael Lepage
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Tutorial Info

Program: Primavera P6 Project Management Version: All Versions Difficulty: Intermediate Time to Complete: 15 minutes Lookahead reports are one of the centerpieces of consistent project reporting and controlling. Lookahead reports show and highlight upcoming activities in the project. Most common lookahead reports focus on activities scheduled for the upcoming week, next 2 weeks, next 3 weeks, next month and next 3 months. Of course there are other variations and the determining factor will be the type of project being worked. The nice thing about Primavera is that you can build a custom filter that will lookahead any period that suits your needs. The key to a lookahead report is building a proper activity Filter. Recall that an activity Filter will show only activities that meet the Filters criteria all activities that dont meet the criteria will be hidden. Knowing how to program the Filters criteria is essential. And in this tutorial well show you how to do it.

Tutorial Files
Complete this tutorial by downloading the following files: Ptuts -Lookahead-Filters-Files.zip

Step 1 Finding Your Footing With Filters

Start by opening a project plan. You cant build any filters in Primavera unless you have a project open.

Click the Filters icon on the toolbar OR goto Views -> Filters in the menus. Click New to add a new custom filter.

Step 2 Creating A Custom Filter In P6

Name your filter 1 Month Lookahead Basic. Now to do the programming part. Click in the empty field in the Parameter column. You should get a dropdown box with a long list of field names. In this list, find the entry Start which is the column that

represent activity start dates.

Step 3 Programming The Filter

Click in the Is column and choose is within range of from the dropdown list.

Step 4 Using Primaveras Built-In Date Variables

When building a filter that uses a range (as in our choice from Step 3), well have to specify an upper value and a lower value for the range in question. Then in the next column Value well specify the lower value of the range. Click in the Value column you should see another button become available. If you click it, youll see the menu below. The choices in the menu represent some of Primavera s built-in date variables. For example, the variable PS represents the Projects Start Date that was specified when the project was first created. For our filter, well use the variable DD the projects Data Date.

Now click in the High Value column. This type were going to type in a short formula. Type in DD+1M. This formula sets the upper range to 1 month more than our current Data Date. For example, if our current Data Date is March 3rd, this formula would set the upper range to March 3rd + 1 month which is April 3rd.

NOTE: If you hit Enter after typing in DD+1M, you will likely have a new line added to your screen. Go ahead and delete that line by clicking the Delete button on the right.

Step 5 Viewing The Filtered Results

Click OK to lock in your custom filter. You should notice that your new filter is checked on. Click OK to view your project with the filter on.

The filter should show you a short list of activities scheduled to start in the next month (assuming your Data Date is set to reflect the last status date and you are statusing on a consistent basis). In our sample project, were only showing 2 activities planning to get started in the next month.

A lookahead report can be essential for focusing on soon-to-be-starting activities. You could easily print this layout or create a Report from this data to discuss at your weekly project meeting.

Creating a Better Lookahead Filter

The basic lookahead filter youve just built works well in ideal situations but it doesnt quite meet the mark in other cases. For example, it leaves out in-progress activities which you will likely want to be aware of. In the case where activities started earlier than planned, it wont show you those either. So lets show you how to build a better lookahead filter.

Step 6 Make A Copy Of The Basic Lookahead Filter

Go back to the Filters window by clicking the Filter icon on the toolbar. Highlight your 1 Month Lookahead Basic filter, click the Copy button and then the Paste button. Highlight the new copy and click the Modify button.

Step 7 Tweaking The Primavera Filter To Include In-Progress Activities

Rename the filter to Better 1 Month Lookahead. Start reprogramming by changing the paramete in the Value column (currently DD). Well change this to PS instead the Project Start Date.

Next, click the Add button to add a line. Click the Parameter dropdown box and find Activity Status in the list. Change the Is column to Is Not Equal To and set the Value column to Completed. Click OK.

Place a checkmark next to your new filter to turn it on and uncheck any other filters to turn them off. Click OK to view the project.

As you can see, the new filter includes the original 3 activities due to start in the next month PLUS any activities are that are still in-progress. This new filter is much more complete now and will ensure you report on all planned and in-progress activities in the filtered range.

Interactive Tutorial
Ive whipped up a short interactive application so you can try enhancing our Lookahead Filter even more. Please give it a try. NOTE: another window will open make sure you allow pop-ups or disable your pop-up blocker for this to work.

Wrap-Up

Lookahead filters are fundamental to reporting and monitoring your project on an ongoing basis. Create these filters in your Oracle Primavera database and make them Global so you can share them with your colleagues and start to set a standard for reporting in your organization. Dont forget to download the Tutorial Files back at the top of this post. Weve included a layout your can import that has all 3 Lookahead Filters.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ted Lister for contributing his recommendations on tweaking the basic lookahead filter.

4 Votes

Michael Lepage
Michael is a Primavera P6 and Project Management expert working with companies large and small. He's also a trainer, instructional designer, and is pretty good at flying remote controlled helicopters. He writes tutorials because he loves to teach and is pretty keen on technology. He also holds a Project Management Professional cerfication from PMI.org. Visit Authors Website | Read more posts by Michael Lepage

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22 Responses

adil ahmed
5.3.2012

Fantastic tutorials on filters. The way of presentation is superb, vry easy to understand

Michael Lepage
5.4.2012

Thanks for the great feedback Adil!

Bob Evans
6.7.2012

You have an nice website michael. Good ideas. Can you help me? I only have three options on the filter IS parameter, equals, is not equal to and, is under. How can i get the other lines to appear, especially, within/not within range? Bob

Michael Lepage
6.7.2012

Hi Bob, Thanks for the feedback.

What shows up in the IS dropdown depends on what is in the previous dropdown (parameter). It seems like you may not have a date field set or showing in the parameter dropdown. In the tutorial, we set Start (which is the activity start date) in the parameter field. I would check the parameter dropdown to see if a date is set there. Let us know if that helps. Warmest regards, Michael

maas
7.10.2012

Fantastic 100% tutorials on filters. The way of presentation is superb, vry easy to understand

sabeel m
10.16.2012

very helpful tips thanka alot

Osman
12.2.2012

Great way of explaining !! I would like to know how will we send a 3 weeks look ahead report ????I mean how do we create one ???? Thanks in advance ! Regards , osman

Michael Lepage
12.3.2012

Osman, Everything in this tutorial still applies. But where you see DD+1M change it to DD+3w. There you go! Michael

Precious
12.7.2012

As a beginner in the use of Primavera, I really enjoyed the tutorial. Excellent presentation! Thank you Michael.

Mohammed Umer
12.30.2012

I learn soo many things from your free tutorial Thank You

Santhy
1.12.2013

Nice tutorial sir.. Could you please emphasize more the use of Custom Date, Custom Month. How about I want to filter the date I prefer up to 2weeks How to do it? Thanks and more power

Amir Kia
1.12.2013

Your Comments : Thanks Michael, I have two questions and appreciate of your response, 1- When i copy and paste a file in project or EPS mode, while opening the file, it seems activity code is missing? 2- Filter windows doesnt show all data that we need to filter it. Amir

Michael Lepage
1.15.2013

@Amir 1) Have you added the Activity Code your layout as a column? Check the Codes tab for some activities on the Activities screen does it exist there? 2) What data is missing that you would like to filter by?

Michael Lepage
1.15.2013

@Santhy If you use custom dates, then you can specific a specific date range like Jan 1 for Value and Jan 14 for High Value. There is no formula when using custom dates in filters in P6. Hope that helps. Michael

Nikhil
2.17.2013

I am new to Primavera and working on a schedule for a project, I have completed assigning resources to the activities, but now I have a problem, the s curve is not accurate , in need to get it in proper shape i need to adjust the units distributed in the activites , but i am not able change the units , so can you help me figure out a way out of this.

Michael Lepage
2.18.2013

@Nikhil

Thanks for reaching out. You can adjust how labor hours are spread out over the duration of each activity. By default, P6 spreads all labor hours linearly over the duration of an activity. If you want to manually set the spreads (which is called bucket planning in P6 documentation), you can do this by using the Resource Usage Spreadsheet (View -> Show on Bottom -> Resource Usage Spreadsheet). Configure the columns to show budgeted or planned labor hours. You can edit the allocations on the spreadsheet on the bottom right of the screen. This will be a topic for a future tutorial. Hope that helps. Warmest regards, Michael

Naveen
2.19.2013

Mr.Micheal, Just to add a piece to your explanation, u can user the attribute REMAINING EARLY START to filter out all the activities in progress. Hope it helps. Regards, Naveen Talla

Debasish Mitra
3.12.2013

How I can use the filter to see how many projects are in progress under each Stages ?

Debasish Mitra
3.12.2013

Its really good to see it. How I can get the number of Inprogress projects under each stages ?

PlannerTuts
3.12.2013

Debasish, This is a bit more complex and I think you are asking to see a list of projects that are currently in-progress and would like to see also what stage they are in. Start on the Projects page and build a filter there. You might filter on a range of Data Dates (DD) where Data Date is within range of CD-1m (which is current date minus 1 month) to CD+1m (current date + 1 month). Try this to see a list of current progress in progress. PT

K. Satish Kumar
4.12.2013

Thank you for sharing. In the interactive kindly include the final screen shot after applying the filter so that i can confirm (myself) the correctness(i could still see the WBS summary bars!)

Michael Lepage
4.15.2013

@K Satish there is a final screenshot in the tutorial and yes, the WBS bars are showing but the filter will not remove those only the special WBS Summary activities if you project has any. This sample project did not have any WBS Summary type activities to begin with. Warmest regards, Michael

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