Welcome

Using the P6 Professional User's Guide

P6 Professional can connect to two databases, a P6 Professional database and a P6 EPPM database. Depending on which database you are connected to, some topics within the user's guide and some information within certain topics will be relevant while others will not.

Topics that are only relevant to one database will be qualified in the title of the topic. When a topic title is followed by (P6 Professional Only), this topic will only be relevant when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 Professional database. When a topic is followed by (P6 EPPM Only), this topic will only be relevant when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 EPPM database. For example, the topic, "Defining Administration Preferences (P6 Professional Only)," contains information only relevant when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 Professional database.

Other topics will include information that is relevant when connected to either database. These topics will not be qualified. For example, the information in the topic, "Create a project," applies when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 Professional database and when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 EPPM database.

Other topics will include some information that is only relevant when connected to a P6 Professional and some that is only relevant when connected to a P6 EPPM database. These topics will include conditional phrases such as:

"When connected to a P6 Professional database,"

"When P6 Professional is connected to a P6 EPPM database,"

"(P6 EPPM Only),"

"This icon only appears when P6 Professional is connected to a P6 Professional database."

Within our documentation, some content might be specific for cloud deployments while other content is relevant for on-premises deployments. Any content that applies to only one of these deployments is labeled accordingly.

Introducing P6 Professional

When P6 Professional is connected to a P6 EPPM database:

P6 Professional is a separate component of P6 EPPM that integrates traditional project management with streamlined resource and cost management.

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P6 Professional User Guide

It provides a set of robust features aimed primarily to address the needs of project planners and schedulers. (P6 Professional connected to a P6 EPPM database is not used to perform administrative or most enterprise-level tasks.)

P6 Professional features include the following:

Support of work breakdown structures (WBS), user-defined fields and codes, critical-path-method (CPM) scheduling, and resource leveling.

Multiple users can access the same projects concurrently.

Issue tracking

Management by threshold

A tracking feature that enables you to perform dynamic cross-project rollups of cost, schedule, and earned value

Work products and documents that can be assigned to activities and managed centrally

Visualizer, which allows you to create time-based Gantt and Timescaled Logic Diagram reports

Resource and role administration

A Report wizard that helps you create customized reports to extract any data from the P6 EPPM database

When P6 Professional is connected to a P6 Professional database:

P6 Professional is a comprehensive, multiproject planning and control software, built on Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server relational databases for enterprise-wide project management scalability. P6 Professional can stand alone for project and resource management, and it enables your organization to store and manage its projects in a central location. The module supports work breakdown structures (WBS), organizational breakdown structures (OBS), user-defined fields and codes, critical-path-method (CPM) scheduling, and resource leveling.

P6 Professional enables you to budget, prioritize, plan, administer, and manage multiple projects; optimize limited, shared resources; control changes; and consistently move projects to on-time and on-budget completion. It provides customizable interfaces, scalable and flexible tools, and easy integration with project management software outside of the P6 suite, including Oracle Contractor, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Excel.

P6 Professional provides

An enterprise project structure (EPS), which enables project managers to manage multiple projects, from the highest levels of the organization to the individuals that perform specific project tasks. Multiple users can access the same projects concurrently.

Integrated risk management

Issue tracking

Management by threshold

A tracking feature that enables you to perform dynamic cross-project rollups of cost, schedule, and earned value

Work products and documents that can be assigned to activities and managed centrally

Visualizer, which allows you to create time-based Gantt and Timescaled Logic Diagram reports

Resource and role administration

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Welcome

A Report wizard that helps you create customized reports to extract any data from the P6 Professional database

About P6 Professional Standalone

P6 Professional Standalone uses a P6 Pro Standalone (SQLite) database connection running on a SQLite database. A standalone implementation supports all of the Project Management functionality of P6 Professional except for the following:

Update baseline

Job Services – Jobs cannot be scheduled. However, the user can use the Windows scheduler to invoke the command-line interface to import, export, and run batch reports.

Risk Analysis

Any existing Java-based integration components developed by the customer using the P6 Remote Integration API (RMI) is not supported with a SQLite database.

Advanced XML import options

Note: If you choose to continue to use Oracle XE database, the features listed above are retained.

Additionally, P6 Professional Standalone is single-user implementation. The only user in a P6 Professional Standalone implementation is an Admin Superuser. As a single-user implementation, any features intended for use in a multiple-user implementation are not available in P6 Professional Standalone, including:

User administration

Security profiles

Email

Project access (all projects are opened in shared mode)

Checking out and checking in projects

Saving or importing layouts for all users or other users

If you need a project management solution for multiple users, see the following documents to install an enterprise-wide solution:

P6 Professional Installation and Configuration Guide (Oracle Database)

P6 Professional Installation and Configuration Guide (Microsoft SQL Server Database)

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