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Compare P6 schedule updates without Primavera (Beta)

Upload last month's and this month's XER: see the finish slip, what was added or deleted, logic and duration edits, float erosion and progress against plan.

Opens: XER, ZIP
Saves: HTML, XLSX, CSV

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Earlier update (or the only schedule)
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.xer, .zip · up to 200 MB
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    The previous update or the baseline, as exported from P6 (.xer, or a .zip of it). Upload only this file to get a schedule health check instead of a comparison.

    Later update (optional)
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    .xer, .zip · up to 200 MB
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      The newer update of the same project (.xer, or a .zip of it). Activities are matched by Activity ID.

      Options
      More options

      Only needed when an XER holds several projects. Empty: the projects whose Activity IDs match each other are used.

      Which activities count as critical in the report.

      For showing durations and float in days. 0 uses the hours per day of each activity's calendar, as P6 does.

      Your files are deleted after processing.

      A monthly schedule update is only useful if you can see what changed since the last one. In P6 that means opening both projects and comparing them field by field. This page does it from the two XER files, so an owner's representative, a claims consultant or a subcontractor can review an update without a P6 licence.

      How to compare two updates

      1. Ask the scheduler for the XER of both updates, or export them yourself in P6 with File, Export, Primavera PM (XER). Recalculate (F9) before exporting.
      2. Upload last period's file as the earlier update and the new one as the later update.
      3. Read the findings on the page, then open the full report or the Excel workbook.

      If the files arrive the wrong way round, the one with the earlier data date is treated as the earlier update and the page says so.

      What a reviewer checks first

      • Finish movement: the forecast finish of both updates and how many calendar days it moved, with the activities that slipped most and every milestone.
      • Progress against the plan: what started and finished, and which starts and finishes the earlier update planned for the period did not happen.
      • Edits that move dates without progress: changed original durations, new or removed relationships, lag and type changes, constraints, and calendars that gained holidays or lost working days under the same name.
      • History: actual dates that were changed or removed, and started work that was deleted.
      • Float: total float erosion on every unfinished activity, new negative float and changes to the critical and longest path.

      Pitfalls

      Each monthly copy of a P6 project gets new internal ids for its activities and calendars, so a tool that compares those ids sees the whole schedule as replaced. Here activities are matched by Activity ID and calendars by name, which is what a reviewer means by "the same activity".

      The report shows the dates and float P6 stored in the files. It does not reschedule, so a file that was edited after its last schedule run is reported as it was submitted. The health checks of both updates, included in the report, flag forecast dates before the data date and similar signs of a stale file.

      The single-file schedule health check runs on the same page when you upload only one XER.

      More about what this tool reads and writes: P6 Schedule Update Comparison (XER).

      More with P6 Schedule Update Comparison (XER)