1. Question 1. What Is Primavera, Exactly?

Answer :
Primavera is not just a single product, but is now a brand name covering a suite of
products focused exclusively on helping project-intensive businesses manage their
entire project portfolio lifecycle, including projects of all sizes. It is estimated that
projects totalling more than US$6 trillion in value have been managed with Primavera
products.
Companies turn to Primavera project portfolio management solutions to help them
make better portfolio management decisions, evaluate the risks and rewards
associated with projects, and determine whether there are sufficient resources with
the right skills to accomplish the work. These best-in-class solutions provide the
project execution and control capabilities needed to successfully deliver projects on
time, within budget and with the intended quality and design.
2. Question 2. What Is Portfolio Management?
Answer :
Portfolio management is a term used by project management professionals to
describe methods for analyzing and collectively managing a group of current or
proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The fundamental
objective is to determine the optimal mix and sequencing of proposed projects to best
achieve the organisation's overall goals - typically expressed in terms of hard
economic measures, business strategy goals, or technical strategy goals - while
honouring constraints imposed by management or external real-world factors.
Typical attributes of projects being analyzed include each project's total expected
cost, consumption of scarce resources (human or otherwise), expected timeline and
schedule of investment, the expected nature, magnitude and timing of benefits to be
realised, and relationship or inter-dependencies with other projects in the portfolio.
3. Question 3. What Is Programme Management?
Answer :
According to the Project Management Institute "a programme is a group of related
projects managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits and control not
available from managing them individually. Programmes may include elements of
related work outside of the scope of the discrete projects in the programme... Some
projects within a programme can deliver useful incremental benefits to the
organisation before the programme itself has completed."
Bearing this in mind it can be seen that programme mananagement necessarily
operates at a level above individual projects and is focused on coordinating and
prioritising of resources across projects, managing links between the projects and
minimising the overall costs and risks of the programme.
4. Question 4. Which Primavera Products Offer This Functionality?
Answer :
Both P6 PPM and P6 EPPM provide the ability to group projects together into
"portfolios", but this is simply a mechanism for simplifying access to specific groups
of projects. In either product a portfolio can be defined to contain projects within a
specific programme, and reports can be produced for the portfolio/programme as a
whole.
 There are some basic portfolio analysis functions in P6 EPPM, with dashboard
reports that can be configured to display and compare key project data, but for a
comprehensive portfolio management solution that you should consider Primavera
Portfolio Management. This product (formerly ProSight, acquired by Primavera Inc. in
2006) can operate standalone, but comes with a direct interface to P6 EPPM that
allows exchange of data in both directions.
5. Question 5. Is Primavera P6 The Same As Oracle Projects?
Answer :
o No. Oracle Projects is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The Primavera
Gateway can be used with a suitable "provider" (connector) to integrate P6
and EBS.
o Integrating Oracle Projects with Primavera P6 provides a comprehensive
Enterprise Project Portfolio Management solution and performs the
following features:
o Brings together complex scheduling and industry-specific PPM processes
with project financial management, skills and inventory management, and
other enterprise solutions
o Provides end-to-end visibility and control for improved decision making,
coordination, and collaboration
o Provides consolidated view of enterprise and project portfolio for an
accurate, up-to-date view of project, resources, and financial performance
o Creates coherent and complete solution for Enterprise PPM with ERP,
database, middleware, and analytics.
6. Question 6. What's The Difference Between P3e, P5 And P6?
Answer :
They are basically different versions of the same product. When the replacement for
P3 was first released it was known as Primavera Project Planner Enterprise, which
was soon shortened to P3E. There was a v3.5 and a v4.0 of this product, before the
name changed to P5 and then P6 in line with the version number. When Oracle
acquired Primavera Inc. in 2008 "P6" became a brand name rather than a product
version and so the next version (although sometimes referred to as P7) was officially
named P6 v7.
The latest products have followed normal Oracle practice in being "releases" rather
than "versions", and were called P6 R8.0 through R8.4. The latest software is P6
R15.1 - Oracle is now using the last 2 digits of the year of issue as the major release
number, and has stated that it aims to produce 2 releases per year so that in each
year there will be a yy.1 and a yy.2 release.
7. Question 7. What's The Difference Between P6 And Primavera Contractor?
Answer :
Primavera Contractor is Primavera's entry level project management product,
designed to allow contractors to exchange planning data with clients using P6 EPPM
or PPM for their project management. It offers a similar level of functionality to
Microsoft Project but can generate the .xer files typically required for bid submissions
on major engineering and construction projects.
8. Question 8. What Are The Differences Between P6 Eppm And P6 Ppm?
 Answer :
The most obvious difference is the architecture. P6 PPM is a traditional client/server
Windows application that runs on a PC (physical or virtual) and stores its data in a
relational database (Oracle or SQL Server). P6 EPPM is a 3 tier web application
whose client runs in a web browser. The middle tier runs on a web application server
(WebLogic or WebSphere) and communicates with the database. Since R8.1 all
administrative tasks are managed via the web interface, although a Windows
"professional client" is also available to allow users without web access to work with
the software. From R8.2 this desktop client is identical for both PPM and EPPM, but
when connected to an EPPM database none of the administrative functions are
available.
There are also major differences between the reporting capabilities of the two
versions. P6 PPM continues to run the traditional reports found in earlier versions of
the product, while P6 EPPM also uses Oracle's BI Publisher to create web based
reports that are viewed via dashboards in the browser. It also provides connectivity to
other reporting tools - see the Reporting and Business Intelligence section below for
more on this.
The final major difference is connectivity. P6 EPPM ships with a Java API that allows
the development of custom interfaces to other products, and a Web Services
interface layered on top of the API. The product is also designed to integrate with
Oracle's Business Process Management toolset. In contrast, P6 PPM only offers the
SDK, a desktop interface that exposes the underlying database as an ODBC data
source.
9. Question 9. Can You Configure P6 Ppm As A Multiuser System?
Answer :
Although the most common use for P6 PPM is as a "standalone" installation (see
below) on a laptop or single PC, it is perfectly possible to configure it so that multiple
networked PCs access a single server based database. If you do not require the web
based dashboards and integration capabilities of P6 EPPM this may well be your
most suitable configuration.
10. Question 10. Which Project Management Product Is Right For Me?
Answer :
There is no easy answer to this, as a lot depends on your current IT landscape and
precisely how you wish to make use of your planning tool. If you wish to integrate P6
seamlessly with other enterprise applications then it is possible that PPM will not be
able to deliver what you require. We will happily advise on the pros and cons of
deploying either version in your environment.
11. Question 11. What Is A "standalone" Copy Of P6?
Answer :
This typically refers to a copy of P6 where the database and client application are
running on the same machine - often a laptop. Prior to the acquisition of Primavera
Inc. by Oracle, this was a standard option in the installer which performed a hands-off
installation of a database server (originally Borland Interbase, then SQL Server
Express) on to the machine in question as part of the process. With the release of P6
v7 the database was changed to Oracle XE and then at P6 R8.0 the standalone
 option was withdrawn. It now exists again - from P6 R8.1 PPM onwards, you are able
to select a standalone installation that uses Oracle 10g XE as the back end.
The advantage of this type of installation is that you do not have to have previously
installed a database on the machine, as one is provided free of charge. There are
restrictions associated with Oracle XE though - it is limited to 4GB of data, will only
use up to 1GB of any available memory, and will only execute on 1 CPU core. If any
of these are likely to cause problems you should use a full copy of Oracle or SQL
Server to store your data. Note that that P6 R8.x will not work with SQL Server
Express unless you are upgrading an existing standalone system based on an earlier
version of P6.
As of P6 R8.4 the situation has changed again since the product now ships with
SQLite - an embedded relational database - providing the storage for standalone
systems. The pros of this are that installation is much simpler, and you can once
again have multiple P6 databases accessible in a standalone configuration. The cons
are that a number of the add on tools - such as Claim Digger - no longer work,
although Oracle have said that it is their intention to reinstate this functionality in later
releases. Note that you can still choose to deploy Oracle XE as a back end to work
around these issues, although you will have to manually download it as it is no longer
included as part of the product installer.

12. Question 12. Can I Still Purchase P3 And/or Suretrak?

Answer :
Unfortunately not - they were withdrawn from sale at the end of 2010. The nearest
equivalents from the current product range are Contractor or P6 PPM.
13. Question 13. What Reports Come With Primavera P6?
Answer :
Primavera P6 PPM ships with a library of text reports which can be scheduled to run
as a batch. You can also develop custom reports and print out graphics such as
Gantt Charts or resource histograms from the appropriate view.
While Primavera P6 EPPM still allows you to run traditional batch reports, it also
offers an additional library of reports designed to operate within Oracle BI Publisher
via a Restricted Usage Licence (RUL) for BI Publisher. These can be triggered on
demand from within the web client or scheduled to run periodically, with their results
available for view within the web client. If you want to make any changes to these
reports then you will have to purchase a Full Usage Licence (FUL) of BI Publisher to
allow you to develop your own reports.
14. Question 14. What Is The Primavera Reporting Database?
Answer :
There is a large amount of data displayed within P6 that is calculated on the fly and
not stored in the project management database (PPMDB or EPPMDB). As a result
Oracle introduced the concept of a reporting database external to the project
management database. This is optimised for reporting purposes and contains fields
storing calculated values. In versions prior to R8.1 the creation and updating of the
reporting database required an administrator to set up several additional databases
and configure standalone scripts to carry out the ETL (extract, transform, load)
 operations. From P6 EPPM R8.1 the reporting database schema forms part of the
standard EPPMDB database, and the scheduled publishing of data is administered
from within the product.
Once the publishing of data to the reporting database has been configured, any
external reporting tool (e.g. PCF's QEI Management Reporting or Crystal Reports)
can be used to extract data from it.
15. Question 15. What Is Primavera Analytics?
Answer :
Primavera Analytics is an add-on product for Primavera P6 EPPM which consists of
a star schema data warehouse and a set of prebuilt reports and queries that run
within Oracle Business Intelligence products. The data warehouse is fed from the
EPPM reporting database and can be also connected to other BI applications.
16. Question 16. What's The Difference Between Primavera Risk Analysis And
Pertmaster?
Answer :
They are both the same product. PertMaster was acquired by Primavera Inc. in 2006
and is now sold as Primavera Risk Analysis.
17. Question 17. Does Primavera P6 Contain Any Risk Analysis Functionality?
Answer :
As of P6 EPPM R8.3, the answer is no, although you can use P6 to develop a risk
register and associated risk scores which can be transferred between P6 and
Primavera Risk Analysis.
18. Question 18. What Does Primavera Contract Management Do?
Answer :
This product has always had a confusing name, as the one thing it does not do is
manage contracts. It is actually a system designed for teams managing construction
projects (contracts) which enables them to collaborate, track issues and costs,
monitor contractor performance and manage documents.
The current version is a web application built on top of Oracle's WebLogic application
server and Business Intelligence Publisher reporting tool. It can be linked to external
document management systems, and can exchange cost and schedule data with
Primavera P6 EPPM and JD Edwards.

19. Question 19. Can P6 Be Interfaced To An Erp System?

Answer :
Absolutely, this is very common. The Primavera Gateway ships with a connector for
SAP as standard, and connectors for other ERP systems are also available.
20. Question 20. Can P6 Be Interfaced To An Asset Management System?
Answer :
This is a fairly common requirement and the Primavera Gateway can be used to
deliver this integration. Connectors are available for common Asset Management
Systems like MAXIMO.
21. Question 21. I Need To Develop A Bespoke Interface To P6 - What Options Do I
Have?
 Answer :
If you only require a desktop solution then you can use the SDK, which exposes a
proportion of the data within the project management database (including calculated
fields) as an ODBC Data Source. You can then write code in any environment that
supports communication via ODBC to exchange data with P6. The SDK is available
for both PPM and EPPM systems.
More complex integrations are possible using the API. This is a set of Java classes
that expose the business logic and objects and makes them available for inclusion in
any Java application. From v6 to R8.0 the API was available for all installations; as of
R8.1 the API was limited to EPPM only. This decision was reversed at R8.3 and is
once again available for both variants of P6. EPPM systems.
It is also possible to make use of the Web Services interface to P6; this is layered on
top of the API and provides interoperability with any other applications that make use
of Web Services. For example, the Oracle Business Process Management suite can
be used in combination with event-driven messages from P6 to develop standard
business processes for project approval, initiation and update.
Note that use of the SDK incurs no extra licencing costs, while the API and Web
Services require additional licences.
22. Question 22. What Professional Services Can Pcf Offer?
Answer :
In addition to the supply of the product range, we also offer a wide range of
professional services to ensure that your Primavera implementation goes smoothly
and that you rapidly gain real business benefits.
23. Question 23. How Does Oracle's Product Licensing Compared To Primavera's
Original Scheme?
Answer :
Primavera operated a technical solution to licencing, whereas Oracle operates a
commercial solution.

Primavera had either Named or Concurrent users, whereas Oracle only has
"Application Users".
Primavera issued a licence code (linked to the Serial Number of a particular copy of
the software) that controlled the number and type of licences allocated to each
module within the product. By contrast Oracle issues a CSI Number associated with
a particular installation of their software. The permitted number of users is governed
solely by the number of licences purchased - there is nothing technically in place to
prevent any company from deploying more licences than they have purchased.
However the Oracle Licence and Services Agreement (OLSA) includes a clause
stating that the client accepts that Oracle has a right to visit the client's site(s) at any
time to audit licence usage, and that the client agrees to pay the licence costs
associated with any unpurchased deployed copies found, plus penalty charges and
backdated support fees.
24. Question 24. What Is An "application User"?
Answer :
 The Oracle licensing model is actually fairly simple. The Oracle Master
Agreement (OMA) states:
"Application User: is defined as an individual authorized by you to use the applicable
licenced application programs which are installed on a single server or on multiple
servers regardless of whether the individual is actively using the programs at any
given time."
which is a drawn out way of saying you have a licence for a user to use the
application regardless of environment.
In practical terms this has the following consequences:
A single licence permits a user to use a copy of the software on multiple machines
(for example a server and a laptop) provided that the various copies are not
accessed by that user at the same time. If the laptop is also used by a different user
to the server then this requires two licences.
Use of any component within a licenced application counts as full use of that
application, so for example an environment where two people only accessed P6
EPPM via the Web while another only used the desktop Optional Client would require
three EPPM licences. This differs from the old Primavera scheme where individual
modules/components were licenced separately
You cannot make use of generic users like "user1" or "planner", since a login has to
correspond to a real individual.
25. Question 25. How Do I Upgrade From Older Versions Of Primavera Software?
Answer :
Depending on the date of purchase of the original licences and whether the product
is in support, it may be possible to upgrade to the latest version of the product. This
is a very complex area and we will need to ensure that we understand precisely what
products you already own before we can offer advice. Please contact our specialist
licence migration team who will be pleased to assist you to identify the most cost-
effective route.
26. Question 26. How Is Product Support Provided?
Answer :
Support for all Primavera products is handled by Oracle Support. When you
purchase Primavera you will be assigned a Customer Support Identifier (CSI
Number) which is your key to unlock the support resources available to you. These
include a web portal giving you access to the Primavera Knowledge Base, the ability
to log Service Requests and notification of any relevant patches or critical updates. In
addition, Oracle host Primavera-related blogs and forums.
We can provide additional assistance if desired, for example to resolve application-
related questions or to install patches and upgrades. Please contact us for further
information and charges.