Oracle Primavera P6 v7 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management – New Release
Oracle Primavera P6 v7 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management – New Release
Oracle released a new version of the existing popular product P6 EPPM. Surprisingly, this new release is still called P6 but it has a revised release number v7. The new product is called “Oracle Primavera P6 v7 EPPM”. Many organizations would like to know what new features are added and bug fixes incorporated. I will try to discuss a few main enhancements and your IT/PMO teams can review and determine if your organization is ready upgrade to this release.
Improvements:
- Open Enterprise Architecture
- Event-Driven Architecture: Developers can now utilize this new feature to write “event-driven” triggers and build integration to any product. Project Managers can get notification on their PDA, iPhones or Outlook; external workflow can be initiated or dashboards can be updated based on any event.
- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – In the past, clients either used Primavera SDK or APIs to build integration to other ERP or legacy systems. With the new improved SOA model and Primavera Web Services there are additional options because of the open architecture for building integration between P6 v7 and other products.
- Sharepoint Integration: MS SharePoint integration enables plug’n’play interoperability.
- Major Changes to the web interface; also called PriamveraWeb or MyPrimavera.
- Improved Web-Based Graphics: many organizations have been reluctant in deploying PrimaveraWeb due to the lack of ease of use and limited graphical views. With this new version there are crisper Gant/Pert views, option to have floating windows for Activity Codes, Successor/Predecessor, resources assignments and much more. Now all key data that is part of the project/wbs/task can be viewed on one single view.
- Progress Line: This new feature is added on both the thick client and the web interface. Planners for years used this feature with P3 3.1 and Suretrack and but it was lacking in the P5 and P6 series. Now the new progress line can be shown on the Gantt chart to graphically communicate variances in the project progress.
- Calendar View: Most users love the calendar view in Outlook, and now a similar intuitive view can be used to view their activities along with the required information to perform the work.
- Enhanced Excel Import/Export Options: Users can now export data off-line to Excel, update and review project data and re-import and update their projects. New activities can be added in excel and imported to their Project Plan.
- Activity Field-Level Security: Additional edit security privileges can be assigned to users at Activity Level to restrict the update options at the Activity Level. For example; a user may be allowed to update the Start/Finish dates while limiting them from updating other activity-level fields.
- Minor changes to the Thick Client interface:
- No visual enhancements have been added to the thick client. ?
- One of the key modifications is “Calendar Work Day Definition” option; this enhancement allows Planners to define Work-Day definition parameters at the individual calendar level and allows better control over project time lines and duration of work.
- Activity Codes: Now users can add “New activity codes values” on the fly while working on their Project Plan.
- Supports Oracle Access Manager (OAM):
P6 v7 supports Oracle Access Manager (OAM), which centrally manages security and access to various systems through single-sign-on that provides one common logon for all applications and removes the need to enter the login credentials for each system.
Should You Upgrade to EPPM P6 v7?
There are major enhancements in this version that require a detailed review by each IT department in consultation with the PMO Organizations. Here are some suggestions:
- If you’re using P5 standalone or enterprise: You should try to upgrade to this new version P6 v7 since your organization can benefit greatly from P6 v7 as there are many bug fixes and new features as compared to P5.
- If you’re using P6 standalone: You will not benefit a great deal as the upgrade would be time consuming and you cannot use all of the new features of the product. I suggest reviewing with your IT department and deploy P6 v7 in an Enterprise mode.
- If you’re using P6 Thick Client only in Enterprise Mode: If you are not using the Web Interface then you will not see major benefits. I suggest that you should try to deploy the Web interface and move some of your user community from the thick-client to the Web Interface.
- If you’re using P5 or P6 Enterprise Mode with PrimaveraWeb: You should upgrade and will benefit from the major enhancements that v7 brings
- Integration: If you are interested in building custom integration to ERP systems, other desktop applications or legacy systems, you should upgrade to P6 v7.
You can download the latest software from the Oracle website and review all of the new features/functionalities and define a path-forward if you are interested in upgrading to this version.
Contact Oracle for additional detail:
For a list of issues from previous versions that are resolved in P6 version 7.0, refer to Solution ID prim82775 in the Oracle Primavera Support Knowledgebase:
http://www.oracle.com/primavera/support.html



Great summary. Don’t forget the other compelling reason for EBS & JDE Customers to upgrade to P6v7 – then they can use the pre-built AIA PIP integration that passes data between their ERP/Financials system with Primavera for scheduling. Remove those integration and manual re-entry headaches! thx.