Top 10 Features of P6 R8

 10.  Support for Apple Browser

 9.   User Productivity Kit (UPK)

 8.   Business Process Management (BPM)

 7.   New Web Based Reporting (Business Intelligence)

 6.   Integrated Risk Management

 5.   Enhanced Resource Analysis

 4.   Portfolios

 3.   Templates

 2.   Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) View

 1.  100% Web

Number 9, User Productivity Kit

See It, Try It, Do It!

As the famous Nike said “Just Do It”, Oracle Primavera P6 R8 has the User Productivity Kit (UPK) technology embedded in the software.  The Tagline is ‘See It’, ‘Try It’, ‘Do It’.  

The UPK comes loaded with P6 R8 and includes sample Multimedia Tutorials.  This will assist your organization change management team in how they deliver training.  Ultimately, your company will benefit from buying additional UPK licenses to design and create your own custom training simulations.  The ability exists for the UPK to be integrated with the P6 interface and native help files.   

The UPK is only available in English but other languages will most likely eventually be available.  The P6 R8 tutorials are designed to give companies multimedia experience of how to complete certain functions or processes during the projects lifecycle.  The UPK will help supplement training needs.  The users will be able to follow custom process and procedures.  Users will be allowed to see the process first, then try it and finally do it themselves.   When the UPK is launched from the Help Topic, a complete list of topics or modules will be available for the end user. 

An example how the UPK would be beneficial to your company would be as follows: 

• Grant users read only access to P6 R8
• Encourage them to try the UPK prior to attending classroom consultative training
• Attend customized classroom consultative training session.
• Allow access to the UPK during the entire project lifecycle.

This will allow the user to incremental learn the software instead of the flooding the end user with an enormous amount of information to retina over a two day classroom period.   After training, the UPK will allow end users to consistently review techniques on how to process documents, job aids and or interactive simulations.     

The four modes of the UPK are as follows:

1. See It, allows users to follow along to a multimedia simulation of the activity needing to be performed.
2. Try It, allows the user to try it in simulated environment where users will feel safe to practice in.
3. Do It, end users will be guided to complete the activity live in the P6 R8 application.
4. Print It!, for those that refuse to ‘Go Green’, this feature gives the users the ability to print the latest Job Aid or allows them to supplement their training manual. 

One of the real benefits of the UPK is that once a process or procedure is enhanced, it can immediately be available to the entire user community.  This would be latest and greatest collection of P6 R8 best library, from Project Templates, Forecasting, Planning, and Scheduling Project & Resources.   

In the past, the options were MSWord documents that were ‘Job Aids’ that quickly become out of date and needed constant updates.   Now UPK comes along in P6 R8 and it has predefined templates included right out of box. 

The UPK examples loaded with P6 R8 include:

1. Building a Project Plan
2. Using Project Templates
3. Dashboards
4. Managing Risk
5. Administering P6 R8

If your appetite desires documenting your entire process, you will need to upgrade to the full read write version of Oracle UPK.    There are two types of possibilities for Create or modify need:  

• 1) Development license or
• 2) Employee license.

 You would only need a license or two for your training department.  You can get the latest quotes from an Oracle Primavera Account Executive.  Prices seem very reasonable per user.