In high latency environments, performance can be affected by the amount of data that needs to be transferred between P6 Professional and the P6 database.
When you connect to a Cloud Connect database, P6 Professional caches some data locally to improve performance. The data in your local cache is automatically synchronized with the Cloud Connect database in the background. The first time you connect to a Cloud Connect database, or if you mark the Reinitialize local cache option when connecting, a large amount of data will be downloaded from the Cloud Connect database and stored in the local cache. This can mean that P6 Professional takes longer to open. Some changes to your security profile also trigger a refresh of the local cache which will cause P6 Professional to take longer to open. In all these cases, once P6 Professional opens, performance will be improved.
To optimize the amount of data that flows between P6 Professional on your desktop and the P6 server, ensure that you have a stable, wired connection to the P6 server and follow the guidelines described in this section.
Working With the Launcher
Once P6 Professional opens, the launcher (Primavera.CacheService.exe) minimizes to the status tray. You can right-click on the status tray icon to show the launcher, reload P6 Professional and reconnect to the same Cloud Connect database, or exit the launcher and stop synchronization with the Cloud Connect database. If you exit the launcher it will restart next time you launch P6 Professional.
Improving Login Performance
Login performance is affected by the amount of data that gets loaded during the login process. You can control this data by following the tips described below:
- Evaluate user privilege assignments to ensure that your users have access to only relevant data.
- Remove unused global objects from the system, including unused UDFs or Code assignments.
- Set the startup filters to load Current Projects Only Data and turn off loading for Resource Summary Data.
Enabling the Welcome Dialog
Enable the Welcome dialog from User Preferences dialog box to select the project at application startup. Selecting a project at startup ensures that you do not open a project that you had not intended to open or are not required to switch to the correct project after an incorrect project loads in the application.
Note: You should only enable the Welcome dialog if you work on different projects.
To configure the Welcome dialog:
- Log in to P6 Professional.
- From the toolbar, select Tools and then click User Preferences.
- In the Application Startup Window menu, under the Application tab, select None.
- Select the Show the Welcome dialog at startup checkbox.
- Exit the User Preferences dialog box.
Creating and Selecting a Portfolio with Only the Required Projects
Oracle recommends that you do not use the All Projects portfolio because it will load all the projects in the database to which the user has access. Instead, you can either create a new portfolio with your required projects or you can open the No Projects portfolio when logging in to the application.
To create a new portfolio:
- Log in to P6 Professional.
- From the toolbar, select Enterprise and then click Project Portfolios.
- Click Add to create a new portfolio.
- Add the required projects to the portfolio.
- From the toolbar, select File and then click Select Project Portfolio.
- Select the portfolio.
Note: Ensure EPS bands only for projects in current portfolio option is selected when opening a portfolio.
Configuring Startup Options
To configure the startup options:
- Log in to P6 Professional.
- From the toolbar, select Tools and then click User Preferences.
- Under the Startup Filters tab, deselect the Resource Summary Data checkbox.
- Select the current project data; this only applies to for Resources, Roles, OBS, Activity Codes, and Cost Accounts.
Improving Functional Performance
- Use Exclusive mode to open projects to perform actions, such as updating the schedule. Only the user that opens a project in Exclusive mode can edit it; other users are prevented from making changes.
- When possible, use filters to reduce the amount of data that is loaded or displayed.
- P6 Professional commits data whenever a new row is added. If your network or Internet connection experiences high latency, it can take longer for data to be committed. To reduce this time, create a local Excel file and then import then data using XLS import.
Alternatively, you can use a Standalone SQLite database to enter the data and use XML export/import to move the data to main database. See the P6 Professional Installation and Configuration Guide (Standalone) for details.
- Import layouts separately from projects when doing XML import. This allows the import to run in the background.
- Use P6 to schedule recurring tasks like summarizer, apply actuals, scheduler, and so on, during off-peak hours.
- Avoid frequently scheduling projects.
- Use Refresh (F5) only when necessary because it forces P6 Professional to reload data from the server.