You can create your own managers for Primavera Unifier. You can create up to 25 managers.
In Primavera Unifier, managers are a means to create, consolidate, and monitor such things as schedule activities, resource allocations, company assets, or project/shell/company costs. Managers generally use a discrete set of functions to control and provide oversight for specific purposes, such as document maintenance, scheduling, or asset management. Most managers work as nodes in the Primavera Unifier navigator where users can create both the items to manage, and an electronic "sheet" where these items can be consolidated and monitored. As an example, the Asset Manager is a manager already provided by Unifier where users can gather their company assets and monitor their locations, acquisition dates, depreciation over time, etc.
Much the same as the Asset Manager, you can create your own managers to consolidate and monitor any entities you want. You can create your own code system and navigation for the manager, and design your own data elements for the business processes the manager will use. Once you have created a manager, you can deploy it at the company or project/shell level.
In most Primavera Unifier managers, you can roll up currency amounts from BP records to a sheet, or from one sheet to another. However, in configurable managers, you can roll up not only currency amounts, but also quantity amounts. To use this feature, you will need to create specific data elements to place on the manager attribute (detail) form. These fields must be built on the following data definitions and will serve as "containers" for collecting the values from business process line items:
- SYS BP Currency Amount
- SYS BP Decimal Amount
- SYS BP Integer Amount
Using these data definitions for the fields on your attribute form, you can separately roll up currency, decimal, and integer amounts from BP line items to the manager sheet. (For information on how to create data elements, see Creating a Data Structure.)
Using Primavera Unifier’s snapshot feature, users can take a "picture" of the manager sheet at any point in time. This can be useful to expose specific items for particular attention.
You can design two kinds of managers: Code-and-record-based and code-based.
- A code-and-record-based manager employs both codes to create a tracking sheet and records of individual items.
- A code-based manager employs only a sheet to keep track of the values it is monitoring.
From a code-and-record-based manager, you can drill down from the sheet to individual items; from a code-based manager, you cannot.
Code-and-Record-Based Manager
In Primavera Unifier, a code-and-record-based manager is where users can enter items and classify them into categories to make managing them more efficient. Similar to the Asset Manager, you can create categories (called classes) of items in uDesigner, and Primavera Unifier users can add records of individual items to these classes and manage them on electronic sheets. Once the Primavera Unifier user creates an item under a class, it automatically appears on the sheet.
In Primavera Unifier, the [manager] node lists the names of every item class that was created. These nodes are where Primavera Unifier users can add items to the class, or modify them. The manager node supports multiple levels of data (such as an equipment class and equipment items) with drill-down capability.
In the Sheets node, Primavera Unifier users can create a new sheet (one per code class) and specify what should appear on the sheet for the class, create formulas for sheet calculations, and roll up currency and quantity values from BPs to the sheet. Once the sheet is created, Primavera Unifier will automatically add a row to the sheet whenever a new item is added to any class. Primavera Unifier will also automatically refresh the sheet whenever an item is modified.
From the sheet, users can import and export column data in CSV format to and from other applications.
An example of a code-and-record-based manager might be an inventory or parts manager to itemize and keep track of parts for your facilities. In this manager, you could:
- Categorize parts by class
- Track inventory on hand in all locations
- Maintain basic cost information
- Track parts transactions (bought, sold, repaired, received, shipped, etc.)
- Monitor the costs generated by each transaction