Primavera P6 Professional 26.4 - Default link type

Hit the same surprise rolling out 26.4 recently. A few points that reframe it slightly:

1. The release-note justification is about the DCMA schedule-quality guideline that at least 90% of relationships should be finish-to-start. That isn't a DCMA-contractor-only rule — it's a general network-logic gauge several agencies use, and it's a reasonable one: FS logic is unambiguous about sequence, whereas SS/FF links leave date-driver ambiguity. Oracle points at it as a rationale, but nothing in P6 forces FS-only.

2. The change only affects the default when a new link is created. Relationship type is still a per-dependency property — existing FF/SS logic isn't retrofitted, and you can still set any type via the dependencies dialog. A legitimate FF link to a finish milestone is one extra click, not a locked door.

3. On reverting to old behavior: I haven't found (and Oracle hasn't documented) a global toggle to restore the activity-type-based default. Voting it up on Oracle's idea portal is the practical route — a fixed FS default is fine for logic-first workflows, but it removes a genuinely useful shortcut for the rest of us.

Also worth noting: the 90% threshold is a network-level target, not per-link — a handful of deliberate FF links keeps you comfortably clear. Fair to be annoyed at a UI default driven by one auditing regime, but the practical risk is low.

Gareth, the note’s right but it doesn’t force FS on anyone. It’s only the default when you add a new link to a milestone. Existing FF/SS stays as it is, XER/XML still comes in with whatever type is in the file, and you can still set FF/SS/SF in the dialog. No switch to put the old default back.

DCMA’s 90% is a check they run when they assess a schedule, not a lock in P6. Only matters if your contract asks for it. Oracle’s own 26 guide says the default for activities, including start milestones, is FS.

One catch on the old behaviour: from 20.12.4 / 21.5, linking onto a finish milestone already defaulted to SF, not FF. Oracle logged that as KB305007. The FF default is the older one.
Nothing on Ron Winter’s site about this.

Problems for P6 users started when Oracle introduced 14 schedule quality checks into the desktop versions of P6, largely mirroring the DCMA checks.

Users quickly discovered that the logic check could fail not because the schedule logic was wrong, but because P6 lacked the capability to apply FS logic appropriately to all milestone types. The workaround was effectively to use different relationship types around Start and Finish milestones.  So this was not Oracle restoring some “old behaviour.” It was a capability gap that had existed across all previous P6 versions.

Saying that,  the idea that a “good” schedule must contain more than 90% FS relationships is questionable in itself. A schedule should represent how the work is actually performed (!). Parallel work is absolutely normal. If real processes require SS, FF or even SF relationships, then the schedule should contain them. The number of each relationship type should be driven by the delivery process (!), not by the need to pass a quality check.

Unless, of course, the objective is simply to produce another “tick-the-box” P6 schedule.

BTW, if a schedule contains 100% FS, it is definitely artificial, but it will pass the test. 

Gareth, a correction to my earlier post. I said linking onto a finish milestone defaulted to SF. It did in some older versions, but Oracle treated that as a bug. The intended default was FF, so you were right.

One tip in the meantime, the FS target in Check Schedule defaults to 90%, but you can change it to match whatever your contract actually requires.