Activity ID and relationship mismatch

P6 is designed so that the Activity ID is not part of any work sequence order. Indeed as you have found using the Activity ID to chose the sequence of events is VERY difficult.

I would have to advise not using the ID as a way of sequencing activities - you will get consistent problems this way.

This isn’t an answer to the problem.

Many people advise not using the ID as a way of sequencing activities - I agree It makes no difference to producing the Plan, however when you’re on the phone with someone on the other side of the world and they have a 20 page PDF of your plan it’s a lot easier if the ID’s are in numerical order to say for example ’look at ID number 100520’. Instead of searching for a description.

Obviously once you’ve baselined the plan for the first time you wouldn’t want to change any existing ID’s. Which is usually why we go up in 10’s and can therefore add in 9 further activities if necessary.

A column on the left which had a row number (as in MSP) would be useful at times.

Hi

Again, if the schedule is breakdown nicely, finding activity should be easy and it make no different whether the activity id is in sequency or not.

However, when I saw schedule that have 20 activities name the same, I am always wonder how the planner actually plan their project.

ID is a unique identifier, organise it nicely is good but don’t try to built in too much intelligent to it.

Alex

Glenn,

i believe that a sane planner or pm who understands how the program (software) works will never review a 20 page pdf or hard copy of the schedule without the aid of a real soft copy for himself.

Dear Friends ,

I am seeing people are posting replies why the issue is imporatant ?

If at all it is imporatnt to sequencially put the activities there is no harm.

If some know the solution how can it be done .
I am also a planner and understand that logic exisits but having then in a sequence its easy to understand.

Regards

Shiv Rao

Annon,

Thanks for the answer.

All I need to do is change the 6 PM’s and 9 clients I currently deal with for ’sane’ ones.

Shiv true P6 behaves that way. P6 sorts data in one of the column say "start" or " act description", etc. After copying data, use the same sort method used in original file. i.e click the heading as we do in excel.

Glenn,

That’s reality, and dealing with it is another kind of planning which I never learned, that’s why an ordinary employee like me gets fired always!