Activity ID and Activity Codes

An Activity ID is the unique value associated with an activity, and is used by P3 when defining releationships, allocating resources etc.

Activity codes help to organise a schedule or define responsibilities, phases work areas etc.

YOU MUST HAVE an Activity ID, you dont necessarily need activity codes (but they do help). If you are unsure just hide the activity id, and let P3 manage this.

HTH

An Activity ID is unique to P3. This is how primavera recoginzes an activity. It helps to find an activity or operation. The activity ID can be up to any length. The activity id can be organized in a particular format so that it can be related to particular location, type of work, etc. Each activity in P3 needs to have an activity ID. Activity ID can be user defined or P3 generated. However, on big schedule jobs it is strongly recommended to have user defined activity id so that they can relative to the work performed in the field.
An activity code is user defined totally. It helps to organize and sort the schedule to particular formats. The activity code is not a necessity for the P3 schedule to perform but it definetly helps to manage the schedule in a better way. you can learn the way to add activity codes from the P3 help menu. The activity codes are initally defined in activity code box. The way to get to it is by clicking on Data icon on the top of the screen.

P3 is based on database, if you have experience of anyother Database software (eg Access), then you will understand activity ID is the primary key for a data table,a unique identification for a record. when P3 works on activity, it use this id to recogenize activity.
activity code are some free space in the database where you can store additional information for each task

In practice, ID can be used as activity code to some extent, that is by using a well defined coding structure for activity ID, you can build intelligence into the ID.
Just like the first two chars of the ID is used to identify subproject in a project group.

Dear All,

Thanks a lot for your valuable informations.

As far as I know activity IDs can contain up to 10 alphanumeric characters, which can be divided in to a maximum of 4 codes. Is there any genarally accepted way of organizing these 10 alphanumeric characters?
We all know that first 2 characters of Activity IDs are reserved for the SUBP (Project ID) code, but what about the remaining 8 alphanumeric characters? Of course organizing the Activity IDs is totaly the scheduler own problem but I am working for a project which will have around 20000 activities I guess. That is why I need your recommendations to make the things well planned for the future.

Regards,

"As far as I know activity IDs can contain up to 10 alphanumeric characters, which can be divided in to a maximum of 4 codes."

Where did you get this from ?

Generally, the first two characters of the activity id are reserved to identify sub-projects. What you do with the other 8 is entirely up to you.

Activity Codes can have up to 20 different values, up to a limit of 64 characters i.e 10 codes of 4 characters, 4 codes of 3 characters & 6 codes of 2 characters, as one possible combination. And takinf the first 4 character activity code to be phase, this can have any 4 character value i.e 0010 - 9990, A010 - Z990, someone did work out all the possible value but all I can remember was that it was a lot !.

HTH

Is that too important my dear friend?
(where I got this from).

I just need help that is why I sent my questions to forum.

Anyway thanks for your reply...

Not important at all, however you should be aware of the source of unreliable (or even wholly incorrect information).

But How could it be?

I am aware of the source of reliable since I got that information from "Primavera Project Planner Help".

I usually like to define the category of work, area, and WBS in the activity ID (although the same information is also defined on activity code), ie:


Category (1 digit): milestones, engineering, submittal, procurement, delivery, construction, start up. etc...

Area (1 digit - ex for a combined cycle power plant): 1-CTA, 2-CTB, 3-STG, 4-HRSG A, 5-HRSG B, 6-BOP, 7- Intake/cooling tower, 8- discharge, etc...

WBS (3 digit)- this is the system number that depends on the engineer information

Belive me, after a while just for looking the activity ID give you a lot of information... Makes life easier. You still have 5 other digits to play with subprojects and sequencing

Cheers mate,

david ,

you are correct, lenth of activity ID is only up to 10 chars.

How to use it depend on how you want to organize your project and what info. you want to build in activity ID. For such a big schedule, it’s very important to think of the activity ID code & activity coding structure before you start work, or you will have problem sorting/filtering/grouping activities. May be you will find out 64 chars is not enough, so think it carefully.

If you organize your schedule by e.g. Buildings as sub-project in a project group, then fisrt 2 char of the ID represents the building, you may use the 3rd char for discipline eg "C" for Civil, "M" for Mechanical...
then people can find some information from the Activity ID
B1C-001 > B1 building Civil work

any way it’s up to you

I agree with Luis - although it can be tedious, I try to build intelligence into my activity codes. also, leave space between the numerics (i.e. every 10) so that should you need to insert an activity numerically by ID, it will be easy.

hi guys,
I think the original question of David about activity ID remains un-answered, what i understand about his question is the ACTIVITY ID, which you can see in the Menu>Data>Activity code , then you can see three columns as Activity Code , Activity ID and Alias.

Thats the activity ID he wants to know not the act Id columns.
regards uly

david,
in anwswer to your post, activity id is like activity code, it has feature to orgaize anf filter, but it seldoms use in standalone project. it helps you mainly if your projects are in groups. my advise use activity code instead
regards , uly

I agree
Activity codes are the one that structure your program. They can be effectively used for filtering out a set of activity.

The other problem I faced is if you have too complicated activity ids, and want to change some relationship in you project, it takes a lot of concentration to select the right activity id. (or may be someone has a better idea.)

My conclusion: You can live without activity ids but not without activity codes.

Sorry guys, in my last post don’t be misled that you don’t need activity id. What I wanted to say that you can leave this upto P3 to genertae these by itself on defined/default settings.

You have to have something in activity id to differentiate one from another.