Primavera P6 Birds on a Wire Chart

OnePager builds birds-on-a-wire timeline charts from Primavera P6, like this:

If you don't already have OnePager, click the button above to download a free trial. Then, follow these instructions to see how easy it is:

1. Start by opening your schedule in Primavera P6:

   

   Here, we'll use the Finish Milestones as the birds, which will sit on top of wires that are tied to the WBS. If you have established WBS Summaries in your P6 schedule, you could use those instead of the actual WBS.

2. This example P6 project is very simple, so we'll plan to include all activities in our birds on a wire chart. However, if you have a larger P6 schedule, you can add a user defined field called OnePager and place a Yes next to any Finish Milestones and WBS Summaries that you want to include.

   To add a user-defined field to Primavera P6, go to Enterprise > User Defined Fields and click the Add button to add a new user-defined field called OnePager.

3. Now, we want to export the P6 schedule to either XML or XER format, both of which can be imported by OnePager. Go to File > Export and follow the prompts to export the project:

   

4. Next, go to your desktop or Windows Start menu, and launch OnePager:

   

5. When the OnePager start screen appears, click on New to start building a new birds on a wire chart from Primavera P6:

   

6. When the import wizard appears, choose Select > BROWSE Primavera P6 Files:

   

7. The import wizard will confirm the project from Primavera P6 that you are about to import. We also want to select OnePager's template that is specifically-designed to create birds on a wire charts from P6. To do this, go to Change > BROWSE and select the template called Birds on a Wire Chart for Primavera:

   

8. Again, our example project is simple, so we're opting to import all activities and WBS levels from the P6 project into OnePager, but if you did set up a user-defined field in step #2, this is where you'd select it as your import filter:

   

9. Click Create New Chart, and OnePager will import the milestones and WBS from Primavera P6, and create a birds-on-a-wire timeline like this:

   

For each level of the WBS, OnePager automatically places the milestones on top of their summary tasks to create the standard birds-on-a-wire layout so that you don't have to drag and drop the milestones in your chart by hand. OnePager goes a step further by automatically color-coding each level of the WBS differently so that each phase gets its own color.

Get started today by downloading a free trial.