[email protected] +1 303 779 0344

Home How-To

Timeline with Hours Worked from Primavera P6

Use OnePager to create a project timeline from Primavera P6 depicting hours worked by resource or by department.

Most project timelines will show you the start and finish dates of tasks and milestones, but don't have a way of displaying how much work is actually taking place during the project. OnePager gives you the ability to import work information from Primavera P6 and display it as a graph next to your timeline.

15-Day
Free Trial

  1. Begin with your project plan. This example is shown in Primavera P6, though the same approach applies to tools like Microsoft Project, Planisware, or Smartsheet. In this plan, every task tracks the hours worked, and those hours are assigned to a resource who is also a member of a department:

    Primavera P6 schedule with hourly work

    With OnePager, we can track the total project work over time, or we can break it out by resource, by department, or both.

  2. With a user defined field, you can tell OnePager which activities from Primavera P6 to include in the timeline:

    Select activities from Primavera P6.

  3. Once you have decided which activities to import from Primavera P6, export your project to an XML or an XER file so that it can be imported into OnePager

  4. Launch OnePager by clicking the button on your desktop:

    Launch OnePager to import from Primavera P6.

  5. On the start screen, click NEW to start building a new project timeline. When the import wizard appears, browse for the Primavera P6 XML or XER file that you exported:

    Import from Primavera P6 into OnePager to create a project timeline.

  6. When the start screen appears, click NEW to build a new timeline, which will initially look something like this. In the next few steps, we'll bring in the hourly work data, and graph it across the top of the timeline in a few different ways.

    Project timeline created from Primavera P6.

  7. To graph hours worked along the top of the timeline, go to Home > Chart Properties > Graphs/Data Cells. Let's add a cumulative monthly line graph that tracks the Budgeted Labor Units field from Primavera P6:

    Settings to create a monthly work (hours) graph for your Primavera P6 chart in OnePager.

  8. Click OK, and OnePager will graph a monthly summary of total hours worked across the entire project timeline:

    OnePager timeline from Primavera P6, displaying cumulative monthly hours worked for a project.

15-Day
Free Trial

Graphing Hours Worked by Resource

While the line graph in the first part of this example provided a good understanding of the total hours worked over time, many leaders also need to understand the hours worked by each person assigned to the project. To do this, we can change the line graph from the previous section to a stacked column graph with a different color for the work performed by each resource.

  1. Return to Home > Chart Properties > Graphs/Data Cells. Change the Graph Type to Column, change the Time Unit to Quarter, and uncheck the Cumulative checkbox:

    Switch from a line graph to a column (bar) graph for hours worked on a project timeline.

  2. Click OK and OnePager will change your monthly line graph to a quarterly bar graph, like this:

    Primavera P6 timeline with a bar graph showing total project work in hours.

  3. To slice and dice the quarterly hours worked by person, click on the Pivot Series button:

    Apply a pivot to your bar chart of hours worked during a project.

  4. Check the box to Pivot Vertically and then choose the Resources field from the dropdown. OnePager will identify all of the resources in your project and assign a different color to each person, so it will be easy to see their hours:

    Slice and dice a bar graph based on each person's hours worked on a project.

  5. Click OK. OnePager will slice and dice your bar graph so that each person's hours appear stacked in a different color, like this:

    Quarterly graph of project work, pivoted by resource.

    Optionally, you can enable a legend to show which colors have been assigned to each person.

15-Day
Free Trial

Graphing Hours Worked by Department

We can take things one step further and split the graph out so that we not only see hours worked by person, but also by department. Here's how.

  1. Back under Home > Chart Properties > Graphs/Data Cells, click the Pivot Series button again.

    Switch the hours worked graph from a line graph to an area graph.

  2. Switch to the Horizontal Pivot tab, check the box to Pivot horizontally with field, and then select the Department field from the dropdown. Click OK when you're finished.

    Create a vertically stacked area graph based on monthly hours worked for a project.

  3. Click OK, and OnePager will update your bar graph to show you the hours worked by both person and by department:

    Project timeline that tracks hours worked with a stacked and splayed bar graph for each team and person working on the project.

Get started today by downloading a free trial.

15-Day
Free Trial


Steps demonstrated in this article require use of OnePager's optional graphs and data cells feature, which is purchased separately from a standard license. All trial licenses receive complimentary access to graphs and data cells for fifteen days. Some sequences pertaining to unrelated features have been shortened for brevity.