In Primavera P6, the tasks of a project are known as activities. As with other project and portfolio management applications, activities have some basic attributes:
- A name
- A start date
- A finish date
- Percent complete
Here is how to add an activity to a new or existing Primavera P6 project.
- Right-click on an existing line in your plan -- or, if this is a brand-new project, simply right-click on the project summary task, as shown below. Choose Add.
- This inserts the new line into your plan, and fills in some basic information:
- Obviously you'll want to revise the default values populated by Primavera automatically. To do this, the best place to go is the Details window, traditionally displayed on the bottom half of your screen. (If it’s not showing, toggle it by going on the ribbon to View > Show on Bottom > Details.)
- You'll notice there are five tabs in the Details window. Each serves a specific purpose:
- The activity name can be changed from the General tab, where you see the text "New Activity."
- Duration, start and finish dates should be set from the Status tab. Duration is denominated by default in days, so "2d" means the task is expected to last two working days.
- Resource and predecessor/successor assignments have their own dedicated tabs. We'll cover these topics in a future article.
- Once we’ve filled in these details, our new activity is ready to go!
