Before adding Project activities in Primavera, you should first define the project scope in WBS format, which includes all groups of work that need to be completed.
When you add activities in Primavera, you can add them directly to the application, or if you have an activity list in Excel or Microsoft Project format, you can import the activities, including the duration, into Primavera.
The initial information that needs to be prepared when adding activities is a list of activities, duration and their relationships.
Like the Microsoft Project application, in Primavera, you can define relationships between activities such as Start to Start (SS), FS, FF or SF. You can also define lead or lag if necessary.
You also need to determine whether the activity has a duration type of Fixed Duration & Units, Fixed Duration & Units/Time, Fixed Units or Fied Units/Time.
Apart from that, you also need to define the % Complete Type, which has the options Physical, Duration or Units.
To make it easy to remember, here are the basic things you need to prepare when adding activities:
- WBS.
- Name of activity, duration and type of relationship.
- Determine what milestones you want to achieve.
- Activity calendar (usually follows the project calendar).
- Duration Type.
- Type % Complete.
- Constraints, if any.
- Determine the Level of Effort activities that need to be added, if any (usually related to costs).
- It is best to have all activities of the Task Dependent type so that it is easy to control them. You can also determine whether an activity is task-dependent or resource-dependent.
The first step to adding an activity is to determine the default configuration at the project level. The default configuration is determined based on the type of majority of your activities on the project.
This is useful, so you don’t need to reconfigure a lot at the activity level. When you add an activity, Primavera will automatically adjust the configuration type according to the configuration at the project level. Examples of default configuration: Calendar, Duration Type, % Complete Type, Numbering (ID), etc.
To add activities manually, you can go to the activities page and then add activities using the add activity button that is provided in Primavera.
You can add a list of all activities and define their name and duration first; then, you can define the relationship after all the activities are entered.
After all activities and their relationships are defined, you can execute the scheduling menu so that activities will move according to their start and end dates based on the duration and type of relationship between activities.
When you add activity data, the Duration Type, % Complete Type, calendar, and Numbering (ID) data will automatically adjust to the data previously defined at the project level. You can still change it at the activity level if necessary.
Any changes to activities that could affect the schedule must be rescheduled by accessing the Tools -> Schedule (F9).
When you have a lot of activities (for example, above 500), you can ask the support team for help to fill in the activities in Excel in the form of activities and their duration. You can collect activity data and its duration and then import it into Primavera via Excel. You can manually add other activities in Primavera after the import process is complete or carry out the import process again.
It is best to refrain from importing relationship data between activities via Excel (although you can import it), but relationship data should be defined directly in the Primavera application. Suppose you need to configure the activity ID format. In that case, you can do it at the beginning via the default configuration at the Primavera Project level or the end after all the activities have been entered.
