When working with Primavera P6 .xer files, often there is a need to hide specific information from people inside or outside the team.
For example, we have a sub-contractor that needs to view the project schedule in order to perform their work, but we do not want them to see any resource cost data or any other cost data.
Another case is when we want to send the project schedule to a general contractor, but want to hide the cost information him.
And what about POBS? As you already know, every Primavera P6 database has a POBS table which stands for Performing Organization Breakdown Structure. This table however is not used by Primavera P6 Professional or Primavera P6 EPPM, but the data is imported or exported via XER data file.
The real problem occurs when there is a large amount of unwanted POBS data within XER file, causing a slow load into the database that may even last for hours.
So how do you remove/hide unwanted data in XER file?
There might be more answers to this question. For example, if you want to remove “POBS” data, Michael Lepage from Plan Academy is sharing the manual way with the help of basic text editor.
In this post, I want to share a straightforward way to clean data in P6 XER file with the help of third-party tool.
ScheduleCleaner™ modifies certain project categories and will not change original XER file that is exported from Primavera® P6 database. Instead, it will make a copy of the project plan and modification that are done will be saved in the newly created file.
The process workflow for single file is presented on the following image:
Step 1: Load the XER project file
Step 2: Select the categories to be deleted
Step 3: Your “Cleaned” file is ready
This was the automatic way to clean and prepare XER files for distribution and sharing.
Moreover, user can setup and reuse Templates that contain different modifying settings to a single or group (Batch Clean) of XER files.
What else can you clean in XER project file?
I showed an example for removing costs such as project funding, budget changes, spending and benefits plans, project expenses and assignments costs as this is the most usual case.
Other data categories that can be removed too are:
- Units
- Rates
- Pricing
- Change output file version number
- Progress parameters
- Convert Global to Project calendars.
- Convert Global to Project activity codes
In this way, users who share project files with other parties will keep schedule integrity and protect sensitive data, which is one of the most important aspects of any Primavera P6 oriented organizations.
Do you know other way either manual or automatic that anonymize confidential data in XER file?
I like to hear from you below.
