Schedule frequently asked questions

As you manage a detailed schedule within the Plan view of InEight Schedule, you will need to make adjustments and changes. You may need to import change information from other sources, or export schedule changes to use in other applications.

You can import and export schedule data using the Import and Export options in the right toolbar within the Plan view.

For import, you have the options to import WBS items, activities, logic, codes, user-defined fields and resource assignments, using an Excel import file.

For export, you have several options, including:

• Primavera P6 XER

• Excel Export

• MS Project MPP

From the Plan view of InEight Schedule, you can assign resources to an activity by selecting the Actions ellipses and selecting Assign resource assignments. This opens a window where you can select from available resources or add new ones to the activity, along with productivity and cost information.

Once added, you can review your resources’ planned and actual productivity by turning on the Resources Histogram from the View Option menu.

If you’ve customized your Plan view by applying groupings, filters or columns sets, you can save the view by selecting Views from the left toolbar and selecting Save current view.

To compare multiple schedules, you can take snapshots and designate which ones to compare on the Baseline/Snapshot Management slide-out panel in the Plan view. You access this slide-out panel from the right toolbar.

Once designated, you can select which snapshots to include in your view by selecting them in the View Options menu.

You can then compare the activities of each schedule next to each other in the Gantt chart.

See Also:

Baseline/Snapshot

You can save your entire schedule, or portions of it, to the Knowledge Base for future use. To save the entire schedule, click the Actions ellipses on the highest level (first row) of the schedule and select Publish to the knowledge base.

You can perform this same function at any WBS level.

Published schedules (or portions of a schedule) are stored on the CPM Schedules tab in the Knowledge Base. An Administrator must review the schedule and mark it as Verified prior to it being used.

In existing schedules, at the WBS level, you can add portions of a schedule from the Knowledge Base. This is done from the Iris panel, under the Smart Planning section.

InEight Schedule currently includes import/export functionality to share schedule data between applications via Microsoft Excel and .XER files. Development is underway to more tightly integrate InEight Schedule with other applications including InEight Estimate and InEight Plan.

Resources used for scheduling in the Plan view are for considering durations, productivity and costs for the entire CPM schedule for the project and are assigned at the higher activity level.

SIP resources represent the labor, equipment and materials tracked on look-ahead schedules managed by the field team. These look-ahead or short interval plans break schedule activities down into the day-to-day steps to execute the work in the field and track the SIP resources at the step or task level.

Yes, there is a fill-down feature for calendars, codes and resources, where you can specify a value at a summary level and have it apply to the child elements below it. You access the Fill down feature by clicking on the Actions ellipses of your summary level item.

InEight Schedule does not support a program level of schedule management, where distinct schedules for different projects are managed under a single program and have external relationships between them. You can still manage multiple schedules with relationships between them, however, by importing the individual schedules into one “master” schedule and then establishing logic links between them as needed.

Use Case 1: InEight Schedule only

Publish each schedule to the Knowledge Base, then add WBS items representing each schedule and import the corresponding schedule from the Knowledge Base for each WBS item using the Smart Planning feature.

Use Case 2: InEight Schedule and Primavera

Select multiple schedules in Primavera and export them as a single structure in an XER file. Then import the .XER file into InEight Schedule, where it becomes a single “master” schedule structure containing the individual schedules exported from Primavera.

You can send data from the InEight Schedule Plan view to Excel using the Column Set Builder and the Export feature. From the Column Set Builder Menu, select the Column Set Builder to specify what columns you would like to include for exporting to Excel.

Then, you can export that set of columns and their related data to Excel, by selecting Export on the right toolbar.

InEight Schedule includes a review cycle feature that can be used to obtain progress updates from the field.

The resources used in InEight Schedule (both at the Knowledge Base and Project levels) are distinct from the resources used in other InEight applications. Any coordination of resources used by the different apps would therefore need to be managed via internal processes within your organization. For example, your organization could define a standard set of resources used by the company and share that list out to the various project teams to import or manually input within each application.

You can import schedule data via an .XER file using the Import schedules function on the left toolbar of the Project List page.

Note that when importing you can import historical data from another schedule to bring in additional information including planners, assignments, and short interval plans.

You can access InEight Schedule from the InEight Cloud Platform, either from an organization or project level. If you select Schedule from the Organization home page, it takes you to the Project List page within InEight Schedule, where you can then select your schedule as needed. If you select Schedule from a Project home page, it will take you to InEight Schedule, and will be filtered down to that specific project’s workspace on the Project List page, making it easier to get to the schedules related to the project.

From the Project List page of InEight Schedule, you can link a schedule workspace to a project in InEight Platform by selecting Link project on the left toolbar.

In the future, the schedule workspace will be created automatically when an InEight Platform project is created.