The Oracle | Primavera Risk (Pertmaster) system options contain software functionality and usability settings that are important for standalone and server setups.  The system options can be accessed under “tools” in the main menu bar.  Most options will only need to be set one time by the risk analyst or an IT department for a server install.  A few options, such as using F9 to schedule, may be toggled on and off by the user.

Video Walkthrough of the Oracle | Primavera Risk (Pertmaster) System Options (Duration: 7 min: 19 sec)

Section Tab: System Modes

The first option in the system modes tab, Manual Schedule Analysis (Press F9 to Schedule), is one of the more widely used option in the Primavera Risk product.  Schedulers can choose whether the CPM scheduling engine will recalculate the network live after every change or if they can make multiple changes and choose to schedule the network manually by pressing the F9 key.  Microsoft Project users will be familiar with live scheduling, while Primavera P6 users will use the F9 feature more commonly.  This option is very important because large networks can take a significant amount of time to recalculate.  If a planner is going to make ten changes before running a scenario, then do they want the network to recalculate on every change or only after they have made all of the desired changes?  Live scheduling can be convenient on smaller schedules, however it is usually time consuming on larger CPM schedules.

Additional Options are listed:

• Prompt before creating a new task from a link – typing in a link to an ID that does not exist will create a new activity with the entered ID name.  This prompt will create a pop-up box before creating the task.
• Clicking a task row scrolls Gantt Chart to show task (x) – when a user clicks a task the screen will snap to that activity on the Gantt Chart.  This option chooses what location to snap to on the activity bar.
• Allow tasks to be moved with mouse – activities can be moved left and right by hovering over a task bar on the Gantt chart and left-clicking.  This option can be disabled.
• Left Splitter Bar Snaps to Columns Edge in Gantt Chart – the splitter bar on the left edge of the Gantt chart will snap to the end of one column when double-clicking if this is not selected.  It will snap to the last column if this option is checked.
• Move Selection down after Enter – clicking enter on a column will move down to the next cell if this option is selected.  If the option is not selected, then the selection will stay within the current highlighted box.  There is no option to have the selection move to the right.

Section Tab: System Folders

The system folders tab allows users or an IT department to setup the users personal and shared folders.  The user and shared folders can be mapped to anywhere that users have system access.  It is common for the user folders to be mapped to the local machine for analysis and the shared folders to be mapped to a server location so that multiple users can share templates.  On shared PCs or laptop computers, the shared folder may be mapped to a location on the local machine that any logged in user can access.

The user folder for plan backups is near the middle of the page.  Primavera Risk utilizes flat files and not a database back-end.  Analysts must manually save their Pertmaster .plan files frequently, like a Microsoft Excel file, to avoid losing data.  An option can be set to create backup files on a set time increment to protect the risk analyst or planner against unexpected shut downs.  If this item is unchecked, then all unsaved data will be lost in the event of a system or program crash.