Global Change Overview

Using Global Change Video

The Global Change tool enables you to make changes to a selection of activities in a project at the same time. It is similar to find and replace functionality in other software applications but with more powerful capabilities. The global change process is quicker than manually updating many individual activities with the same data, especially in larger projects. The ability to save global change configurations enables you to repeat the processes as necessary.

First, add a global change and define the specific values that you want to identify on activity fields such as codes, configured fields, dates, or durations. Depending on the field, you can choose to identify static values, rolling values, or a specific range of values. You can identify values for multiple fields. Next, specify the actions that should be taken when any or all of those field values are found. This might be changing all activities of a certain type to another type, modifying activity calendar assignments, or increasing the duration of activities whose durations fall within a specific range. Changes are only made to activities that meet your specified conditions. Multiple actions can be taken from a single global change.

Global change functionality is supported by activities in the current schedule, baselines, and what-if scenarios. One recommended best practice is to run global changes on a scenario to preview the changes before they are made to your current schedule. If you are satisfied with the potential changes, you can set that scenario as the current schedule. Use the Schedule Comparison tool to compare the scenario with global changes to your current schedule. In addition to manually creating global changes, you can also copy existing global changes from another project in the same workspace. Global changes and their parameters are saved to the project and can be run at any time. By default, individual global changes are only visible to the user who created them, but they can be made publicly accessible to all users who have access to the project.

You must have the required security privileges to configure and run global changes. You must also have the required privileges to edit the activities to which you want to make global changes. If you are making changes in a baseline, the Baselines - Edit Activity Data privilege must also be enabled. If your security privileges do not enable you to edit the activities, you will not be able to commit the changes you make.

After a global change process completes, the Activities page automatically updates with any new values. A global change log is generated, containing the change's parameters, a list of updated fields and values, and any errors that were encountered. You can access the log from the system notification you receive when the process is complete, from the Inbox, or from the Manage Services page.