How-to·8 August 2026·8 min read

809 activities in, one page out: a P6 XER rolled up, step by step in screenshots

Your P6 export has 809 activities. The steering committee will give it ninety seconds. This is the whole journey between those two facts — a Primavera P6 .xer goes in, a board-ready one-pager comes out, and every Sketchdule picture below is an actual screenshot of the interface doing it. (The one P6-side view is a faithful recreation — we don't screenshot Oracle's product.) You can follow along with the same file.

The file is the master schedule for the Meridian Gas Processing Plant — Phase 2 Expansion — 809 activities (805 tasks, 4 contract milestones M1–M4) under a WBS built the way planners actually build them: six phases broken into eighteen work packages — FEED, process & systems, three detail-engineering packages, long-lead and bulk procurement, civils, steel, mechanical, piping, E&I and three pre-commissioning packages — each carrying its detail activities, from IFR/IFD/AFC design deliverables to spool fabrication lots and loop-check batches. 1,618 logic links — the two-relationships-per-activity benchmark, with only the first activity and M4 open-ended — statused to a data date of 1 October 2025. Exported as a plain .xer exactly as P6's File → Export produces. If you want to click along, download the sample: Meridian_EPC_Level3.xer (165 KB — an XER is just a tab-delimited text file).

A note for fellow planners: the Meridian project is built purely to illustrate this workflow. The activities, durations, logic and dates are all invented — a stand-in file, not a real programme or sequencing advice. The roll-up is the story here, not the schedule itself.

Step 0 — Where it starts: the Level 3 on the scheduling side

This is the file at home, in the scheduling tool — FEED complete in blue with M1 banked, detail engineering split at the data date, and the steelwork-erection chain running red where it drives equipment setting and the piping installs behind it. Collapsed WBS bands hide the rest of the 809. Forty-odd screens of this is what the steering committee is not going to read.

A representative Primavera P6-style Activities view of the 809-activity master schedule: Key Milestones band at top, WBS bands, activity table with durations and dates, blue completed bars, red critical remaining work and the data date line — **Step 0.** The working programme on the scheduling side — a faithful, recreated P6-style view of the sample XER (drawn from the same file; not a screenshot of Oracle’s product). Correct, current, critical path on the steelwork — and unreadable in a boardroom.

Step 1 — Point Sketchdule at the file

On the Data tab, open Import ▾ and choose Schedule (P6 / MS Project)… — or skip the menu entirely and drag the .xer onto the window. Either way the file is parsed in your browser: nothing uploads, and the programme never leaves your machine.

Sketchdule with a blank schedule and the Data tab's Import menu open, showing Schedule (P6 / MS Project), CSV, Excel, Calendar and Import filter options — **Step 1.** Data ▸ Import ▾ ▸ Schedule (P6 / MS Project)… — one menu for every format in and out. Starting from a blank schedule (File ▸ New) — the import builds everything.

Step 2 — Choose what to bring in

Sketchdule reads the XER and, before building a single row, shows the import filter: the headline count — 809 activities in this Primavera P6 (XER) file — the file's own WBS as a tick-tree, activity-type chips (803 tasks, 6 milestones), optional rules, and a live preview of the page structure on the right. For a first pass you rarely need any of it — Import selected with everything ticked brings in the lot. The point is that the choice exists before import, so the monster can arrive already trimmed to one area or one discipline when that's all the exhibit needs.

The Import filter dialog for a Primavera P6 XER: activity type counts, a WBS scope tree with checkboxes, grouping options and a live page-structure preview — **Step 2.** The import filter, straight off the parsed XER — "809 activities in this file", the WBS tree to scope by, type chips, and a live preview of exactly what the page will look like. Nothing has been imported yet.

Committing the import lands you on a "what next?" launcher — collapse, colour, relabel, or update progress from the P6 actuals — and the toast confirms what arrived:

Import complete dialog reporting 809 activities imported from Primavera P6 XER, with one-click reshape actions: collapse all groups, colour by activity code, relabel bars, update % from P6 actuals — **Step 2½.** Import complete — 809 activities from Primavera P6 (XER), with one-click reshaping on offer. We'll just start editing.

Step 3 — This is your Level 3

The full detail, exactly as the XER carries it: the WBS as section bands, every activity with its dates and % complete, the logic network as connectors, the imported data date (8 Aug 26, red line) anchoring a progress frontline, and a status stoplight column synthesised from the schedule's own state. No dates were retyped — the grid is the XER.

The imported Level 3 schedule in Sketchdule: Key Milestones band at top, WBS bands, activity grid with start, finish, percent complete and status stoplights, Gantt bars with logic links, the red data date line and critical path — **Step 3.** The imported control schedule — logic-linked, statused, critical path traced in red, milestones M1–M4 embedded in their packages exactly as the XER carries them. Note the footer: **809 activities**, status date 1 Oct 25. This screen scrolls on for forty-odd pages.

Step 4 — Roll it up: one dropdown

Everything so far was setup. The actual summarisation is one control: Schedule tab ▸ Smart summary. Pick Level 2 and the file folds to its package structure — and because the WBS was built package-wise (FEED, detail engineering by discipline, long-lead equipment, steel, piping, loop checks…), each roll-up bar means something: it isn't one long phase bar, it's the phase's story in two to five spans. Compare this screen with the final page below — the skeleton is already identical. The detail is hidden, not lost.

Smart summary set to Level 2: the 809-activity schedule rolled up to stage bars — FEED and basic engineering, detailed engineering, bid and award, fabrication, deliveries, construction stages — under phase bands, milestones visible at top — **Step 4a.** Smart summary ▸ Level 2 — the 809 activities fold to the eighteen work packages: FEED, the detail-engineering packages, long-lead equipment, bulks, civils, steel, mechanical, piping, E&I, pre-commissioning. One dropdown did this; "Show all" expands straight back.

Pick Level 1 and the work packages fold too. 809 activities, six bars — the executive skeleton, still computed live from the imported dates:

Smart summary set to Level 1: only the six phase bands remain, each with a single roll-up bar, with the red status date line crossing them — **Step 4b.** Level 1 — the six phases on six lines. Each bar's ends are the min/max of everything beneath it; the red line still says exactly where today cuts the programme. Both of these are *views* — collapse in, expand out. The page for the board gets built next.

Step 5 — Regroup: from a roll-up view to one row per package

Here's the step that turns a collapsed outline into a page. The Smart-summary bars live on section rows — fine for reading, but a presentation wants eighteen real rows you can colour, label and cost-load. So ask the import for exactly that: Data ▸ Import ▾ ▸ Import filter / Collapse…, tick Combine onto shared rows and group by WBS. Watch the live preview rewrite itself — the counter at the bottom says it plainly: 18 rows from 809 activities (collapsed).

The Import filter dialog reopened with Combine onto shared rows ticked and grouped by WBS: the live preview lists the eighteen packages and the counter reads 18 rows from 809 activities, collapsed — **Step 5a.** Re-open the Import filter and tick *Combine onto shared rows*, grouped by WBS. The live preview shows the page that will be built; the footer counts it out: 809 activities → 18 rows.

Import selected, and the same file comes back in board shape: six phase bands, one row per package with one bar spanning it — and M1–M4 automatically riding their packages as diamonds, because milestones collapse onto the row that owns them. Nothing was drawn by hand; this is still the XER, regrouped.

The regrouped schedule: six phase bands with eighteen labeled package rows, one bar per package, milestones M1 to M3 riding their rows as diamonds, the status date line crossing the chart — **Step 5b.** The regrouped page — eighteen package rows under six phase bands, milestones on their bars. Compare it with Step 4a: same dates, but now every bar is a real row ready for colours, costs and status.

Step 6 — Dress it: colours, milestones, costs, a legend that tells the truth

Now make it a board page, with standard features only. Colour the package bars by phase — engineering blue, procurement violet, civils amber, mechanical green, E&I rose, pre-commissioning teal. Mark the contract milestones M1–M4 on their bars. Switch on the critical path so the driving chain — detail engineering → piping → pre-commissioning → M4 — reads in red outline. Add the money: Cost (BAC) and Actual-cost columns next to %. And edit the legend so it says exactly what's on the page — six phase colours, the milestone diamond, the critical-path outline, the status date. No orphan entries, nothing on the chart the legend doesn't explain.

The board view: four rolled-up phase bars plus an expanded Key Milestones band showing six milestone diamonds with activity IDs A9030 to A9080, from NTP through Handover to operations — **Step 6.** The dressed board view: eighteen package bars coloured by phase, M1–M4 marked, the critical path outlined red, BAC and actuals beside the dates — and a legend that matches the page item for item.

Step 7 — Ship the page

Export it however the audience wants it — a landscape PDF, a PowerPoint slide with editable native shapes, a PNG, or a read-only link that rebuilds the live picture in the recipient's browser. This is the PNG the app produced from the view above, unedited:

The exported one-pager PNG: eighteen phase-coloured package bars across six sections, milestones M1 to M4, red critical-path outline, cost columns, stoplight status and a matching legend with status date — **Step 7 — the output.** The exported one-pager, exactly as Sketchdule wrote it: 809 activities and 1,618 logic links condensed to eighteen package bars, four milestones and one red critical path — with BAC, actuals and RAG status riding alongside. Every date is the XER's date, rolled up; none retyped.

Elapsed time, honestly: under three minutes, and most of that was admiring the import filter. When the P6 file is updated next month, Data ▸ Refresh re-points at the new XER and shows what changed before you accept it — the one-pager tracks the real programme instead of drifting into fiction.

What the screenshots didn't show

Dressing it up. Branding the page with a header, footer and logo, RAG stoplights, gate curtains, callouts — that's the board-pack article's territory. The point here was the pipeline: file → filter → roll-up → page.
Selective import. The Step-2 filter can group by activity codes instead of WBS, keep only one area, or collapse the whole file to one bar per group on the way in — the fast path from a 5,000-activity XER to a Level 0/1 exhibit. See importing just milestones and summaries.
The theory. Why a summary is a zoom level, what P6 itself can and can't do about presentation, and the three classic ways a roll-up lies — covered in the Level 3 → Level 1 article and five ways a summary schedule lies.

Key takeaways

The whole pipeline is five moves: Import the .xer → tick the filter → Smart summary → regroup to one row per package → dress & export. 809 activities became eighteen package bars and four milestones, and every Sketchdule screenshot above is the real interface, in order.
The import filter shows the file's own WBS and type counts before anything is built — trim on the way in, not after.
Roll-up is a dropdown, not a rebuild: summary bars are computed live from the imported dates and reverse with "Show all".
Structure the P6 WBS package-wise (design stages, award/fabrication/delivery, discipline scopes) — then the Level-2 roll-up IS the board skeleton, and every milestone traces to an activity ID.
Everything parses and renders locally in the browser — the XER never leaves your machine.

Do it with your own XER

Open Sketchdule in a browser — free, no install, nothing uploaded. Or replay this exact walkthrough with the sample file.

Start free →Download the sample XER

Primavera and P6 are trademarks of Oracle Corporation; Microsoft Project is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Sketchdule is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Oracle or Microsoft. All Sketchdule screenshots are unretouched captures of the app importing the 809-activity sample XER linked above. The Step 0 figure is a recreated, representative P6-style view drawn from the same file for illustration — it is not a screenshot of Oracle’s software. The Meridian project, its dates, durations and logic are entirely fictitious, generated to illustrate the workflow — not a real programme and not scheduling advice.