A Reflection

What a planner means

Two different objects.

What-If is a project status. Oracle: Enterprise > Projects > General > Status = What-If. Use it for a project that is only being considered. Oracle: you might copy first so flipping status does not hit the live EPS project. What-If can be set only at the project level. Team Member cannot see What-If activities.

Reflection is a copy of a source project that (Oracle):

1. Is named like the source with reflection appended
2. Internally links to the source so you can merge selected changes back
3. Has What-If status

Unlike a plain what-if, a reflection lets you preview differences and pick which activities to merge. After merge you can replace the reflection, delete it, or keep it. Cancel leaves the source untouched.

Create a reflection in P6 Professional (Projects window). EPPM: “Reflection projects created in P6 Professional appear in P6 as What If projects.”

Oracle workflows: sandbox scenarios; review collaborators’ edits; export the reflection as XER, send it out, import the changed XER back into the reflection, then merge into the source.

EPPM-only: give Activity Owners OBS access to the reflection, not the live source, so status updates can be reviewed before merge. If they have OBS on the source, their edits skip that review. See Primary Resource.

This is not a baseline (snapshot for variance, no selective merge). See baselines.md. Not checkout. Not a scenario field on TASK.

XER

A reflection is another PROJECT. Oracle’s project map has no REFLECTION table.

REST names SourceProjectObjectId as the project the reflection was created from. The XER column with that job is the one Oracle labels Source Project (source_proj_id). Do not treat orig_proj_id or sum_base_proj_id as the reflection link.

status_code stored tokens (e.g. a What-If code) are unverified. Do not invent WS_WhatIf.

A Viewer that opened one XER cannot run Merge Reflection. The merge is a Professional command against two projects in the database.

Microsoft Project

No reflection / merge-selected-changes command. A what-if is another MPP (or an inactive copy). Do not map P6 reflection to MSP inactive, to a baseline, or to Compare Projects and call them the same object.

Don't

• Treat What-If status as a reflection (no merge link).
• Treat a reflection as a baseline or as checkout.
• Treat source_proj_id as Project Baseline (sum_base_proj_id).
• Invent a REFLECTION table or a TASK what-if flag.
• Claim a Viewer can merge a reflection from an XER.
• Give Team Member OBS on the live source when the intent was reflection review.