Best Practices

Aggregation of text and images in Hierarchy Charts
When Hierarchy Charts were introduced to the Anaplan UX, their popularity grew very quickly. The power of the intuitive visual representation of business hierarchies, and the simplicity of setup, combined to fuel substantial adoption by hundreds of our customers. At its’ simplest, the structure of a hierarchy can be…
[UPDATED] Summary Calculations with the User List
Author: Rob Marshall, Director of Architecture and Performance at Anaplan, Operational Excellence Group (OEG). Prior to the February 2024, users were not allowed to use aggregation functions (SUM, ALL, ANY, AVERAGE, FIRSTNONBLANK, LASTNONBLANK, MAX, MIN, RANK) when having the Users list in a module because the system could…
Get to know the model experience as an end-user
Welcome to the Anaplan modeling experience (MX)! The Anaplan functionality you know and love, with a modern look and feel and simplified, intuitive navigation. In February 2023, the updated model experience became the default for all users. In April 2024 the ability to toggle back to the old classic experience will be…
[Start here] Modeling Experience
If you are an experienced model builder, you are already familiar with the power and flexibility that the Anaplan platform provides when solving your teams' planning needs. In February 2023, we made the enhanced Modeling Experience (MX) the default experience for our users, and from April 2024, the old classic interface…
LOOKUP on Time | Model Optimization Team series
Hello Anaplan Community! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is our last post in an eight-part series, on the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month,…
How to use notifications effectively
Author: Vinay Varadaraj Mirajkar is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Solution Architect at Anaplan. When you think about creating simple workflows or enabling collaboration between/within the planning teams, some of the features which can help achieve this are: sharing pages, card comments, notifications, and last…
ADO DB Connectors Preview
I had the opportunity to test a preview of the new database connectors developed by the Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) Team, and I wanted to share my experience with you. To set up the testing environment, I used my AWS account and the RDS service to launch four types of databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server,…
Text Concatenation | Model Optimization Team series
Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
Organizing templates for data imports
Author: Vinay Varadaraj Mirajkar is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Solution Architect at Anaplan. I am sure many of us have seen the below message many times in our experience, and at times it may be very time consuming to retrieve the file which was used to create the import action. And there are also chances…
Convert CUMULATE functions to PREVIOUS | Model Optimization Team series
Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
Data Quality Orchestration : a simple example with ADO & Workflow - Part 2/2
In this article, you'll find a simple but hopefully inspiring illustration of the power of Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) combined with Workflow. This is a 2 parts article. The Part 1 focuses on the Workflow and the steps to achieve Data Quality tasks. This Part 2 is a deep dive on some details. Above is the final Object…
Data Quality Orchestration : a simple example with ADO & Workflow - Part 1/2
In this article, you'll find a simple but hopefully inspiring illustration of the power of Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) combined with Workflow. This is a 2 parts article. This Part 1 focuses on the Workflow and the steps to achieve Data Quality tasks. The Part 2 is a deep dive on some details. Summary For illustration,…
Cutover activities: Things to do before UAT and before go-live
Author: Nikitha Kumar is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Principal Solution Architect at Anaplan. Cutover activities are the tasks that are performed to transition from DEV environment to UAT or PROD environment. In the delivery lifecycle, cutover activities are done twice: UAT cutover activities are done…
How to test the ADO Snowflake connector
Author: Noel Rocher, Partner Success Manager at Anaplan Step 1: Snowflake trial environment Go to developers.snowflake.com and select the START FREE button at the top right of the page. To check if the trial account conditions meet your needs, look at the Trial Account overview. Choose the software edition and cloud…
How to test the ADO Salesforce connector with a Salesforce Developer Account
Author: Noel Rocher, Partner Success Manager at Anaplan Step 1: Register for a Salesforce Developer Account Note: the Developer Edition is coming with API access enabled. If you are using a Professional Edition, you'll need to purchase this feature. Go to Fill out the form Validate your email account by clicking on the…
Setup your ADO Demo using an AWS S3 Connection
Author: Noel Rocher, Partner Success Manager at Anaplan The problem statement "I would like to Demo the ADO S3 Connector with a CSV file hosted on AWS S3 as an ADO Data Source." The solution Use a free AWS Account to host the example CSV file. Steps to take We will walk through how to setup an AWS environment using a free…
Calculate with the fewest cell | Model Optimization Team series
Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
How to roll back a production model to recover lost data
Author: Jessie Zhao is a Solution Architect and Certified Master Anaplanner at Anaplan. Working with a model in ALM has a lot of benefits. These include building new features in a development model anytime without affecting production users, securely managing production lists by identifying structural data that needs to…
PlanIQ algorithm properties
Review the table below for information on each algorithm and its specific properties. Question? Leave a comment!
RANK | Model Optimization Team series
Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
Nested Ifs | Model Optimization Team series
Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
Build a random number generator in Anaplan
Author: Noah Jackson is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Data and Insights Architect at Anaplan. Anaplan does not have a RANDOM formula or function, but random numbers can be useful — I was interested in it for generating sample data, but it could potentially be useful for other applications such as Monte Carlo…
SUM and LOOKUP | Model Optimization Team series
Hi! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…
How I optimize model calculation with MAPS reporting
Author: Jessie Zhao is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Data & Insights Architect at Anaplan. Please note: MAPS reports are dependent on a few key qualifications and may not be available to all customers. Please check with your BP if you have questions. As a CoE member, model building — either for new user stories or…