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On-Demand Calculation in Polaris
Author: Dave Smith is a Senior Product Manager at Anaplan. We are thrilled to announce the rollout of On-Demand Calculation in Polaris, a feature that significantly enhances performance and efficiency for our users. On-Demand Calculation is designed to compute values only when they are needed, leading to a more optimized…
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Exciting news: Anaplan will soon connect to Amazon Redshift
Author: Kira Wagner is a Product Owner at Anaplan. We're thrilled to announce that Anaplan is planning to expand our integration capabilities with the launch of our new Amazon Redshift connector. This addition will empower your organization to seamlessly bridge your cloud data warehouse with Anaplan's powerful planning…
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Anaplan Polaris: A deeper dive into the Polaris Engine and model building techniques
This article is part of a series on Polaris best practices. Click here for more Community content or visit Anapedia for detailed technical guidance. Polaris is Anaplan's next-generation calculation engine, designed for highly dimensioned calculation at scale. It represents a paradigm shift in the ability to model business…
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[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…
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Forecaster - How to manage NULL values?
In real-world forecasting applications, it's common for data to have null values. These values are missing values for certain points in time. There can be multiple reasons for the presence of missing values. For example, a transaction may not have occurred, or a device or service that monitors data may have malfunctioned.…
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Anaplan XL Reporting: Effective use cases and practical recommendations
Anaplan XL Reporting (AXL) is a powerful solution bridging the robust planning capabilities of the Anaplan platform with the familiar flexibility of Microsoft Excel. It allows you to interact with your Anaplan data dynamically, right from your desktop. To use its power effectively, it's important to understand how to use…
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Unlocking AI's potential: How Anaplan's new data layer ends planning chaos
Author: Miki Sato is a Product Manager, Product Management Team (Data Management) at Anaplan. Your data is now harmonized, normalized, and ready for the AI era. 1. The scale AI needs Are you ready to truly leverage AI, but constantly hit a wall because of data chaos? In today's fast-paced environment, planning needs to be…
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Retrieving Anaplan’s Optimizer logs step-by-step
Getting Optimier logs helps to understand how to tweak the model to speed up the solving time. Workspace administrators can download the Anaplan Optimizer log via an API. Links: - Optimizer logs for debugging - https://anaplan.docs.apiary.io/#/reference/logging Users can use Postman or perform this action directly in the…
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[Start Here] Forecaster overview and resources
What is Forecaster? Who is it for? Use-case examples To get started Once you get more comfortable Deep dive on algorithms Support Are you interested in starting time series forecasting with Forecaster on Anaplan, but don’t know where to start? You have come to the right place! This article is the pathway to all things…
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Forecaster algorithm properties
Review the table below for information on each algorithm and its specific properties.
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Forecaster - Probabilistic forecasting using forecast quantiles
Probabilistic forecasts & forecast quantiles Forecaster produces probabilistic forecasts. This means that Forecaster algorithms output a distribution of possible values, rather than a single point forecast typically outputted by other solutions. This distribution can be divided into quantiles. Applied to forecasting,…
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Forecaster - Using a backtest window to assess performance
In almost all cases, computing forecast accuracy requires a calculation of the difference between forecast versus actuals. One of the best ways to approximate the future accuracy of the forecast is to use a backtest window. With a backtest window, you can simulate “what if” you had run a Forecaster forecast with the data…
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Forecaster - Introduction to forecast evaluation
Before making business decisions based on Forecaster forecast results, you should assess the expected performance of the forecast predictions in the real world. It’s important to evaluate forecast performance at the outset of your project as well as on an ongoing basis. Also consider that a range of factors unique to your…
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Forecaster and related data
Background Customers are frequently wondering what can be used as related data. When thinking about related data, we can think about different types of “internal” time dependent inputs: Historical and future promotions Stockouts Price fluctuations Holidays and special events Actual data may be different dependent on a…
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Forecaster - Deep dive into the Algorithms
Overview In this article, we review the algorithms that drive time series forecasting with Forecaster. These algorithms range from traditional statistical algorithms such as Exponential Smoothing (ETS), to those based on complex neural network algorithms such as DeepAR. Before talking about the algorithms in more detail,…
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Forecaster - How to use item attributes to refine your forecast
Attributes are static, non-time-dependent categorical text features that describe the items in the historical time series data. Examples for attributes could be style, category, geographic location, size, item hierarchy level etc. The DeepAR algorithm can leverage the information captured in these attributes to produce…
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Forecaster - Design and build your item list for forecasting
In order to forecast forward based on historical data, the algorithms within Forecaster require a module in Anaplan made up of a minimum of the following: a list of items to forecast against (e.g., SKU by Store), a list of time periods containing the history the data or measure to be forecasted (e.g. sales volumes) This…
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Forecaster – Considerations before starting
Before starting with Forecaster, there are a few topics we recommend considering around the data, properties of the forecast, and forecast evaluation. While it is important to define clear goals for each forecasting scenario, Forecaster's forecast accuracy will mostly be determined by the quality of the available data.…
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Workflow Advanced: Coordinating parallel approvals
Author: Dave Waller, Principal Product Manager at Anaplan. With the introduction of parallel tasks, Anaplan Workflow Advanced can bring additional efficiencies by parallelizing process steps that would ordinarily have to run in sequence. This functionality can help when using Anaplan Data Orchestrator to dramatically…
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Streamline hierarchy management with Polaris's new ITEMLEVEL and HIERARCHYLEVEL functions
Author: Dave Smith is a Senior Product Manager at Anaplan. In the world of enterprise planning, working with hierarchical data is fundamental—whether you're dealing with product categories, organizational structures, or geographic regions, the ability to roll up and see your plans at a macro-level is essential. Until now,…
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Experience expanded functionality and flexibility with Workflow Advanced
Authors: Dave Waller, Principal Product Manager, and Abby Schutt Beckman (@AbbySB), Technical Training Program Lead at Anaplan. Workflow Advanced is an additional capability in the platform that empowers businesses to visualize and automate processes with greater speed and confidence. At the time of this article, Workflow…
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Anaplan Workflow Advanced: Intelligent Routing
Workflow Advanced extends Anaplan's workflow capabilities with sophisticated features that enable automatic decisions and intelligent routing. Workflow Advanced contains all the Workflow Basic functionality with the additional capabilities of branch and reconnect, send-back loops, value-based decisions, and parallel steps.…
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Anaplan Workflow in action: Focused demo series
Author: Dave Waller, Principal Product Manager at Anaplan. Discover how Anaplan Workflow streamlines and simplifies complex approval processes with our set of short demo videos. Each video highlights a real-world use case — budget submission, capex submission, headcount allocation, and compensation plans — showing how…
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Why planning needs a different kind of MDM — and how ADO delivers
Author: Miki Sato is a Product Manager, Product Management Team (Data Management) at Anaplan. Many companies are investing in Enterprise Planning, AI, and BI to improve forecasting and decision-making. Yet across industries, business users still ask the same question: “If we have trusted data, why can’t we use it in…