Blog

Planning for an impactful year: Community Bosses share their 2025 goals!
Whether you’re in recovery mode from the holidays or goal-setting mode for 2025, it’s time to start thinking about what you want to accomplish this year! To inspire you, five of our Community Bosses volunteered to share their plans for the year, what they hope to work on and achieve, and goals they are setting for…
January Q&A Challenge — share your reflections for a chance to win!
In the Anaplan Community, we believe that growth comes from connecting, collaborating, and sharing knowledge. Every day we see our members coming together to share ideas, solve problems, and support one another in forum discussions, blog posts, and beyond. As we start the new year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the…
Lessons learned in 2024: Trust the process
Author: Taryn Townsend is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting. It is always an honor for me to be able to share perspectives with you, the Anaplan Community, as I strive to learn and grow as a part of this ecosystem. As 2024 draws to a close to give way to crafting New Year’s resolutions…
Year in review: My 5 favorite 2024 Anaplan releases
Author: Chad Frantz is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Technical Associate at Alpha FMC. Here we are at the end of another year. A perfect time to look back and reflect on what’s happened and where things are going. As we’ve become accustomed to in the Anaplan environment, that includes looking at the updates and…
How I Built It: Football Survivor tool
Author: Ryan Rist is an Anaplan Solution Architect at General Atlantic. Hello Anaplanners! I’m happy to share my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial today; a fun football game/tool. Football Survivor is a competition where people select one team per week. If that team wins, they move on. If that team loses, they are knocked out.…
UX source model auto updater
Author: Abhishek Roy is a Certified Solution Architect , Sr. Platform Architect at Equinix and a member of their Anaplan CoE team. This article primarily covers a less explored API functionality that the Anaplan UX is based on and adds an element of automation and easy configuration to the otherwise manual time-taking and…
Setting up action naming conventions that will withstand the test of time
Author: Taylor Giesler is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director, Enterprise Performance Management at Alpha Alternatives. I have been a consultant for nearly four years now, and I have seen a lot of models, some easier to follow than others. The person building the model isn’t always the same person maintaining it…
How I Built It: Creating functional P&Ls using line item subsets without COLLECT formula
Author: Austin van der Linden is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Model Builder at Hubspot. Hello Anaplan Community! In this 'How I Built It' Tutorial, I show how you can build functional P&Ls using line item subsets as a mapping tool. One of the cool functionalities provided with line item subsets is that you can…
My journey on Workflow implementation — Part 1: the buildout
Author: Kevin Beltz has been a Certified Master Anaplanner since 2018 and is writing this blog on behalf of Wildflower Aspect. Hello Anaplan Community! Today I’m happy to share Part 1 of my Workflow journey. I segmented the blog into three sections: the state of Anaplan at my client, live build thoughts, and a summary…
Ending the year with our Community Bosses — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
What’s that you say — 2024 is almost over?! I truly cannot believe we’re at the part of the year where we reflect on our personal and professional growth and look at what we want to accomplish in 2025. I’ve not tackled that task yet, but I’m so excited to share that three of our Community Bosses have and they are here…
Event recording available! Model design best practices
If you missed our event yesterday, November Challenge Recap: Model design best practices, a recording is now available. Last month, we invited the Anaplan Community to share their best advice for model design. In this recap event, speakers Rob Marshall (@rob_marshall) and Adam Trainer (@AdamT), both from Anaplan’s…
December 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Seyma Tas
As we wrap up 2024, we’re excited to feature @seymatas1 as our final Community Member Spotlight of the year! Seyma has been part of the Anaplan ecosystem since 2020 and has contributed over 120 comments in the Community in the past two years. She became a Certified Master Anaplanner in the last year, and is an active…
New Customer Care portal coming soon
Discover a better way to get the help you need and submit cases At Anaplan, our goal is to deliver a platform that’s as robust and stable as possible. But as with any software, there will always be issues that crop up from time to time. When they do, we know you want to find answers and get help as quickly as possible.…
Four reasons the Anaplan Community is the BEST!
Hello Anaplanners! November is a time of thanksgiving in the U.S. — and while I know our Community is worldwide — there is never a bad time to show thanks, right?! Ginger, here. If you don’t know me, I manage the platform our Community runs on, and also a lot of the content posted weekly, along with my amazing content…
Did You Know: Mastering Anaplan color matching
Author: Brent Orr is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Global Data Architect at Accenture. Hello Anaplan Community! The objective of this ‘Did You Know’ tutorial is to guide users on how to match the background colors of Anaplan management reports to maintain consistency with other pages in Anaplan. The video is below, but…
Event recording available! Polaris use cases & best practices
If you missed our event yesterday, Polaris Use Cases and Best Practices, a recording is now available. In this event, Rob Marshall (@rob_marshall) from Anaplan, John Dorma (@johndorma) from Twelve Consulting, and Harshita Mysore Shankar (@HarshitaMysoreShankar) from Adobe discuss Polaris, how it differs from Classic, use…
Anaplan Academy is getting an upgrade!
New look, new features, and a better learning experience! We're thrilled to announce that our Anaplan learning hub, Anaplan Academy, is getting a major upgrade! That's right, we've been hard at work behind the scenes to make your learning journey smoother, more engaging, and tailored to your needs. What you can expect with…
Celebrating 100K Community members!
Thank you, Community! We’re thrilled to announce that we have reached 100,000 registered users, all thanks to you — our incredible members! Your creativity, commitment to helping others and continued enthusiasm has made the Community a special place for our members. We know the Community is the one place within the entire…
Share your model design best practices – November 2024 Community Challenge
We’re excited to announce our second Best Practices Challenge of the year! This Challenge series is open for Community members to share their expertise and tips on a specific topic. Join us to spotlight your knowledge and explore fresh ideas from other members in Community! For our second Best Practices challenge, we’re…
October 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Cianna Bramley
This month, we are excited to feature @cianna.bramley as our Community Member Spotlight! Cianna is a Model Optimization Manager, Community Boss Employee, and has been with Anaplan for over seven years. Cianna, who leads the Model Optimization Team, worked with her team this year to launch an eight-part series in Community…
Event recording available! Modeling tips and tricks
Last month we hosted a challenge inviting Community members to share their thoughts on modeling best practices — over 30 tips were shared! Yesterday, we held an event highlighting that guidance every model builder should know. Jason Blinn (@jasonblinn), Principal Solution Architect and Employee Community Boss at Anaplan,…
Driving business transformation with Alessio Pagliano — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Tune in today for a conversation on driving business transformation as a CoE Leader! We welcome Alessio Pagliano (@Alessio_Pagliano) to Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast along with host Dennis Lemoine (@DennisL), Director of Customer Engagement & Experience. Alessio has been in the Anaplan ecosystem for seven years,…
From clutter to clarity: Mastering documentation in Anaplan
Author: Madison Matous is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at Akili Inc. Though not always the most glamorous task, documentation is critical to overall project success. It serves as a standardized reference for both the development team and end users. Successful adoption of a new Anaplan model is…
Event recording available! Implementing with Polaris
If you missed our event yesterday, Implementing with Polaris, a recording is now available. In this event, Jonathan Goldsmith (@E2EJonathan), CoE Leader from NVIDIA, and Stephen Rituper (@Stephen), Head of the Operational Excellence Group at Anaplan, hosted a dynamic discussion exploring their experience in implementing…
2025 Recertification update
We're working on enhancements to the certification program, focused on further elevating the quality and credibility of our certified professionals. These improvements will highlight the expertise of our super users to provide a distinct advantage in the competitive market. We expect to share more details in the spring of…
How I Built It: Integrating Hierarchy Cards, Anaplan Connect, and Outlook
Author: Kamal Verma is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Lead at Accordion. Hello Anaplanner Community! I am excited to participate in my second ‘How I Built It’ tutorial. Many clients want to be informed via an email notification when changes occur in their models. This video will present one method to extend the…
Getting started in Anaplan: An interview with Pulkit Chawla
Hello Anaplanners! My name is Kas Gengadaren, and I am a Senior Manager for Global Ecosystem Experience at Anaplan. One of the things that I love about my role is connecting with people at all stages of their journey in the Anaplan ecosystem, and shining a spotlight on them and their accomplishments. I recently shared an…
Workflow: A comprehensive guide to streamlined planning
Author: Prasanth Kosuri is a Solution Architect and EPM Consultant at Deloitte. Anaplan Workflow, introduced in September 2023, has revolutionized the way organizations approach planning. This powerful tool offers a range of enhancements designed to improve efficiency, accuracy, and collaboration. Anaplan Workflow allows…
Recording available! Change Management for CoE Leaders and Implementers
If you missed our event yesterday, Change Management for Anaplan CoE Leaders and Implementers, a recording is now available. Often overlooked and underappreciated, effective change management is the single greatest contributor to the success of realizing the benefits of a project. An Anaplan project does not end with the…
Build a game in Anaplan! Recording from the Builder Challenge event
Our August Community Challenge invited people to share creative or useful Anaplan models they've built, and WOW — the Community delivered! We recently hosted an event to walk through a few of the unique and fun model builds — a recording is available below. Tune in to see four fun model builds: Kirill Kuznetsov…
Display timestamp on your Anaplan dashboard
Author: Hannah Shan is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Consultant at Lionpoint Group. I've come across discussions about whether there's a way to display the action timestamp on the UX for the end user — and there have been some great suggestions to bring in the date by leveraging CloudWorks. But what if the end…
Share your modeling tips and tricks — Best Practices Community Challenge
As we step into September, we’re thrilled to introduce a new and exciting addition to our Anaplan Community Challenges: the “Best Practices” challenge! Throughout the year, we’ll be inviting Community members to share best practices and tips around a specific topic. It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase your expertise…
Don’t miss these upcoming events!
We have several exciting events coming up — opportunities to learn and have a little fun! Check out what's on the calendar and be sure to RSVP. If you are unable to attend live, be sure to sign up anyway as a recording will be sent out after each event (and also posted in Community). ACE Spotlight: "Builder Community…
August 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Timmy Thomas
This month, we are excited to feature @TimothyThomas as our Community Member Spotlight! Timmy has been a vital part of the Anaplan ecosystem for the past four years, bringing his expertise and passion as a Certified Solutions Architect and Community Boss. With over 125 comments in Community, Timmy is known for his…
How to take full advantage of the new Hierarchy Card feature
Author: James Cannon is a Certified Master Anaplaner, Solution Architect, and Senior Manager at EY. In the ever-evolving landscape of planning and business modeling, Anaplan continues to separate itself from the pack and lead the charge with innovative solutions that streamline and enhance the end user experience. One…
Did You Know: Tips for using assets in Anaplan
Author: Chad Frantz is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Consultant at Lionpoint Group. I expect that most members of Community who are taking the time to read this have used images and charts on their model building journey. But I wonder how many have also used the Assets functionality in Anaplan? I had been aware…
Getting started in Anaplan: An interview with Bhumit Jain
Hello Anaplan Community! My name is Kas Gengadaren, I am the Senior Manager, Global Ecosystem Experience. I recently had the opportunity to interview Bhumit Jain (@Bhumit285), an Anaplanner somewhat new to our ecosystem and a recent learner from the Talent Builder Guided program. We often showcase our experienced community…
A conversation with Lis de Geus — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Today we're excited to share episode 16 of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. Our host, Dennis Lemoine (@DennisL), Director of Customer Engagement & Experience, chats with Lis de Geus (@lis.degeus) — Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Solution Architect at Bedford Consulting. Lis has been in the FP&A space on…
Kickstarting your career in the Anaplan ecosystem: A beginner's guide
Author: Einas Ibrahim, Finance and SPM Consultant and Certified Master Anaplanner. Embarking on a journey in the Anaplan ecosystem offers a unique blend of challenges and opportunities. As someone who started from the basics and advanced to being recognized as a Certified Master Anaplanner, I've gathered numerous insights…