Blog

Articles about the Anaplan Community and Connected Planning

UX best practices for building impactful dashboards in Anaplan: Part 1
Author: Arjun Gandhi, Certified Master Anaplanner with over a decade of experience leading enterprise Anaplan implementations across industries. ———- “If your dashboard doesn’t tell users what to do within 10 seconds, it’s already failed.” 🧭 Introduction: Why UX design in Anaplan matters Anaplan’s UX is more than just the…
Guiding users through the UX best practices — Event recording available!
In July, we hosted a challenge inviting Community members to share their best practices on guiding users through the UX. We shared prompts with the Community to get members thinking about how they how craft the user journey through the app. Yesterday, we held an event highlighting the responses we received from the July…
How I Built It: Chess in Anaplan
Author: Waleed Hakim is a Sr. Anaplan consultant. Hi everyone! I’m Waleed — a Senior Consultant working with enterprise clients to transform their planning processes through Anaplan. I've been in the Anaplan ecosystem for just under four years now, and while most of my time is spent solving complex business problems, I’ve…
Event recording available: Workflow In Anaplan
If you missed our spotlight event on Workflow, a recording is now available. Anaplan's Elizabeth Schera, Allison Slaught, and Chris Stauffer share insights and strategies to optimize your processes. The session explores how Workflow can support more scalable and intelligent process automation by comparing two different…
How I Built It: Set up timestamps leveraging ADO & Workflow
Author: Jeffrey Glazner is a Manager, FP&A Systems at ResMed. Hello folks! I’m happy to share my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial with you all. This video shows a simple way to set up timestamps in Anaplan leveraging Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) and Workflow, without the need for any additional scripting. While not…
Managing Anaplan maintenance windows: A comprehensive guide for enterprise planning teams
Author: James Cannon is a Certified Master Anaplaner, Solution Architect, and Senior Manager at Ernst & Young. In any enterprise Anaplan implementation, regular maintenance windows are essential for model stability, performance optimization, and ongoing business value. However, without proper structure, communication, and…
Tips for onboarding junior model builders
Author: Evgeny Seledkov is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Consultant at Keyrus. Hello, I’m Evgeny, and I’ve been part of the Anaplan community for nearly ten years. Over the years, I’ve taken quite a journey — seeing this world from both sides: as part of a customer Center of Excellence, where I helped stakeholders…
Design standards for a superior user experience — Part 2: UX page standards
Author: Aaron Overfors is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Architect at Spaulding Ridge. In my first article, we detailed how to create a robust design for the user experience; now comes pulling it all together and building the actual pages! We will examine the concepts and ingredients of a strong page to focus…
Design standards for a superior user experience — Part 1: Effective dashboarding
Author: Aaron Overfors is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Architect at Spaulding Ridge. A strong user experience is the key to almost every Anaplan solution’s success. A well-designed Anaplan model that scales, performs well, and is easy to maintain will become shelf-ware without a thoughtful, purposeful user…
Anaplan security automation
Author: Steve Meekins is a Certified Master Anaplanner and has worked in the Anaplan ecosystem for over 8 years. Steve has worked in both industry and consulting and has successfully architected over 50 end-to-end EPM implementations. The challenge Security management is no simple task for organizations that have several…
How I Built It: How to open the Optimizer's black box
Author: Author: Damien Bouquier has been a Certified Master Anaplanner for 5+ years and has developed solutions across a wide range of industries for FP&A, supply chain, and sales operations planning use cases. In this ‘How I Built It’ tutorial, I show how Anaplan’s Optimizer can provide more transparency and user…
Share your best practices on guiding users through the UX — July 2025 Community Challenge
Our latest Best Practices Community Challenge is here, and we’re diving into guiding your users through the user experience! Each Challenge highlights a specific topic where Community members can share their expertise, exchange ideas, and learn from one another. Are you an expert in crafting intuitive and impactful user…
Case study: Streamlining demand forecasting with Anaplan
Author: Korey Cheung, Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Associate at Spaulding Ridge. The challenge A leading consumer goods company faced challenges in aligning their statistical forecast model with their disaggregation and demand planning models. The statistical forecast and disaggregation models were primarily…
Boards, reports, and worksheets best practices — Event recording available!
In May, we hosted a challenge inviting Community members to share their insights on boards, reports, and worksheets best practices. We received insightful responses from Community members on these UX topics. In the follow-up event from the Challenge, Anaplan's Seb McMillan (@seb_mcmillan) and Russ Goza (@R_Goza), both…
Sample Python code to perform EPB move to production activities
Author: Michael Moore is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director, Enterprise Planning at HP. Overview of what this article covers: Prepare Begin authentication Complete authentication using code to fetch token Load API client code Move to Production Generate list of PRODUCTION MODELS to update Find the SOURCE MODEL for…
Did you know? Boolean read write
Author: Stacey Gibbens is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect, Financial Planning & Analysis at Globe Life. Hello, Anaplan people! Today, I would like to share with you a solution to a model-building question that pops up on Community from time-to-time: controlling the behavior of user-facing Booleans so…
June 2025 Community Member Spotlight: Andrew Tye
Celebrating @andrewtye as our June 2025 Community Member Spotlight! With a decade of experience in the Anaplan ecosystem, Andrew is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Community Boss who has made meaningful contributions to the Community over the years. He’s shared nearly 800 comments and is a familiar presence in forums,…
Relaunch of the Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) Program!
We’re excited to share that the customer-centric Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) Program is back — with a refreshed experience designed to help you grow, connect, and lead more strategically with Anaplan. Whether you're building your CoE from the ground up or scaling an established team, this opt-in program offers…
Event recording available: Anaplan Data Orchestrator
If you missed our spotlight event today on Anaplan Data Orchestrator, a recording is now available. This session — ideal for architects, model builders, integration developers, and enterprise planning teams — will help you better understand how Data Orchestrator fits into your broader integration and automation strategy.…
Curiosity, Collaboration, and Connected Planning: Inside a 3-Day workshop
Author: Mikhil Agarwal, Certified Master Anaplanner and Delivery Manager at VISEO USA Inc. “They say a strong foundation doesn’t just support growth; it sparks curiosity.” That could not have been more fitting during our Anaplan onboarding workshop in Singapore last year. What began as a technical Level 1 Model Building…
Did You Know: Code for Line Item Subsets
Author: Jonathan Cushing is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Consultant at Vuealta Consulting. The video gives the details of a little-known function in Anaplan whereby you can add codes to line item subsets (LiSS). The video shows: Where to input the LiSS code How it can be used to map a line item subset to a list…
Streamlining your Anaplan models: A guide to effective cleanup
Author: Junqi Xue is a Certified Master Anaplanner and consultant at valantic. Keeping Anaplan models organized and auditable is crucial for efficient operations. Over time, these models tend to grow organically, often resulting in clutter. There are some good articles in the community about cleaning up; I’m going to…
The digital transformation of valuations
Author: Taylor Giesler is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director, Enterprise Performance Management at Alpha Alternatives. The digital transformation of valuations is driven by several key trends that are reshaping the financial industry. Firms are increasingly adopting digital solutions to solve these problems, and…
May 2025 Community Member Spotlight: Marina Ketelslegers
Meet @Marina Ketelslegers — our May 2025 Community Member Spotlight! As a Certified Master Anaplanner with five years in the Anaplan Community, Marina has shared valuable insights and ideas that have helped other members along the way. Check out her spotlight to learn more about her path, her favorite Anaplan tips and…
When to import alphanumeric data as numbers
Author: Andrew Barnett is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Vice President at PJT Partners. Today, we will be discussing a scenario that we often run into in Anaplan. Numeric data comes in with units of measure, whether explicitly stated or implied in the data. The data might be a currency, like US Dollars or Mexican…
Alternative for the default export chunking
Author: Anya Skvortsova is a Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE Lead at Asana. Problem statement When exporting the data from Anaplan module, Anaplan’s default chunk size is 10MB. The common challenge is that the chunks produced may have the rows split not just into the separate files but also split the row in the middle…
Share your boards, reports, and worksheets best practices — May 2025 Community Challenge
We’re kicking off a new Best Practices Challenge this month! Each Challenge highlights a specific topic where Community members can share their expertise, exchange ideas, and learn from one another. This time, we're focusing on the topic around boards, reports, and worksheets. Below are some prompts to spark your…
How I Built It: Upload Anaplan data — account hierarchy and key accounts
Author: Saikrishna Bandaru is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Anaplan consultant. In this video, I demonstrate how to create a user-friendly Anaplan UX page that allows end users to upload or update specific data directly into Anaplan. The example covers account mapping, enabling users to mark accounts as "strategic"…
Creating a two-layer ranking system in Anaplan
Author: Laiza Tagumpay is a Certified Master Anaplanner, former Customer Success Business Partner at Anaplan in the Philippines, and is now a Solution Architect at an implementation partner in Canada. When developing effective plans, companies often rely on multiple layers of prioritization criteria. In this blog, we’ll…
April 2025 Community Member Spotlight: Alexandru Pavel
We’re celebrating @alexpavel in our latest Community Member Spotlight! For the past eight years, Alexandru has been a steady, helpful presence in the Community — with over 500 comments, and a role as a Certified Master Anaplanner and a Community Boss. He consistently shows up with thoughtful insights and a genuine desire…
How I Built It: Replacing list items
Author: Chris Allen is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Allitix Part of Accenture. Hello, and thank you for checking out my ‘How I Built It’ video tutorial on replacing list items! The video will walk you through the process of replacing list items. The key feature leveraged here is importing a new code into a…
How I Built It: Dynamic cell hardcoding
Author: Casey Pham is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director of FP&A Systems at Yext. Hello Anaplan Community! In this ‘How I Built It’ demo, I'm going to show how we dynamically hardcode data in cells in order to preserve values that were previously derived from calculations. An issue I've seen in past implementations…
Spring cleaning: A step-by-step guide to optimizing your model
Author: Ekaterina Garina is a Certified Master Anaplanner and EPM Consultant at Keyrus. Does your Anaplan model feel cluttered with too many line items and modules, making it difficult to find anything? Are you dealing with redundant calculations? Need a little optimization? Or perhaps you have a large model that needs…
Choosing the right EPM/IBP tool: Beyond the basics
Author: Piotr Weremczuk is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Deloitte. Throughout my career, I have guided both large corporations and smaller enterprises in selecting Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP) tools. A recurring pattern I’ve noticed is that most clients focus…
Event recording available! ALM Best Practices
Last month we hosted a challenge inviting Community members to share their insights on ALM best practices. We received 25 comments with insights on how to best utilize ALM! Yesterday, we held an event highlighting the responses we received from the March Community Challenge. Ryan Kohn (@ryan_kohn), Principal Platform…
How I built it : Centralizing complex calculations
Author: Fabien Junod is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Solution Architect at Autodesk. Hello Anaplan Community, Let me ask you a question: do you have the same complex calculation in multiple models (maybe with different dimensions) and wish you could centralize them? In this “How I built it” tutorial, I shared…
Re-energizing your Anaplan Center of Excellence: A new era of value and innovation
Author: Stacey Borne is a Certified Master Anaplanner, former Anaplan Center of Excellence Leader, and runs the Certified Master Anaplanner Program and Anaplan Center of Excellence Programs at Anaplan. Picture this: Your Anaplan ecosystem is functioning smoothly, but despite the existence of value-add opportunities to…
How I Built It: Fast, efficient model build of scenario planning with P&L impact analysis
Author: Marina Ketelslegers is a Certified Master Anaplanner and FP&A expert and independent Anaplan Solution Architect. In this 'How I Built It' tutorial, you'll learn how to create a dynamic and flexible impact analysis and allocation framework tailored to your needs. Whether you're evaluating P&L scenarios with business…
Women’s History Month: Spotlighting leaders in the Anaplan Community
March is Women’s History Month, a time to celebrate the achievements and contributions of women — including the incredible members in the Anaplan Community! Over the past year, women across the ecosystem have shared their knowledge, experiences, and insights through blogs, videos, and member spotlights. Their expertise…