Blog

Articles about the Anaplan Community and Connected Planning

Introducing the new Anaplan Community experience!
The new Anaplan Community experience is now live! Starting today, Community members can access a new and improved Community. We have thoroughly migrated existing content to the new Community, including discussions, blogs, articles, the Idea Exchange, as well as favorite resources such as Planual and the Model Optimization…
Two approaches to ragged hierarchy
Author: Taichi Amaya, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Financial Planning and Analysis Specialist at Pasona Group, Inc. In Anaplan, we consider it a significant feature that lists are hierarchical. Hierarchical structure allows for smooth and meaningful connections from the parts to the whole and gives flexibility to the…
Five lessons I learned in 2022
Author: Manuela Apostol, Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan & BI Solutions Architect at Logicor Anaplan is a resilient and very flexible tool and has demonstrated it can be used to adapt plans in days or weeks to current market trends — or rather — shocks! I have found that I’ve also needed to adapt my work strategy…
Community perspective: Version switchover management from UX Page with API
The Anaplan API offers many improvements to model management, which can help improve the data quality and make work more efficient by eliminating repetitive tasks, which are error prone. One area where I have found myself doing repetitive tasks is switchover management. Especially when dealing with multiple models it…
Building with Anaplan while avoiding perfectionism
Author: Dave Edwards, Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal at Columbus Consulting. Inevitably we will all encounter projects that drift too far into the realm of perfectionism. As companies transition to more agile software solutions, the lingering perspective from older system design that a tool must be perfect to…
Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 1]
Part 1: Dealing with Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions Author: Steve Bows, Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director, Zooss Consulting. Last year I took a year out to do a Masters in Sustainability. I’ve been building planning models for over 25 years (originally in Adaytum — anyone old enough to remember that?), and…
Building your internal Anaplan talent pool
Is your organization looking to grow your internal Anaplan talent pool, and either begin to establish an Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) or move up the Anaplan CoE maturity curve? If you’re not thinking about this component of your CoE, then you’re not thinking about a key ingredient of an Anaplan CoE! Or perhaps your…
Version compare and dynamic module line item description update
This article was updated December 16, 2025. Author: Soumya Bhattacharya is a Certified Master Anaplanner and technology consultant at Accenture. There are at time when we generate some output modules with version comparison feasibility. Although Anaplan has its own Version Compare Function, sometime we need to build…
Three foundational steps required to transition from classic to UX
The development of Anaplan’s user experience (UX) has been both a major step in the platform’s maturity as well as a key driver of its best-in-class recognition. However, because the UX represented a major change to the dashboard interface during a time when Anaplan had already amassed a large customer base, not all…
Community perspective: Add a timestamp to processes utilizing Anaplan API and Python
Anaplan is a critical tool for different business processes, and it is used to handle a variety of data. One key attribute for data quality is the timeliness and reliability of the data. It is a known best practice to use Data Hub for centralized data management and then import data to different spoke models. Even though…
Five ways to give back in the Anaplan Community
The biggest thing I’m grateful for in my career is the Anaplan Community. Not just in the sense of this technical website — community.anaplan.com. If it weren’t for all of the people willing to share their knowledge, support others’ growth, and challenge ideas, I wouldn't be in business as an independent consultant. In…
The new Modeling Experience is here!
If you attended ACE 2022 or have been keeping up in Community lately, you’ve probably heard about exciting new changes to the Anaplan model building experience. That’s because the new and improved Modeling Experience will soon officially become the default modeling interface, but you can start using it today! Though the…
That's a wrap on the Anaplan Community Experience!
Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) 2022 is in the books! We had an incredible two days of sessions, networking opportunities, and our first-ever ACE Awards. Thank you to all our incredible presenters, hosts, and producers for making this inaugural ACE a huge success! And most importantly, thank YOU for being members of the…
From spreadsheets to Anaplan
Have you ever worked on a team where spreadsheets are used everywhere and for everything? Have you seen multiple versions of a company’s financial forecast flowing through email from one person to another, back and forth? Have you validated versions of the same file to capture any possible accidental or unwanted changes?…
How I Built It: Dashboard Filter using Line Item Subset
Hello Anaplanner Community! I’m excited to participate in this new Community ‘How I Built It’ video series with a tutorial on dashboard filtering using line item subset (LIS). This video represents one of the functions of LIS, and how can we use the LIS to apply a filter on a dashboard. This filter helps to build a filter…
Case study in workforce and talent acquisition planning
What do you do when you need a single source of truth for headcount approvals, reports, and pay benchmarking with real-time forecasts? You turn to Anaplan! In this case study, I’ll share how we improved our workforce and talent acquisition planning processes, resulting in significant forecast accuracy advancements, time…
Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Jerry Wu
Meet Jerry Wu — Certified Master Anaplanner, and Product Manager, Enterprise Apps at Snap Inc. in Texas. Jerry is part of a team that maintains, supports, and develops revenue planning, sales opps planning, and sales incentive compensation using Anaplan. Snap, Inc. empowers people to express themselves through products…
Announcing an improved Anaplan Community experience, launching soon!
Anaplan Community is excited to announce it is moving to a new platform and adding new capabilities to elevate the member experience. Launching in mid-December, the new Community experience will include upgrades such as content personalization, a simplified process for user-contributed content, new badging/rewards, and…
Breakout tracks announced for the Anaplan Community Experience!
Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) is coming up soon — next Wednesday and Thursday — and we hope you'll join us for this new virtual event! We are excited to announce new sessions and speakers added to our event line-up, from Meta, Autodesk, Groupon, Deloitte, and more. You can look forward to four main stage sessions,…
Community Perspective: Using OAUTH2 to develop custom Anaplan connector for Azure
Introduction The release of OAUTH2 authentication for the Anaplan API opens the door to developing more native connectors across all the major cloud platforms. In this article, I explain how you can configure a custom connector on Azure for use in Logic Apps. The benefit of a custom connector is that you can expose all the…
Modeling in Anaplan with alternative tools: Part 4
One goal of the Anaplan Community blog is to showcase the variety of skills, thought leadership, and knowledge that exists in our ecosystem. There are so many stories and talented people we want to highlight! One of those people who stood out this year is Certified Master Anaplanner Mitch Aist. Mitch has graciously given…
Community perspective: Monitor activity in your models using an action log
Model actions are a useful tool when it comes to automating routine tasks in Anaplan. They enable a wide range of applications such as data integration, list management, or model maintenance. To keep track of action-related activity in a model, we can rely on the Start Date and Time (UTC) column in the Actions pane: A…
Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Dmitry Sorokin
Meet Dmitry Sorokin — Certified Solution Architect, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Senior Model Engineer at lululemon in British Columbia. Dmitry focuses on supply chain planning, demand forecasting, allocation, and replenishment. He enjoys setting up best practices in model building to improve model performance and user…
Modeling in Anaplan with alternative tools: Part 3
Today we are thrilled to bring back one of our favorite Certified Master Anaplanners, Mitch Aist, in our Community series on how to model build in Anaplan with alternative tools. Mitch has shared his expertise earlier this year in Part 1 showcasing how to create a model and versions, and in Part 2, demonstrating how to…
Modeling with concurrent developers
Generally, modeling in Anaplan is straightforward when there is only one developer owning all the changes within a model. However, as your user base grows, so do the number of use cases and requests for enhancements. This means several developers may be developing functionality within the same Anaplan model concurrently.…
A call-to-action this Global Diversity Awareness Month
Diversity, equity, inclusion, allyship, advocacy, authenticity, and belonging: all words that we are starting to see find more significant homes in our corporate lexicon. Sentiments that we always hoped would be ever-present, but sadly haven’t been. Thankfully in recent years, we are seeing more white papers, essays, and…
Register NOW for the Anaplan Community Experience!
We know the Anaplan Community is looking for more opportunities to network, learn via technical sessions, and participate in more model demonstrations. Join us virtually on November 9 & 10 from 10:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. (EST) for the inaugural Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) hybrid event, featuring a limited number of…
Community perspective: IFO – UPPER and LOWER to the rescue
IFO is a very crucial formula to use when working with raw data, staged in Data Hub, to create lists from within the data's metadata. It truncates the metadata within its line item to "Its First Occurrence" to prevent duplicates being imported into its target list. This keeps the action results clean and optimizes…
Master Anaplanner communication error
A recent email notification was sent in error regarding the Certified Master Anaplanner of the Year status. As a valued member of the Anaplan Community, we can assure you that this was not a phishing attempt and apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. Certified Master Anaplanners wear many hats and drive…
Cybersecurity best practices for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Cybersecurity is a topic that many people are still learning about, and it is important to stay up-to-date on online safety best practices. As digital citizens, it is our duty to act responsibly because no matter how secure a platform is, a simple mistake can lead to dangerous situations for ourselves or others. That is…