Blog

November 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Julie Ziemer
This month we are shining the spotlight on @jziemer, who has been part of the Anaplan Community for over six years! A Certified Master Anaplanner since 2016, and a recently appointed Community Boss, Julie has been an incredible Community leader. Read more to learn about Julie's Anaplan journey, deep Anaplan knowledge, and…
Rolling NPV with timescale workaround
Author: Iain Briggs is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Associate Director at Lionpoint Group. One known limitation of Anaplan’s NPV function is that it calculates across the full timescale. However, a relatively common requirement in investment analysis is to generate a rolling NPV — in other words, to calculate the NPV…
Fundamental lessons I learned in 2023
Author: Ethan Rold is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Manager at Grant Thornton LLP. Winter in the U.S. is basketball season, and it is in full swing. When you attend a high school basketball game, more than likely you will hear the crowds of the student body chant “fun-da-men-tals” in a sing-song style to mock a…
A grateful look at Anaplan's growth and Community impact
Author: Madison Matous is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at Akili Inc. The weather is staring to get cooler, and leaves are changing colors (neither completely apply in Texas though 😊) which means Thanksgiving in the U.S. is right around the corner. "Okay, I'm in my sweatpants! Bring on the food." —…
How to unite an Anaplan Center of Excellence
Author: Nick Alvarez is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager, Anaplan Model Building Empowerment at Autodesk, Inc. Introduction We’re on a journey to unite Anaplanners across Autodesk under one Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE). As we expand the Anaplan honeycomb and our models become more and more connected, we’ve…
An Anaplan rescue mission
Author: Daniel Badura is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Consultant at valantic Business Analytics GmbH. Over the years, we have worked with clients at various stages of their Anaplan adoption journey. Some were just getting started, while others had been using it for several years and use cases. 2023 brought a…
New UX app migration using card template
Author: This blog was contributed by a consultant with Deloitte. One of the key components of ALM functionality is the deployment or migration of code from a Dev model to Prod model. Since Anaplan does not provide an ALM sync for UX changes, the most common approach used is creating duplicate copies of Dev pages and…
Streamlining travel data: A comprehensive approach to trip parsing and expense linking
Author: Steven Kraplin is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Financial Analyst at The MathWorks. In a recent project, I was faced with the task of designing a model that could efficiently consolidate travel data from various systems. The goal was to organize the data into trips and link all related expenses incurred…
November 2023 Community Q&A Challenge — join the discussion and collect a badge!
Building on the incredible success of our inaugural Community Q&A Challenge in September 2023, we're thrilled to announce our second Q&A Challenge! In the Anaplan Community, we've always believed that the key to success lies in members coming together to connect, share knowledge, and support one another. Your enthusiastic…
A conversation with Avnish Goel — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Join Dennis Lemoine, Sr. Program Manager of Community Events, for our eighth episode of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. This month we bring you Avnish Goel (@AvnishGoel), Certified Master Anaplanner at ScriptStory in the San Francisco Bay Area. Avnish is passionate about hands-on thought leadership in implementing…
How I Built It: Number format converter (thousands and millions)
Hello Anaplanner Community! I’m excited to participate in another ‘How I Built It’ video with a Number Format Converter (thousands and millions) tutorial. This video walks you through how to dynamically update UX grid number formats on all tables and charts. This enables users to have different number formats enabled for…
October 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Anirudh Nayak
Let's celebrate @anirudh as our featured Member Spotlight for October! He has been in the Anaplan Community for over six years, a Group leader for our India Community Group, and recently appointed Anaplan Community Boss! Continue reading to get to know Anirudh and his Anaplan journey, expertise, and Community…
How I Built It: Combining two custom time schedules
Author: Moriah Reyes is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Lionpoint Group. Hello Anaplan Community! I’m excited to share my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial with you all. This video shows how you can cleverly use an index list and text list to combine two custom time schedules. Building a custom time schedule can be…
Model change best practices (Sept 2023 Community Challenge recap)
Author: Julie Ziemer is a Certified Master Anaplanner, Anaplan Community Boss, and Solution Leader/Business Analyst at Akili. There were so many detailed answers to the September Community Challenge — it was a challenge just to sort through all the great information! To help the Community, I thought it would be helpful to…
How I Built It: Two-step approval process and audit trail
Greetings fellow Anaplanners! In this episode of ‘How I Built It’, I show you how I build a typical two-step approval process and corresponding audit trail in Anaplan. This functionality accomplishes the following requirements: Analyst users can submit a batch of process data or model results. The manager user then can…
2024 Recertification Requirement Announcement: Using Workflow in Anaplan!
We're thrilled to announce our 2024 recertification process for Certified Model Builder, Certified Solution Architect, and Certified Master Anaplanner. Being a Certified Model Builder, Certified Solution Architect, or Certified Master Anaplanner means that you’re a highly qualified and valued part of the Anaplan ecosystem!…
Top five most useful recent updates and features
Author: Kathleen Sullivan, Certified Master Anaplanner, Solution Architect, and Manager at Cervello. Anaplan is constantly releasing new features to the modeling experience and to the user experience. These spark so much excitement for all Anaplan users because it increases usability for everyone, administrators, model…
A conversation with Shrankhla Singh — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
October may be Global Diversity Awareness Month, but the diversity in the Anaplan ecosystem is something we are proud of and celebrate every month! In our seventh episode of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast, we are excited to introduce a new host to help showcase the variety of talent in our ecosystem. Bringing in new…
How I Built It: User-friendly hierarchy management
Author: Nikko Koutas is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Lionpoint Group. Hi Anaplan Community! Welcome and thank you for checking out my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial. In my video, I will showcase a user-friendly NUX page that can be leveraged by your end users to manage their manually maintained hierarchies. I…
Navigating pitfalls in solution delivery
James Snyder is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Practice Director - Supply Chain at Allitix Inc. As a consultant, my purpose is to build solutions for my clients that deliver value. I take great pride in my work and in driving meaningful change in organizations. However, the best laid plans can unravel as you move…
Remembering to keep the F.I.T in your model retrofit
Author: Taryn Townsend is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting. As technologists and planners, our reflex is to look to the future. We strive to keep up-to-date on the newest and most optimized solutions for our clients and users. This can often lead us to opportunities to give our legacy…
IMPRESSIVE! Community Q&A Challenge recap
Earlier this month we launched our inaugural Community Q&A Challenge, where we presented an Anaplan-related question to our Community to answer and share their perspective. We asked, “As an Anaplan model builder, what steps do you take to ensure that changes you make to an existing module don't create unexpected results in…
A conversation with Clarissa Hassfurder — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Join Dennis Lemoine, Sr. Program Manager of Community Events, for our sixth episode of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. This month we bring you Clarissa Hassfurder (@clarissa), Certified Master Anaplanner, Certified Solution Architect, and CEO at Double10 Consulting. Clarissa has over a decade of software…
Changing production models: corporate psychology vs. customer satisfaction
Author: Jared Dolich is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Partner and Founder at Retailitix. Consider this cartoon from Clowncurls. Maybe a bit exaggerated but sadly not too far from how Anaplan change requests come in. The question is how should you respond? Long ago I was a service desk manager for a 5000-store retailer,…
September 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Alejandro Gomez
Let's celebrate @AlejandroGomez as our featured Member Spotlight for September! He has been in the Anaplan ecosystem for nearly a decade, a Certified Master Anaplanner for five years, and recently appointed an Anaplan Community Boss! Read on to explore Alejandro's journey, expertise, and his meaningful contributions over…
Managing a distributed Center of Excellence
Author: Kevin Cho is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan Team Lead at Atlassian. Managing an Anaplan implementation used by a geographically dispersed team can be challenging. There are the standard challenges of remote working — fewer direct and spontaneous interactions, isolation and lack of team bonding —…
Anaplan training resources and tips from a Certified Master Anaplanner
Author: Hem Maan is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director at Bolt Consulting Group. Anaplan is a fantastic platform that not only allows businesses to achieve their objectives, but also the flexibility it offers also allows model builders to fully utilize creative problem-solving skills. It’s important to be on top of…
A conversation with Stacey Gibbens — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Join Dennis Lemoine, Sr. Program Manager of Community Events, for our fifth episode of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. This month we bring you Stacey Gibbens (@Stacey_Gibbens), Certified Master Anaplanner, recently appointed Community Boss, and Solution Architect at Globe Life. Stacey is a seasoned IT professional…
How I Built It: Solving world’s hardest Sudoku with Anaplan Optimizer
About the Author: Tristan Colgate is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director at Fidenda. Hi Anaplan Community! I’m excited to bring a new and fun video to the Community ‘How I Built It’ tutorial series. In my video, I’ll walk through how I used Anaplan’s Optimizer to solve the world’s hardest Sudoku puzzle. In…
Community perspective: How to vary model inputs using optionality
Sandi Duffy is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Finance Manager at Challenger Limited. With Anaplan, it is easy to run multiple scenarios within the same model by using optionality. A common use for this would be during the budget setting process. Say, for example, you have a budget model but would like to see what…