Blog

Articles about the Anaplan Community and Connected Planning

Community perspective: Automate List Nodes Selective Access
Consider the following situation: There are times when we need to enable selective access for flat list nodes. Although Anaplan has native Users settings tab to manage list nodes access but if the number of list items are huge then managing the security using Users settings tab becomes challenging. This article will cover…
How I Built It: Data Hub basics
Author: Josh Baker, Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Vice President at PJT Partners. Hi Anaplan Community! I’m excited to share my new ‘How I Built It’ video on Data Hub basics, including setup, automation, and model to model data/attribute loads. For some background: The demo utilizes comma separated files…
PLAN Ahead [April 2023 Community Newsletter]
Hello, Anaplan Community! Welcome to your monthly dose of all things Community, packed with thought-provoking articles, the latest discussions, member spotlight, and more. We hope these tips and tidbits elevate your Anaplan learning! 🚀 Have you seen the great thought-leadership and technical guidance in Community this…
Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 3]
Part three: Scope 3 planning using Input-Output Analysis (IOA) Author: Steve Bows, Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director, Zooss Consulting. In the first article of this series, we looked at the difference between Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 carbon emissions, and how you might incorporate Scope 1 (direct) and…
March 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Tiffany Rice
We are excited to continue our celebration of Community with our monthly Member Spotlight for March, Tiffany Rice! Last month we introduced this new series with our first spotlight on Mishbah Ansari. Tiffany, Anaplan Model Builder at Prudential, is a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years, and an active…
What does a home run ball look like?
Author: Aaron Overfors, Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Architect at Spaulding Ridge. Not every software system is designed to do everything. In the early 2000s, however, this was the focus — one platform that could handle everything: resourcing, customer relationships, supply chain, HR, financial planning,…
How I Built It: Integrations using CloudWorks
Author: Gokul Selvam Sadasivam, Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Manager, Business Platforms at Okta. Hello Anaplanners! I’m excited to share a video that I created as part of the ‘How I Built It’ video series — diving into Integrations using CloudWorks. In the video, I give a live demonstration of how to use the…
Best practices for technical documentation of a model
Author: Arun Thakar, Certified Master Anaplanner and Vice President in the banking industry. As go-live approaches and admin and end user training gears up, the question of ‘how do we document the model?’ might be front and center in your daily standups. Fear not! This article will cover some of the best practices on…
Day in the life of a Certified Master Anaplanner (Part 2): CoE Administrator
Author: Joel Bangalan, Certified Master Anaplanner, Solutions Architect, and Systems Administrator in the consulting industry. Hello Anaplanners! This article is the second of two parts on my experience as a Certified Master Anaplanner. I’ve worked as an Anaplan implementation consultant and as an end user, I’m hoping to…
Meet Certified Master Anaplanner of the Year, Asslam Umar Ali
Meet Asslam Umar Ali (@Asslam) — our Anaplan 2022 Certified Master Anaplanner of the Year, and Manager, Financial Performance Management with over 15 years of experience. Asslam currently manages the enterprise planning program, including the Center of Excellence, at Fortescue Metals Group. Asslam is passionate about…
Community perspective: Flat-file Data Load - CSV Encoding Issues
Problem: In the same way we cannot load .txt files (usually tab-delimited) through a data load action originally created with a .csv (comma delimited file), trying to load .csv files with different encoding parameters can result in an issue too. This is the error message you will get in both cases (attempting to load a…
Top three underappreciated features of the UX
Author: Kait Chura, Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at LiveRamp. Reflection is a common practice for me when entering a new year. It's important that I find appreciation in both my personal and professional life, so I know what made my year better. Then, I can either build upon good behaviors in the…
PLAN Ahead [March 2023 Community Newsletter]
There's a lot happening in the Anaplan Community, and it’s easy to miss new articles or the opportunity to share your perspective and help a peer. Take a look at what’s been going on lately. Have you seen the great thought-leadership and technical guidance in Community this month? Here are recent articles you may have…
February 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Misbah Ansari
Congratulations to our very first member we are featuring in Anaplan’s Community Member Spotlight, Misbah Ansari! As one of our top contributors over the course of the past five years he’s been part of the Anaplan Community, Misbah can be seen continually helping members and sharing valuable insights. About Misbah We asked…
Community perspective: Time Settings impact on PERIOD function
When changing the model calendar or available time ranges beware of the unintended consequence on any PERIOD functions in your model. Here are the details on what caused a phantom issue at a customer and how we solved it. Problem While working with a customer to reduce model size we took a hard look at how they were using…
Community perspective: How to achieve multi-app accessibility from a single dashboard
As Anaplan moves forward, many companies are implementing Connected Planning across their entire organisations. This means that as the Anaplan implementation grows - multiple models or multiple functional areas across a single model- generally arise. This is currently being resolved through the use of multiple Apps to…
How I Built It: Beginners guide to integrating with Anaplan using Python
Author: Matt Budd, Certified Master Anaplanner and CIO at Nightingale College and Solution Architect at Dialed Solutions. Hello Anaplan Community! In the last year, I've done a lot of work around creating automation and integrations with Anaplan using Python. Several solutions I've built using Python include: Creating a…
Day in the life of a Certified Master Anaplanner (Part 1): Management Consulting
Author: Joel Bangalan, Certified Master Anaplanner, Solutions Architect, and Systems Administrator in the consulting industry. Hello Anaplan Community! This is the first of two parts of my blog on my experience as an Anaplanner. Having worked with Anaplan both as an implementation consultant and as an end user, I’m hoping…
Community perspective: Building two approaches to ragged hierarchy
In Two approaches to ragged hierarchy, I presented two ways to fix a ragged hierarchy into a balanced one. Now let's proceed with building based on these two approaches. 👀 Blueprints are included for your reference. Building Hierarchy - Loop20230207.xlsx 1. Common preparation Many platforms with a hierarchical structure…
Model building checklist
Author: Nicole Johnson, Senior Anaplan Model Builder at Autodesk. I love a good checklist. Naturally, that passion comes through when I plan and build enhancements for an Anaplan model. I've created a model building checklist that I use to think through and document changes I need to make to a model, and I'm sharing my…
Change management tips for redesigning processes in Anaplan
Author: Arun Thakar, Certified Master Anaplanner and Vice President in the banking industry. As an organization embarks on its Anaplan journey there may be a lot of questions from the business on what Anaplan is, and what the final product will look like. User reactions to process change can be varied, ranging from…
Tips for learning Anaplan
Authors: Ben Ramirez, Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Spaulding Ridge, and Tyler Gareau (@tylergareau), Associate at Spaulding Ridge. Starting out in the Anaplan platform may provoke certain positive emotions such as curiosity, excitement, and stimulation. On the other hand, learning a brand-new platform can…
Community perspective: Smart Data Storage
We’ve all been faced with that question: to version or not to version. The requirements you face, together with your previous experience, will be taken into consideration to make that decision for each new model. But whatever route you decide to take, I think we can all agree that versions shouldn’t be used as storage.…
Anaplan New Year’s resolutions and tips for a successful 2023
Author: Daniel Dunleavy, Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr Associate, Head of Data Integration at Vuealta. Boss calls you into their office. After congratulating you for your hard work last year, he/she says for this year, “We need you to do more, with less, and do it better than before.” After thinking about all the…
Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 2]
Part Two: Scope 3 Planning using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Author: Steve Bows, Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director, Zooss Consulting. In Part 1 of this series, we learned the difference between Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 carbon emissions, and how we could incorporate energy use data (fossil fuels burnt…
Community perspective: Performing FVSchedule Excel function in Anaplan
When searching for FVSchedule in Anaplan Community there was seemingly method for/content about this. There are always multiple methods to achieve the same result but this method has provided the required outcome and may be useful for anyone hoping to tackle an FVSchedule or similar calculation in Anaplan. What is FV…
Recognizing our ACE Award winners
This past November at our Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) event, we recognized two Community members who have gone above and beyond in 2022 to represent Advancement, Culture, and Education — the key elements of ACE — and who embody the spirit of the Anaplan Community. The winners were chosen specifically for their…
Reflections from ACE: CloudWorks for Anaplan CoE enablement
Author: Tiffany Rice, Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan Model Builder, Prudential Financial. With a new year upon us, this is a great time for reflection on the prior year and the capabilities that have been added to Anaplan. During the recent Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) this past November, there was an…
Top 25 Anaplan features released in 2022
Authors: Misbah Ansari (@Misbah), Certified Master Anaplanner and CEO/Founder at Miz Logix and @WajidAli . Within this fast-pacing world, it is important for technologies to move even faster. Anaplan, being a leader in the Connected Planning world, released a plethora of changes and/or updates in 2022 to almost every…
Let’s kick 2023 into gear!
Happy New Year, Anaplanners! The Anaplan Community team would like to take a moment to say thank you for an incredible 2022. We look forward to bringing this Community more learning, professional growth, and opportunities for connections in 2023! We want to take a moment to share our reflections on the past year, and…