Blog

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…
How I Built It: Waterfall calculation
We come across the need for waterfall calculations more often than we think! I’ve personally created this at least four times in different contexts, and I’ve helped colleagues who were trying to achieve something where a waterfall calculation would work perfectly well. First, let’s clarify what I mean by “waterfall…
5 Best practices for Anaplan sustainability
This article covers material I presented during an Anaplan User Group session in 2021. The module snapshots are from prior to my transition to the Anaplan UX for visualization outputs. As someone who started off as an Anaplan implementation consultant and then moved on to manage a tenured Anaplan deployment within a…
Save the date for the Anaplan Community Experience!
Hey Anaplanners! Today I am thrilled to announce an upcoming special event for our Community — the Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) — a hybrid experience on November 9 and 10, 2022. After Anaplan Live! in June, we heard the feedback. We know the Community is looking for more opportunities to network, additional technical…
How I Built It: Popular Word Game
Community Manager note: In our new “How I Built It” series, we will be showcasing the incredible talent in the Anaplan ecosystem! From technical content that will help you navigate common challenges, to insights into creative solutions — these videos will offer a peek into how your peers do their jobs. Hi Anaplanners! I’m…
Tech Talk with OEG: Performance triangle key takeaways from customers
The Anaplan Performance Triangle details the relationship between the number of users and the level of complexity in an Anaplan model to the performance of an Anaplan model, as explained by Mark Warren, Operational Excellence Group Platform Specialist in this article. The Performance Triangle considers: How many end-users…
Keeping current: 2023 certification requirements
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! As stewards of Anaplan, our goal is to ensure your expertise stays relevant, regardless of when you were certified. Staying current with the latest…
Community perspective: RANK and row counts – Management Reporting with multiple lists
A common request within any planning project is to create well-formatted, standard reports for the business to consume. However, these aren’t always as simple to create as first thought. The Management Reporting capabilities within Anaplan produce great looking outputs. However, they require a fixed number of rows for each…
Case study: Anaplan for hypergrowth companies (The story of Rohlik)
In our experience with dozens of implementations, we see a lot of similarities for the reasons clients switch to Anaplan: reducing reliance on Excel, standardizing processes across business units, reducing the time spent on manual work around data preparation, and controlling data quality. Additionally, Anaplan is often…
Community perspective: How to maintain corporate brand standards in Anaplan
Overview One responsibility of a marketing team is creating and regulating the corporate brand standards. Logos represent the most recognizable part of this tool kit, but the choice in color can be equally important when consumers are challenged with recognizing popular companies. McDonalds: Red & Yellow. Starbucks: Green…
Pro tip: Process & Import IDs
When setting up data integrations the process or import actions are often referred to by name, however, this practice isn't robust and can cause process failures if names are changed in the model. During development and enhancements, a model builder may choose to edit the name of a process or import to the model. This…
Showcasing our CoE Leaders (2022 Runners-Up to the CoE Leader of the Year Award!)
In June at Anaplan Live! we celebrated all the hard work we see every day in the Anaplan Community. Hayli Hay, at Autodesk, won our 2022 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year, and there are two more exceptional people we would like to recognize! Asslam Umar Ali and Matthieu Marck are our 2022 Center of Excellence Leader…
Community perspective: Data Hub organization
This article is intended to help assist and standardize Data Hub organization across the Anaplan platform. This methodology is intended to help the technical teams, not end users, navigate and create your Data Hub model and troubleshoot problems with individual data sources efficiently. Functional areas To begin, setup…
Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Kyle Sakowski
Meet Kyle Sakowski — Certified Master Anaplanner and Director at Everest Reinsurance Company in New York. Kyle’s Anaplan experience started when he was an intern, when his boss tasked him with learning all he could about the platform. This led to an incredible learning journey, a full-time role, and successful career as a…
Moved: List of Subprocessors
This discussion has been moved.
Winning at wireframing
Requirement gathering is one of the most important aspects of an Anaplan build. If done thoroughly, it will give stakeholders a quality product with a quick time to deployment. If done poorly, it can result in many additional hours spent in rework and a negative experience with stakeholders and testers. We’ve all heard the…
Community perspective: Employee grouping for sales targets
Within sales and target setting use cases, there are often situations that require assigning specific targets to a group of employees. While this can be done manually or through a blanket allocation, it may be more advantageous to designate groups within regions or markets for the purpose of distributing targets. There are…
How to traverse hierarchies: The power of loops
Introduction Whenever you use a hierarchy, there will often be times when you are required to seek specific information which will necessitate some way to traverse the nodes and map out their connections. What you seek may be a list entity, a specific value, or a unique identifier, and this can become complicated if the…