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2026 certificate maintenance for Certified Master Anaplanners
The 2026 Certified Master Anaplanner Program has begun, and there is incredible opportunity for 2026 Certified Master Anaplanners (CMAs) to demonstrate their thought leadership, technical expertise, Anaplan championship, and mentorship capabilities across the entire Anaplan ecosystem.
At their core, a Certified Master Anaplanner is someone who elevates others across the Anaplan ecosystem through the many ways they share their expertise. This includes mentoring others, sharing community perspective and technical architecture thought leadership, demonstrating innovative solutions, providing product feature insight, ideating and inspiring others in the Anaplan Community to help define the future of the platform, leading CoE development, building innovative roadmaps to scale the platform for business decision-making, and championing Anaplan in the competitive market.
Engagement zones
The 2026 CMA contribution activities list is attached to this post and available for CMAs to download:
Download the list of 2026 Contribution Activities
2026 CMA Contribution Activities.pdf
Each contribution activity is mapped to four engagement zones to help articulate how Certified Master Anaplanners are driving impact within the Anaplan ecosystem. As mentors, thought leaders, Anaplan Champions, and technical experts, Certified Master Anaplanners play a critical role in elevating the broader ecosystem and driving value through the ways they share their expertise.
Each engagement zone is important to the Certified Master Anaplanner community, the entire Anaplan ecosystem, and the Anaplan Community. Highlighting these zones is intended to help you easily align your experience and interests with activities that best suit where you want to make impact. CMAs are encouraged to focus on a primary engagement zone or pursue a blend of activities across zones — with the opportunity for some to complete activities in all four engagement zones during 2026.
Contribution activities will continue to be reviewed and updated throughout 2026 to reflect evolving priorities and areas of impact across the Anaplan ecosystem.
Contribution activities will continue to evolve throughout 2026, with new opportunities introduced regularly to reflect where Certified Master Anaplanners can have the greatest impact. This list will be refreshed at least quarterly, giving CMAs ongoing ways to engage, contribute, and be recognized for the value they deliver across the Anaplan ecosystem.
CMAs are encouraged to check back regularly and plan contributions early to take advantage of new opportunities as they are introduced.
Certification maintenance requirements
Certified Master Anaplanners are expected to actively contribute throughout 2026 and must meet two requirements to renew certification for 2026. These requirements remain consistent with prior years.
Contribution activity requirement
* Complete contribution activities totaling 400 points by December 15, 2026.
* The full contribution activity requirement is due in December; however, CMAs are strongly encouraged to show progress or have a communicated plan in place by the mid-year check-in.
* To support proactive planning and visibility, a mid-year check-in will be conducted between June and July 2026, with 200 points completed or confirmed by July 31, 2026 through planned, communicated activities
* CMAs are encouraged to report contribution activities as they are completed rather than waiting until deadlines
Technical (recertification exam) requirement
* Pass the proctored Certified Master Anaplanner recertification exam by December 31, 2026 (the exam must be passed, not just scheduled)
* The study guide and recertification exam will be available beginning July 8, 2026
* Recertification exam details are available in the 2026 Recertification Information resource
* CMAs should review the Recertification Exam Registration Instructions course in the Anaplan Academy CMA Program Maintenance learning path, which includes step-by-step guidance and the required registration code
Important clarification on recertification exam timing
The Certified Master Anaplanner recertification exam is required every two years. For 2026, the following applies:
* Certified Master Anaplanners who did not take the proctored recertification exam in the prior year — including Japanese-language learners awaiting the release of the Japanese exam and individuals who were granted a one-year extension due to extenuating circumstances — will need to complete and pass the proctored recertification exam in 2026.
* Certified Master Anaplanners who took and passed the proctored recertification exam to renew certification for 2026 have fulfilled the technical requirement for the two-year cycle.
* Newly certified Master Anaplanners in 2025 or 2026 have two years from the date of their initial exam before their first recertification exam is required.
If you are unsure if you need to take action to fulfill the technical requirement in 2026, please contact MasterAnaplanners@anaplan.com for confirmation.
Program terms, conditions, and contact information
Certified Master Anaplanners are responsible for remaining informed of the program policies and requirements that govern certification maintenance and participation.
Please review the 2026 Certified Master Anaplanner Program Terms and Conditions.
Please download and review the 2026 Certified Master Anaplanner Program Terms and Conditions
2026 Certified Master Anaplanner Terms and Conditions.pdf
CMAs must also ensure their contact information remains accurate and up to date, including the email address associated with their Certified Master Anaplanner Program participation. Changes to employment or email address should be addressed promptly to avoid disruptions to program communications.
For guidance on updating your email address, including temporary updates during employment transitions, DO NOT CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT. Instead, email the Academy help desk (academy@anaplan.com) to request an update to your learner and Community email address.
If you are a Certified Master Anaplanner who has any questions about the requirements for annual certification maintenance, your status, or how to engage, please email MasterAnaplanners@anaplan.com
If you are interested in the Certified Master Anaplanner Program and wish to learn more about how to become a Certified Master Anaplanner, please review the resources here.
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How I Built It: Limitless interdependent multi-select filters
Author: Daniel Badura is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Lead Architect at Dr. Oetker.
Hello Anaplan Community! In this ‘How I Built It’ tutorial, I show how you can build filters that filter filters, without using any dependent dropdowns. Each filter allows multiple selections, and they are all mapped using a single system module. This method offers a great deal of flexibility while being easy to build, maintain and extend.
This approach works best for big lists with many attributes, like products, campaigns, or accounts, especially when used in larger modules with few dimensions. It can be useful to uncover relationships and imbalances in master data.
Key features:
* A system module contains the mapping of each filter to the filtered list.
* Each filter has its own module with the Users list.
* The filters are displayed in single-column grids.
* Making a selection in one filter not only filters the data grid, but also the other filters.
https://play.vidyard.com/M3HtGXRVFAS9QYEXYaVh1k
Questions? Leave a comment!
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All ‘How I Built It’ tutorials can be found here.
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How I Built It: User filters with variable hierarchy properties
Author: Erik Svensson is a Certified Master Anaplanner and a Principal Solution Architect at Anaplan.
Hello Anaplan Community!
Thank you for checking out my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial. In this video, I demonstrate a powerful technique for creating dynamic user filters. This solution gives your end-users the flexibility to filter a dimension by different attributes on the fly.
A great example is fashion assortment planning. In the "Tops” category a planner needs to filter by Neckline, while in "Footwear” a planner needs to filter by Upper Material. This model allows each user to select the specific attributes they want to filter by, providing a customized and highly flexible experience.
This is especially important in fast-moving industries where trends change quickly, and a one-size-fits-all filtering approach is too restrictive.
Key features:
* User-specific dynamic filtering
* Flexible attribute selection per user
Check it out and drop in a comment if you have any questions!
https://play.vidyard.com/ErQqG4YvqLwZTVhXm1uHYS
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Making the most of Anaplan Data Orchestrator
Author: Sanja Boll is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Solution Architect at GlobalFoundries.
Anaplan’s Data Orchestrator (ADO) is very effective tool to import, transform, and load data into your Anaplan models. When used correctly, it can cut your data integration and transformation efforts by 50%, however maximizing its benefits does require a bit of experience. Below are the lessons I have learned while leveraging ADO at GlobalFoundries:
Multiple transformation views are better than one
* You will often see better performance and improve the auditability of your data transformations when you create multiple transformation views with your dataset, rather than combing all steps into one view.
* Additionally, ADO will process data transformations in a default order within a transformation view, not the order you apply it in. The order is:* Join
* Calculate columns
* Detail filters
* Aggregations
* Aggregation filters
* Union
* Remove duplicate rows
* This means that if you want to adjust your source data to remove duplicate rows and then create a UID based on logic, you need to create 2 transformation views. The first view will remove the duplicate views. The second view will create the UID.
Establish consistent naming conventions
* As shared in my above bullet, you may need to create multiple transformation views to accomplish your desired data output. To make it clear to the rest of your team what each transformation view is doing, make sure to set naming convention expectations early. While you can always use the “Map” feature to view the progression of your data from source to transformation to model link, it is more time consuming to analyze the data map than it is to scroll through your transformation views. Here’s an example of a helpful transformation view naming convention:* Dataset Name_ Transformation View # _ What the transformation view is doing
* An example would be “Purchase Orders_TV2_Filter Current Period”. This tells your Center of Excellence (CoE) team that this is the second transformation view of your PO dataset and you are filtering to the desired data period. If I were a model builder who needed to tweak the transformations of this dataset, having the transformation views labeled this way makes it easy for me to identify exactly where I need to make the change.
Be careful when you delete a transformation view
* Like anything in Anaplan, you are allowed to hit the delete button if you no longer need an item in your build. Unlike an Anaplan model, however, you cannot revert ADO. This means that if you delete a transformation view and then realize you actually needed it, you can’t undo the deletion. You will need to rebuild it. Some other implications to keep in mind when deleting a transformation view are that you can break downstream transformations that rely on the view you deleted. If the downstream transformation views are broken, your model link will be broken too. You won’t be able to run the model link until you add a new source.
Leverage dataspaces for sensitive datasets
* ADO allows you to create separate dataspaces with access controls. This is a great way to leverage ADO for sensitive data, such as Workday data for your workforce planning use case, without allowing all of your integration admins the ability to view the data. Access to dataspaces is granted to integration admins by the tenant admin in the “Administration” section of Anaplan.
Keep an eye out for new connectors
* There are three ways to get data into ADO:* External source systems with connectors
* Your Anaplan models
* Local files
* I find that the most benefit comes from connecting to external source systems as you get to shorten the turnaround time of your integrations. Currently, there are 13 external connectors available to systems such as Amazon S3, Google BigQuery, Salesforce, and SAP, however Anaplan is actively working on adding more options. Redshift, for example, is currently available with basic authentication. Eventually it’ll be available with SSO, which I personally am quite excited about.
ALM-ing in ADO requires cloning
* When you push your integration build to Production, ADO will not automatically update your model links to your Production model. To connect your link to the proper model, you will need to go to ADO > Links and find the desired link you wish to remap. Then, click the three dots to the right of the link and select “Clone to ALM Models”.
Hopefully these tips help you to save time and get a quicker ROI on your ADO investment. Happy planning!
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The hidden valley: Auditing Anaplan solutions for adoption and value
Author: Avirup Sen is a Certified Master Anaplanner and a senior consultant and solution architect at EyeOn.
A key reason for Anaplan’s global success story is how it is adopted easily across organizations for its ease of business adoption. Users globally love the platform, not only for the performance and scale of functionalities that it provides, but also for the ease of building on the platform, allowing business champions to continue to grow their ecosystem as the platform evolves.
However, complex bespoke organizational solutions can become quite challenging to manage and integrate over time. As the models and use cases grow and the uniqueness of business logic and rule sets become critical, some pieces within the ecosystem get left behind or abandoned, as the landscape continues to grow. This is the case of the hidden valley, as builders and users often choose to build around it or rebuild it again from scratch to connect to the changing needs of the organization. I have seen several such instances over the years, and the biggest value driver to explore the hidden valley has been a targeted audit, focused on value and adoption.
1. Understanding what changed, and what got left behind
The first step, before touching a single list, module, or data pipeline would be to understand the value drivers of the model. Speaking to the business users who championed it initially, asking feedback about adoption and usage, defining success metrics and in such cases, the decisions that led to the current state of the model. This step is what will drive value for everything that comes after in the audit.
Finding out that a model got left behind because “it had custom planning logic that was managed by a person no longer with the organisation “or “our ERP systems changed as part of a project and the model became outdated” is the knowledge that defines the audit, instead of creating generic assumptions based on model logic.
2. Assessing where the solution fits in current business context
Once the model value and adoption drivers are defined, the next step is a targeted pass at the architecture and design to understand solution scope and do a fit gap analysis against the current business needs. A model can be extremely well designed and still fail to be a part of a business process that has pivoted direction. The best way to go about this is to review any existing process maps, identify planning decision templates and see how the solution scores in terms of reusability.
What does this give us?
* Missing user stories that never got drafted into the model design
* Gaps across process evolution that can be covered while keeping the core solution intact
* A recovery focused checklist that helps scope the effort for targeted enhancements against a full solution rebuild
All these things help in bridging the gaps that led to adoption dropping in the first place.
3. The data discovery and identifying broken trust signals
Anaplan models are built around being a single source of truth across planning functions. The ability to ingest, transform, and report out on data across multiple source systems is critical to its identity. Often, the cause of the hidden valley is business users losing trust in the model output, because the trust in data gets eroded over time. The audit at this phase needs to identify such hidden issues and work on restoring the user trust back in the solution. The critical steps are:
* Document every primary and secondary data pipeline. Create swim lanes across source and target systems, capturing data nodes at every step.
* Evaluate data across two lenses: does it have all the data the business currently needs? If so, is the data accurate and one that the users trust daily?
* Identify process and data owners and drive a workshop to see if both come out of the room aligned with the final output. The decisions within that workshop define the points of failure and the biggest changes required to the pipeline.
Data trust has real business consequences and is often sidelined over architectural discussions. A solution is as valuable as the trust it provides to its users and a sanitised data pipeline drives adoption and value from day one.
4. Thinking “recover, reuse, recycle” instead of “build, build, build”
Once the audit is complete, your data and architecture checklist are ready, the value and adoption drivers defined and documented, the final step isn’t a big-bang change proposal. It’s a mindset mapping exercise to see how we can extract value from the current solution without rushing to build a newer, shinier, version. Some of the key considerations to think about are:
* Does the model and data foundation have its core still aligned with the business direction? If yes, it is a recover exercise, not a clean slate project.
* Does the gap analysis show more than 50 percent reusability? Even for v2.0 projects, it is always best to reuse current components instead of reinventing the wheel. This way, we keep the core that drove the adoption while changing the walls around it for newer value driven proposals.
* Does the model need a recycling? Sometimes the solution gets dropped as it becomes too bloated and slow, things that are recoverable by targeted model clean up, streamlining data and history and reviewing performance bottlenecks. A spring-cleaning exercise can give a solution new life instead of rushing to build the next big thing.
When we think of Anaplan audits, we think of a complex technical review that is done by experts in isolation before prescribing a solution. In all my years navigating the hidden valley, I have found that the best audit mindset is what made us adopt Anaplan in the first place:
Every solution was built for a reason. A good audit should recover that reason, test whether it still matters, and reconnect the solution to adoption, value, and the wider planning landscape. That is single biggest value proposition an audit can deliver.
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How I Built It: Process logging
Author: Karim Bhaidani is a Certified Master Anaplanner & Transformation Director at Spaulding Ridge.
In this 'How I Built It' video, I demonstrate how to build Process Logging in Anaplan to enable non-workspace admins to view a summary of the most recent hour and date any process ran within the model on a front end dashboard.
By using templates and schedules within Anaplan Workflow, the current date and time are automatically kept up to date in the model. These can be incorporated into a sequence of actions for each process, enabling automatic capture of a timestamp whenever a process is executed. The setup for process logging is simple and does not require advanced model architecture expertise.
This approach primarily improves overall visibility into process execution times for all users. End users can easily view when any process last ran directly from a front end dashboard, eliminating the need to contact a workspace admin to understand when an integration was loaded or when a user ran a specific process.
https://play.vidyard.com/Jtf1pG3TBzAWmfQthZzqsL
Questions? Leave a comment!
View all 'How I Built It' videos here.
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How I Built It: Anaplan accessibility — Navigating the Anaplan UX using hands-free tools
Author: Mitch Aist is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Solution Architect at Anaplan.
In this episode of ‘How I Built It’, Master Anaplanner Mitch Aist shows us how to use the Anaplan UX hands-free using voice dictation and command software, Dragon Naturally Speaking.
‘How I Built It’ video
https://play.vidyard.com/cdPxE52WGzer3pzozwqKHg
Timestamps
* 0:00 – Intro
* 0:17 – Welcome
* 1:13 – Logging into Anaplan and navigation to a page
* 2:43 – Navigating the App Page menu using “click link”
* 4:55 – Browser shortcuts, copy/paste tables
* 5:35 – Commanding the computer
* 6:45 – Navigating dimension page selectors
* 7:53 – Navigating the App Page menu by commanding the name
* 8:21 – Entering data into field/grid cards and right-click
* 11:18 – Right-click; show cell history and drill down
* 12:54 – Scroll up and down
* 13:27 – Toggling the additional insights
* 13:59 – Top page menu, including refresh and share
* 14:57 – Grid Card menu: filter and sort
Functionality not shown, but still usable with Dragon
* “Click Favorite”
* Page Options* “Click Page Options”
* Export as PDF
* Save Personal Copy
* Reset Page
* Delete
* Grid card functionality* Maximize/Minimize
* More Actions > Export
Functionality which is not shown due to difficulty with Dragon
* App contents page
* Grid Card functionality* Show/Hide
* Pivot
* Comment on Card
* Search
* Reorder
Helpful links
* Dragon dictation overview
* Dragon Commands
* Adding words and phrases to your Dragon vocabulary
* Dragon web extension
* Dictating punctuation and special characters
* Modeling in Anaplan with alternative tools: Part 1
Questions? Leave a comment!
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View all 'How I Built It' videos here.
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How I Built It: ADO and Snowflake data integration
Author: Andre Lie is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Alpha Alternatives.
In this ‘How I Built It’ video, I demonstrate an end-to-end bidirectional integration between Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) and Snowflake. The integration highlights how ADO acts as a centralized orchestration layer that manages and automates the flow of data between Anaplan models and Snowflake.
In this setup, I used a Snowflake database to simulate a sales planning environment. On the ADO side, I configured a connection to Snowflake, created datasets, transformation views, links for importing data and metadata into an Anaplan model, and a pipeline for exporting Anaplan data to Snowflake.
Key benefits of this bidirectional integration include:
* Support for closed-loop planning by feeding actuals and operational data into Anaplan, while publishing forecasts and planning outputs back to Snowflake
* Improved data consistency between planning and operational systems
* Centralized orchestration without relying on custom scripts or external ETL tools
* Automated inbound and outbound data integration
This demo shows how ADO and Snowflake can be leveraged to build automated and scalable data integration foundation for enterprise planning.
https://play.vidyard.com/eMRB9sY182tBdZunBSHPsR
Questions? Leave a comment!
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View all 'How I Built It' videos here.
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