How to get an attribute to show at all planning levels to use filter

We have three planning levels and want to be able to filter based upon an attribute of one to show all three.

 

L1 - Client

L2 - Department

L3 - Product

 

The attribute we want to filter by is Territory, which is determined based upon the L2 Department Level.

 

I think that this is a dimensionality issue and there is not a solution, however wanted to see if someone else has encountered as similar situation and created a resolution.

 

Example:

Client              Department        Product        Territory

ABC Corp                                                      Central, West

                       Dept1                                      Central

                                                  Prod1           Central

                       Dept2                                      West

                                                  Prod1           West

 

Client/Department/Product would be using the L3 List.  A client can have multiple departments so is not limited to a single Territory, a Department can have multiple Products, but Products gets the Territory from the Department.  We cannot use the Summary method of First or Last due to Clients can have multiple Departments - it would result in missing at least half of the instances depending on which is chosen (more if a client had activity in more than two Departments with different Territories).

 

We have managed to use x[TEXTLIST:y] to get the values from L3 Product to accumulate at L1 Client.  However cannot get the L2 Department to have a value, nor have a single line item that would have these values for all three planning Levels, so that a user could filter on that single line item.

 

In this example - the user would filter Territory by Central and be able to see ABC Corp, Dept1 and Prod1 that had Central.

Best Answer

  • Hi @jtkerlin,

     

    If I understand you correctly:

    1. Create line item (A) that has dimension of L3 Product, Format = Territory, Summary = None, Formula = pull values from Dep level using loop by parent (probably you have this already)

    2. Create line item (B) that has dimension of Users, Format = Territory, Summary = None - this will be input, users will pick which territory they want to see

    2. Create line item (C) that has dimension of L3 Product AND Users, Format = Boolean, Summary = Any, Formula = "A=B".

    Now apply C as filter for your view, it should show item at any level that has at least one descendant of selected territory.

    Hope it works for you, let me know if you have any questions.

Answers

  • @jtkerlin 

     

    Please try to refrain from using TextList() as it is performance killer.  See if this post with examples of not using TextList() helps.

     

    https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Anaplan-Platform/Lookup-Sum-and-Textlist-Cheat-Sheet/m-p/53085#M8205

     

    Rob

  • Thank you @M.Kierepka 

     

    This sounds correct, however I am relatively new to Anaplan, so forgive me some dumb questions to clarify.  I suspect that this will help me clear up some other challenges we are facing as it is likely a critical piece of that I do  not yet fully understand.

     

    The Territory format is a list, how does Anaplan connect that Territory to the value that is in the L3 Product attribute?  Is this same list that is in the L3 Product attribute and that is where the linkage occurs?

     

    1) Values from Dep Level using loop by parent - I believe I have this - I have the Territory level information showing on a line item at the L3 Product level based on what it is on the L2 Department it is part of.

    2) This creates a user filter for the criteria of Territory?  If I want to just leave it open and not apply to users, so they would use Quick or regular filter on the module will that work as well?

  • In Anaplan, if you reference some line item, and source & target modules have common dimension(s), it's like automatically applying lookup.

     

    About "Quick/Regular" filter, they can only apply based on some line item. It's doable, but I think it's not intuitive for end users. Maybe, what you would prefer more, is something like applying territory dimension to this grid - only to whole module, but not to single line items. This will produce subsidiary views, but will save space. And what it allows for is applying filter dependent on page selector - so it's really easy for users to use it. If you want to do this, then in B you need to change dimension from Users to Territory and formula to "ITEM(Territory)", and in C replace Users with Territory dimension