Loading data from another module: Data is ignored when loading to Version

hollernaffirm

I have one module called DAT01, which contains employee census data. There are two others modules called DAT02a and DAT02b, which are identical with the exception that DAT02b applies to all versions whereas DAT02a does not apply to any versions. DAT01 only has one dimension, which is a unique ID containing a combination of period, department, and employee ID. DAT02a and DAT02b have the dimensions time, department, and employee.

 

I have an action that loads data from DAT01 to DAT02a and loads the dimension values prior to loading the data to the module. E.g., the data is transformed so that the relevant dimensions appropriately apply to the data. The problem I'm running into is when I try to run an identical action to load data to DAT02b. For some reason when I run this action, every single data item is ignored (see screenshot). The only difference is that DAT02b has Version as a dimension and the action requires that you select the Version for loading when the action is run.

 

Any ideas? Am I missing something fundamental about Anaplan here?

MarkWarren

Firstly you should not include the Period in the unique ID, you should dimension DAT01 by Time, it will save a lot of space and improve performance. See Data Hubs: Purpose and peak performance - Anaplan Community
You will then find it easier to pull data from DAT01 to DAT02 without needing to import, you will still need to build the dimensions of course.
Perhaps show screenshots of the DAT02b mappings.
My question would be why are you importing in to a module dimensioned by Versions if the data doesn't vary by Version?

hollernaffirm

Good question: I'm using Version on the target module because this module is used to calculate forecasted salary. Originally, we did not use version (e.g., DAT02a) and we noticed that when would do our monthly census upload, the forecasted salary for all versions would change, most importantly, our budget. And we realized that the way our census module was built can not preserve census changes amongst versions. So my plan was to add version to this module to preserve the census for the budget and locked forecast versions.

 

See attached screenshots of the action setup. Note, in my example above I changed the names of the modules for the purposes of simplicity. When I referred to DAT02b above, it is actually called DAT04b.

hollernaffirm

I'm not sure what made me think to do this, but I unchecked "Use Switchover" for every line item on DAT02b. That allowed me to successfully run the import.

 

DaanishSoomar

Hello @hollernaffirm,

 

Hope you are doing well. I had a chance to review this thread and tried this in my own scratch model.

 

I wanted to try to understand why your solution worked - here are my takeaways. I have included screenshots if anyone wants to reproduce.

 

1. Here is how I setup my time settings. 

 

 

 

 

2. Here is my Version settings. Notice the switchover set to Jun 22.

3. Here is how the module visually appears with switchover enabled. Notice that the numbers from Actuals are feeding into the Forecast up until the Switchover month of Jun 22. Everything prior to Jun 22 is greyed out and not editable.

 

4. I created some dummy source data.

5. If I try to load this source data, only data from Jun 22 onwards will be updated as everything prior is not editable due to Switchover. Here are my results. Notice the Forecast line has updated after Jun 22.

6. Now if I turn off Switchover, notice how everything becomes editable. 

 

7. After I run the import again, notice how all forecast data gets updated.

 

I hope this provides a comparison into the behavior with switchover on and off. The reasoning for why your load was not working with switchover on is because the cells become uneditable prior to the Switchover month. There are several use cases for why you would want switchover turned on as if there is Actuals data present, there may not be a need to have a forecast. 

 

If we think about this from a business standpoint, I will echo some of Mark Warren's questions from above. Some things to think about: 

 

1) Why are there versions enabled on a module with only Data? 

2) Is there a need for the Actuals and Forecast data to be different prior to the switchover period if you want versions enabled? 

 

Hope this helps provide an explanation and point you in the right direction.