Much needed ALM (Application Lifetime Management) front end enhancements ?

Alessio_Pagliano

As a model builder I want a series of front end enhancements to facilitate the development, deployment and maintenance of my applications.

 

This is very much needed when working with scalable solutions which have 1 DEV model and a number of satellite models which are sync'd to the DEV model with ALM (example below)

 

 

Here is a common Release Management process applied to the above. 

 

 

This is a list of very much needed enhancements that should be applied to the front-end in order to streamline the process and save previous time to many Anaplanners.

 

1) Enable the front end to perform "Mass Syncronizations" to target models

Currently Anaplanners need to open each target model, select the source model, then the revision tag, and then syncronise. This activity will require a considerable amount of time.

I will know this is successful when I'm able to perform a bulk syncronisation with just a couple of clicks.

Suggestion : use profiles to provide central settings like source and target models/consider functionalities similar to the Anaplan Excel AddIn       

I know this can be developed with the APIs but I think it should be available from the front end.

 

2) Change Default Option for taking model offline during syncronisation

By default I would never take my model offline when syncronizing so I need to carefully untick the box every time.

I will know this is successful when I can switch this option from a central place, without the need of changing it all the time

 

3) Change Default Option to enable ALM to syncronise multiple revision tags sequentially

Sometimes a complex development is made up of a series of revision tags which need to be performed sequentially (eg data cutover, deleting structures, etc)

 

Imagine you have something like this

 

Revision 1 - New module B

Revision 2 - Copy data from existing Module A to Model B (through line item formulae)

Revision 3 - Remove formulae from Module B

Revision 4 - Delete module A

 

I can't just  sync my target models straight to Revision 4 as behind the scenes Anaplan would not perform the syncronisation sequentially hence more time is needed to perform this activity. When done on a deployment like the above, this becomes a risk and requires a considerable amount of time.

I will know this is successful when I can have a central option which would force syncronisations to be performed sequentially. 

  

4) Create an export/import functionality allowing model builders to export/import a series of structures from one model to another

This is particularly helpful in this sort of deployment. It will not only save time but also prevent manual errors during replications.

I know this has been disussed in the past and there are caveats/challenges, but it would be a godsend for replicating creation of new structures and simple changes to existing ones.

I will know this is successful when I can easily export objects from a test/development model and import them into another one 

 

5) Purging sync and history from a development model

In this sort of deployment you will notice the ALM performances are very bad and the performances of the revision tags/history becomes degrades gradually.

Currently we need to have a manual process in place where we are taking a copy of the Development (ALM) model and archive the other one (with the history). 

I will know this is successful when I can extract (for audit purposes) and then purge revision tag history and maybe history 

 

I'm curious to see how many people have this type of architecture and what they think about these enhancements. Maybe this could be the right place to collect other requests and check with the ALM product owner. Is He still Chris M ?  

 

Thanks!

Alessio

david.savarin

For topic 5, i am unsure alm gets longer with more revision in the model.

We experience from time to time longer sync, but it s not a constant trend.

 

For the rest of the ideas, ut mostly resolves around being able to automate repeated manual tasks. My take around these is usually to go with the api route.

For instance with the alm api, you can automate multiples sync to multiple prod models.

Alessio_Pagliano

Thanks for your feedback @david.savarin ,

Topìc 5 def causes performance issues on a likewise setup and opening up the rev tag screen can take a few minutes until we "purge" the list. Once that's done it goes back to performing as expected and it opens up within seconds.

For this reason we copy and archive ALM on a quarterly basis. But it's painful for us to run through the audit process where we use a semi-automated process to extract all the revision tags for the auditors (using post-man). I know not everyone needs to do this but I also just raised this new Idea :

https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Idea-Exchange/Ability-to-export-the-list-of-revision-tags/idi-p/153145#M11267

Bottom line for me is that while it's good to have APIs and other mechanisms for achieving what's required I'm expecting and hoping that we could easily achieve as much as possible through out of the box functionality and limit the need/use of customisation as much as possible.