Maxmise compatibility for exports containing dates and periods

marcowohlgemuth

Anaplan is using a unique date format “1 Jan 22” and “Jan 22” as opposed to “2022-01-01” and “2022-01”, which are more common in data science. When Anaplan data containing dates and periods (e.g. the daily traffic per shop) is exported to another system (in this example I use Google BigQuery with the CloudWorks Connector), the date/period column of the destination data table needs to be datatype string, because the database does not recognise "1 Jan 22" as a datetype. This means that for further use of the data there needs to be a postprocessing in the database that maps the Anaplan string-dates to datascience-readable dates, to be able to work with the dates (e.g. SQL / Python, etc.).

 

I would encourage Anaplan to implement features that allow for more flexibility when exporting data tables.  containing date type fields, to avoid having to do an unneccessary postprocessing in the destination database. The goal should be to maximise compatibility and readability. 

 

Here is the link to the discussion https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Anaplan-Platform/Date-Format-Issue-when-exporting-from-Anaplan-to-BigQuery-with/m-p/150452/highlight/false#M40989