This article was updated December 16, 2025.
Author: Soumya Bhattacharya is a Certified Master Anaplanner and technology consultant at Accenture.
There are at time when we generate some output modules with version comparison feasibility. Although Anaplan has its own Version Compare Function, sometime we need to build dynamic scenario creation and comparison function.
Also please have a look in the Planual instructions for versions before proceeding with custom versions as standard version also has the capability to have the variance.
This article will cover:
- How do keep a custom version list and do a dynamic way of comparison.
- How do we update dynamically the comparison module line-item description as per the I/P version selection.
Say the output dashboard looks like below; the module grid show the same name as of the selection of the versions.
If you change it, then it will change the module line items as following:
Module settings
Say, we have a data module (DATA01 Forecast upload) holding the forecast values and we have loaded the different versions of forecast. In the module we have used a custom list called Version List.
This is to have different versions to store the values, there can be as many versions as we want to have as this being a custom list. (Keeping in mind, the workspace size limit).
Calculations of the forecast took place at another module below (CALC02 Forecast Calculations). Here we are pulling the volumes from above data module.
Final output module (OUT02 Version Compare) shown below which is published in the dashboard too.
Settings for the same explained below:
Above module has the Attributes (Volume, Price) as the module line items and Custom Version (Version Compare) as of the dimensions.
Past 1: Here in module, we used another custom list (Version Compare). This list is of type number list.
Part 2: Here in the formula, we are trying to get the calculated forecast from the module CAL02 Forecast Calculations (shown above) and used other modules for the lookup function for custom versions.
Part 1:
It has property which is formula driven and the property is set as a display name property of the List.
The formula to calculate / dynamically update the display name is explained below (Part 2) in the article under the module (CALC01 Version Calculate).
Part 2:
For the formula we have used two modules: INP01 Version Input and CALC01 Version Compare.
Compare Version line item in module (OUT02 Version Compare) will always do a compare between From Version and To Version.
INP01 Version Input: This a simple version input module (published on the dashboard) to get user input.
CALC01 Version Calculate: This module will help to get the values in From version and To version also this module helps to calculate the dynamic update of the module line items.
The Line-item Selected Version Calculates the Version Display names.
The first item in the list (Version Compare) will have the display name value from the From Version and the second item of the list will have the display name from the To Version. And the final item will always have a display name of Compare Version.
This is how we can achieve the version comparison and dynamically update module line-item description as per the I/P version selection.
