January 2024 Community Q&A Challenge — join the discussion and collect a badge!

becky.leung

Happy New Year to the Anaplan Community! We are thrilled to kickoff 2024 with a new Q&A Challenge, providing an opportunity to reflect on the previous year one more time. In the fall of 2023, we introduced our Community Q&A Challenge series centered around Anaplan-related questions, encouraging Community members to reflect and exchange their insights. We've truly enjoyed reading through Community members' responses, observing mutual learning, and the diverse viewpoints shared. 

Question for the January 2024 Q&A Challenge: What were your favorite Anaplan features released in 2023 and why? Please keep your responses focused on no more than three features.

Join in on the Q&A Challenge by commenting on this post below.

How to participate in the January 2024 Community Q&A Challenge:

• The challenge starts on January 4, and will conclude on January 15, 2024.
• Provide a response to the Q&A Challenge question by commenting below: What were your favorite Anaplan features released in 2023 and why? Please keep your responses focused on no more than three features.
• Community members who participate in the discussion will receive a unique participant badge at the end of the challenge.

Are you ready to join the discussion? Participate in the Q&A Challenge by commenting in this post below. We look forward to seeing your responses!

For a full outline of our challenge rules and restrictions, read our full Terms & Conditions here.

JaredDolich

Question:

What were your favorite Anaplan features released in 2023 and why?

Reaction:

Happy new year Anaplan champions! Here are my 2023 Favorites:

1. Community Boss Program
2. Anaplan Sales Team Aligned to Industry Verticals
3. My favorite Anaplan features

Community Boss Program
Without a doubt this is my favorite new feature. Now, you might be thinking, Jared, this isn’t a feature… but, I would argue that it is the most important feature. Community is where ideas are started, developed, and delivered. It’s a venue for problem solving, networking, and learning. For those that are pursuing higher certifications with Anaplan you’ve probably discovered that you cannot realistically advance without advocacy… which comes from many of the Community Bosses. Thank you @EricS @becky.leung and @GingerAnderson

Sales Team Alignment
It’s not terribly obvious to most but the realignment of the Anaplan sales team is a boon for the retail industry, which is the one I follow. Now we can be consistent with our approach, build up our retail assets, and truly go after the top 100 retailers in the U.S. We currently have less than 10 using Anaplan. Thanks to my awesome friends @BobD and Neil Miyamoto.

Anaplan Features
Finally we come to the new features. There were many, especially after May, and for a retail practitioner, there is no doubt that the Assets, 3 GB, of space for images is my favorite. For retailers planning to organize their assortments, this is critical! Thank you Anaplan. Crisp Salute to the development team. Honorable mention to workflow - wish it was part of the base package.. 😁

matthewreed

Happy New Year everyone, hope 2024 is prosperous for you. I'm easy to please, but here are my top 3 features from 2023.

Firstly, being able to adjust charts on a per-series basis has been a game changer for me. It sounds simple but being able to turn off data labels per-series allows for the important data to be shown without losing context that the other series are present for.

Secondly, still on UX, being able to put context selectors at the top of a card is a great change. Particularly helpful when catering to new or infrequent end users who aren't aware that the card information has selectable context.

And finally another small change, but proof that the little things add up in the long run, is having line items default to None from SUM. This modelling change saves a lot of time towards making sure your model is optimized. It may only be a 2 second exercise to switch it (and it took some adjustment at first) but given the amount of line items we create when modelling, I believe this is a great quality of life change and will save time in the long-run while saving unnecessary memory use.

pyrypeura

I have two clear favourite features for 2023.

First one being default summary setting being NONE. I believe this will in overall increase quality of Anaplan models as there will be less non needed summaries in use.

Second one is assets. Before it has been difficult to add different images to models as using imgur or other alternatives is really not that smooth solution. Having assets will make it easier to customise UX pages with company specific images.

alexpavel

I focused on some NUX small features that were released in 2023 that I considered to have great impact.

1. Reset page in NUX

It is very useful to reset the page in one go after the users have multiple filters, pivot, sorting made on different pages. Another gap with classic dashboard fixed.

It was really frustrating with the existing “Reset” option that was doing “reset” only for page selectors reset and not reset for filtering, pivot and other layout changes that a user could do in a page.

2. Possibility to decide page selectors of the cards Bottom or Up

Usually the users prefer the page selectors of the cards to be in the upper side of the card (grid, chart, etc..) and making the place customizable helped to improve the user experience.

This was another functionality gap with classic dashboards that was fixed and it's much better in NUX as it is customizable and also have a color formatting option.

3. Possibility to change order of the context page selectors

Sometimes the order of the page context selectors generated frustration as not always the default order of the selectors was following the users business processes. having the possibility to change it really helped.

It would be really nice to have extended this feature also for the card selectors. 😊

4. Possibility to upload images in Assets section

It was always difficult to decide where to upload the images used in NUX pages.

If the images were published on some internet image sites, it was possible that the users had issues accessing those images because of internet restrictions.

If the images were published only in some intranet site, the external users could have issues accessing the intranet images library.

Really happy that now it is possible to create an image library that can be uploaded in the Tenant Assets Anaplan area.

5. Grid Themes and summary styles formatting

This new feature increased a lot the formatting possibilities in the NUX.

It was quite frustrating that conditional formatting was the only option to format.

6. Management Reporting Insights Panel

One of the big advantages of the worksheet pages was that you could have the “Insights” panel where you could publish different information. This it is possible now also for Manage Reporting pages.

I hope this feature will be extended soon also for the Board pages as well. 😊

DaanishSoomar

1. Drill to Transaction enhanced in modeling view. This was incredible as I stumbled on it today, it was so fast to show which transactions are feeding a summary view.
   
   2. The new formula bar has been enhanced to catch syntax errors BEFORE pressing submit.

Dikshant

My list of top Anaplan features for 2023:

Freeze Panes: Freeze up to any row or column in a grid or worksheet. Allowing for easier analysis and navigation through large data sets. Anaplan end users can now rejoice as the platform has introduced the long-awaited Freeze Panes feature, a similar functionality from Excel. This addition caters directly to user preferences, enhancing the overall usability of Anaplan.

Formula Syntax Checking: This is a revolutionary feature for model builders. It promptly alerts model builders to check for syntax errors in their formulas. This speeds up the formula-building process. Additionally, Anaplan has upgraded the module/line item search functionality, streamlining the formula-writing experience for model builders.

Forms Validation Options: This feature allows setting up min and max character lengths for number-formatted line items and defines the acceptable range, along with more flexibility and validations in user input.

2023 was a stellar year for Anaplan, marked by impactful new features. I wish you an even greater year ahead as Anaplan continues to roll out enhanced functionalities. Cheers to ongoing success!

jziemer

Happy New Year to all! My favorite features of 2023:

1. Line item summary defaulting to "None" ( Mentioned several times above). Will result in better quality models and faster model building.
2. Users now have ability to copy down and copy across in NUX. This is often a big time save for users in FP&A/Accounting world.
3. Workflow! - While there is still a ways to go to make this really efficient, being able to create workflows that can bridge multiple models and automatically run actions is HUGE from a process efficiency perspective. Once Anaplan can get these workflows to be triggered by Users outside the Workflow Administrator page (e.g. with the running of an action button or with integration from source systems), this will be a true game changer.

Thank you Product Teams for continually improving the platform!

Puneeth H P

Hello everyone,

I would like to thank everyone who has worked to bring the new features to Live.

Firstly, it is a summary method that mesmerizes me, having 'Summary' as 'none' is a very good option which almost can be used in many places.

Secondly, introducing various features in MAP is very intriguing. We can assign the values based on territories with multiple colors and options is useful in many ways. Especially, re-allocating the territories is a game changer.

Furthermore, Disabling the process through 'Driver line item', altering the positions of Page selectors, new templates for grid design, hierarchy filter, update in NUX Images, update in Anaplan Report sheet in NUX and so many reasons to be satisfied about the updates which we have got in Modeling and NUX designing.

Thanks,
Puneeth HP

rekaitis

Happy 2024! I enjoyed the Community User Advancement program that rolled out in 2023 - it really allows me to focus in on what and how I want to learn and move forward with my Anaplan development.

Tiffany.Rice

I think 2023 was a year that had a little something for everyone!!!

For the model builder experience, the formula indent + error checking enhancements were massive quality of life improvements! For Page Builders, image Assets make it exponentially easier to include graphics on your pages. For end users, quick click UX enhancements made it easy to make bulk updates to data (copy across/down), compress hierarchies in the page selector, and reset page views.

Small wins can make huge impacts overtime - cannot wait to see the gains in 2024!

ymugeni

Happy new year everyone!

My favorite Anaplan features released in 2023 are:

1. The option to put context selectors on the top of the card
2. Geo mapping
3. Context selector reorder

Alessio_Pagliano

Happy new year everyone !

Selecting only 3 new features is a challenge, which is great, as there were several new ones, particularly towards the 2nd half of the year.

All in all I think 2023 demonstrated the Anaplan roadmap is progressing well (better than previous years) on several big streams.

So, here is my top 3 :

1. 
   User uploaded images

Improving the look and feel in this area was a big necessity. I think we were all working with unsuitable workarounds that were causing big headaches

2. Workflow

Another necessity for the planning world and huge topic that has been in the roadmap for years. The development and functionality that was eventually deployed represents a big milestone and is the result of a big investment.

It's definitely an area that need and will continue to evolve but represents a big opportunity to replace manual solutions that are way too complex.

I reserve the right to have mixed feelings re: the licencing decision of workflow

3. Expand/collapse in page selectors

This is a credit to a peace of functionality that be made available this quarter for data grids as well. Something users are very much used in Excel and that competitors handle pretty well already so I was very keen to see this first milestone reached and I'm very much looking forward to see it implemented into grids !

https://community.anaplan.com/discussion/87138/collapse-expand-hierarchy-functionality-in-modules-and-ux-grids

Thanks !

TimothyThomas

Most things have already been covered, but the 3 things that have been the most useful to myself and my team this past year are:

• Syntax checker in the formula editor: I can't count how much time this has saved us from accidentally triggering the blue "toaster" of death! The additional enhancements such as indenting have been great as well, but in terms of time savers, this has been an excellent and needed improvement.
• Workflow: While we haven't yet implemented it, this has been on the wishlist for many of our end users for years now, and once we get this implemented we will be able to speed up so many tasks which are currently handled disparately through email and instant messaging! Hurray for clear audit trails!
• Context selectors on top of cards: For so many of our NUX builds, this has made a clear quality-of-life improvement with very little time spent by our CoE. A great small enhancement that has been very helpful for us!

Cheers to more great releases in 2024!

M.Kierepka

Hi all,

It's hard to pick just 3, when there were so many cool features released last year. I think the importance matters depending on if someone is a builder, maintainer, end-user, and what they use Anaplan for, but these 3 are my favorite:

1. Assets - store images directly in Anaplan:
   1. Ease of use: Until this feature, we had to decide where to store the images, then upload them, get a proper link, and only then we could use it. Now it's just upload in Anaplan and pick in the UX card.
   2. Quick migration: If there are models that already used some image storage, and had module with links, instead of changing it in UX image by image (which is a lot of manual work sometimes), we can copy the link of uploaded asset and just replace the old one.
   3. Security: Previously either images had to be publicly uploaded (making them accessible without any authorization, which could be potentially dangerous), or shared from some company cloud storage (which meant it wasn't easy to configure, then to protect from changing, or always accessible without logging to the other system separately, especially for external contractors). Now it's safe - the images are uploaded to Anaplan and can be displayed only by people that have access to the app.
2. Updates to UX grid cards - for me it's one big feature of making them much, much better, like:
   1. Grid themes: Let's be honest, most of the cards in Anaplan are grids, so it's really important to be able to prettify them - to show which lines are summaries, which tables are more important and should catch the eye, or even to tie color to some dimension to help users understand the connections between tables.
   2. Freeze Panes: This is a long-waited features, that brings the functionality known from spreadsheets - thanks to it, we can display extra properties for dimensions on big tables, that are visible even if scrolling across the other dimension.
   3. Selectors at the top, better width settings for columns, and many more!
3. Workflow:
   1. Really powerful feature: saves a lot of time, is reusable and built to support various scenarios (like groups and hierarchies, delegation, Anaplan processes, Time dimension with switchover etc.). It also helps that end-users get the automated and on-demand notifications. And obviously it works also in mobile app, which means some simple tasks can be done on smartphone!
   2. Easy to build and use: the interface is user-friendly, different options can be easily spotted, and using it feels as it should be - to the point, without unnecessary links, steps or switching.

andrewtye

For me the top three items for 2023 have been…

1. Create your own colour palettes - no longer have to remember those codes
2. Error checking on formula - like @TimothyThomas mentions the amount of time being saved because of no longer getting the dreaded toaster time
3. And finally - being able to open UX pages in model. This has saved a lot of time with development and checking.

kpasko

A little bit late, but I will drop my 5 cents as well:

1.Workflows: This solution covers the most frequently asked for features that orbit around Approval flow, Comments, Feedback on the process and the Process flow itself
Really looking forward to introduce it to the users in the upcoming months.

2.Error checking on formula: Seems small but it saves so much time - especially in huge models where you can lock out other developers for longer periods of time.

3.Assets: Storing all your assets in one place which you can easily navigate? Sounds about right to me!

CommunityMember121571

I guess,
I'm late for the bage, but I wonder how nobody mentioned ability to work with pages in the model interface for admins 😅

No more jumping between interfaces 👍️