Custom date log / History Log

Sachinsourav02

Anaplanners,

Currently, our user group updates a checkpoint where they record completed tasks, such as onboarding tasks, by entering the completion date in a date-formatted line item. We have developed a custom-built grid that displays changes in a funnel chart format, showing the latest update for each project, with the most recent date entered by the end user. This grid shows the last 30 days by default and helps the reviewing team to come in and take action where required.

However, the reviewing team has frequently encountered instances where the input team backdates entries. For example, they might update today that a task was completed on July 1st. This practice leads to significant discrepancies in the reviewing team’s workflow.

Is there a way to capture the actual date when the user inputs the data, rather than the date they entered? This would allow us to use the actual input date for review purposes. Ideally, we would display the latest update date from the Anaplan History log, but this feature is not currently available. While Anaplan offers a “Show History” feature, it is not practical for reviewing over 100 projects, one by one. Please do let me know if you require any further information on this.

Thanks

AjayM

Hi @Sachinsourav02 ,

If you can manage to import everyday's date into your model (there are multiple ways to import and automate this), you can use that date to validate user input date.

This link talks about a clever way of setting the date within Anaplan, but using cloudworks for automation: https://community.anaplan.com/discussion/120636/easily-get-current-date-using-cloudworks

And further there are two ways to use the date:
1. To disable the subsequent steps for the user if they enter invalid date
2. Introduce an action for the user to click after they enter the date, that will import the actual date of changes, instead of importing user's input date

If you have a hub-spoke architecture, I'd suggest to import the today's date into hub first, so that you can import the date from hub to any number of spokes, and automate it simply using cloudworks.

Cheers!

Sachinsourav02

@AjayM I already of Date of today in place. My question is on step 1 to capture today's date against a change in entry, how do you suggest we can achieve this.

Have mirror fields ? Check constantly if field a = field b ? and if its different then capture today's date ?

AjayM

Through an action. We have to ask users to click the action button once they complete their input activity. You'd import that day's date into a lineitem through the import action, which you can use for the chart.

But just a confirmation - if there are 5tasks for a given user, where he/she completed 3 of them on 15th Oct, and 2 of them on 20th Oct, does the user enter the completion status on both the days?
If yes, then the suggested approach works well. But if he/she prefers to enter the overall completion status on 20th or later, then we must take max(input date, today's date).