Organizing templates for data imports

Vinay VaradarajM
Vinay VaradarajM
in Best Practices
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Author: Vinay Varadaraj Mirajkar is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Solution Architect at Anaplan.

I am sure many of us have seen the below message many times in our experience, and at times it may be very time consuming to retrieve the file which was used to create the import action. And there are also chances that we cannot retrieve the file at all, and therefore end up creating a new action using a fresh template (and of course rename the new action, replace it in the process, and delete the old action). No doubt, this is very frustrating, but it also impacts our productivity.

Image: manage import data sources

One of the simple (yet effective) ways to tackle this issue is to store the templates in a shared location and provide users the link where the action is published on the page:

Here is an example:

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The users can then follow the below steps:

  1. Download the template using the link
  2. Prepare the upload file
  3. Import the data

The links can be organized in a system module within the model as shown below:

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A couple of points to note to ensure this works on a consistent basis:

  • If any template is replaced, then the corresponding link has to be updated.
  • All users accessing the import action have to have access to the shared folder where the templates are stored.

In this way one can follow a systematic approach to storing templates and organizing them. Please share any other ways which you follow that has worked well.

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