Setting up action naming conventions that will withstand the test of time
Author: Taylor Giesler is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Director, Enterprise Performance Management at Alpha Alternatives.
I have been a consultant for nearly four years now, and I have seen a lot of models, some easier to follow than others. The person building the model isn’t always the same person maintaining it down the road. Many of our other Master Anaplanners have focused on proper documentation, but today, I’d like to give you a breakdown of how I instruct my teams to set up action naming conventions in our models so it will withstand the test of time!
I want to focus on actions because personally, I find that they have the most moving parts. If you only have 50 or so actions, it might make sense to name an action “1.01 Import Quarterly Sales”. However, when you have 200+ actions and over 100 modules, this can get tricky… Sometimes you need to look up any action that is getting imported into a specific module or vice versa.
Here is my setup:
[process number].[step] | [action name] | [source] | [target]
Example 1: “1.01 | Imp Quarterly Sales | DAT001 | DAT002”
- First, we list out the process. This is part of process 1.
- Then we list out the step in that process. This is step “01”.
- Next, I give a quick summary name; nothing too long, but just so someone else understands what this action is trying to accomplish. You can also utilize the Notes section to give additional details.
- Then I list out my source module, “DAT001”; this is the alphanumeric predecessor I’ve given my module. The actual module name might be something like “DAT001 | Raw Sales Data”.
- Then I list out my target module, “DAT002”.
Example 2: “1.01 | Imp Quarterly Sales | quarterlysales.csv | DAT002”
- In this example, we are using a file as our source so I have listed out the name of the file; sometimes this is too long so I might abbreviate it
. - Another way to abbreviate the file name is as follows:
- “F_QuartSales” or “File”; then at least you know that this is coming from a file and you can check the name of the file by going to Imports or Import Data Sources.
Example 3: “1.01 | Imp Quarterly Sales | DH INP001 | DAT002”
- In this example we are using the Data Hub as our source, so I have indicated “DH” before listing out the source module.
Example 4: “1.01 | Imp New Clients | DAT001 | L_C3”
- In this example, we are importing from the DAT001 module to create list members in list C3; C3 may not be the full name of the list, but it’s the alphanumeric code I’ve put before the description of the list.
- Note that I’m denoting that this is a list by preceding it with “L”.
There are many ways that you can revise this structure to fit your specific needs, but the most important part is listing out the source and target modules. This will help you when you’re looking for specific actions that impact specific modules or lists.
Questions or thoughts? Leave a comment!
Comments
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@taylor.swisher simple, clean and informative, thanks for sharing.
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@taylor.swisher great, great, great. Thanks for sharing this. Two other suggestions that i've found helpful: 1) is to make sure it's clear what order these actions should run, especially if you have actions that cross import, delete, order, export - because it's not clear from the directory, and 2) documenting the saved view that was used. As we know, reusing a saved view for imports and exports can lead to some unintended challenges. Naming just the module may not be enough. Also modules may have lots of saved views.
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Thanks for sharing! Do you have any conventions/best practices for how to handle naming conventions for incorporating items in the 'Other Actions' section of the actions list (i.e. sorting or deleting inactive list members)? Would you put all of those at the end of a process, so as to not interrupt the numbering in the imports, or is there some other way to make it clear numbers weren't just skipped if a Sort action is inserted between Import actions?
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@dameyer01 My recommendation is to number all actions in the order that they occur in the process. If you have two import actions and your next action in the process is a sort action, I would label that "1.03 | Sort L1 List", then I would continue the numbering of the other import actions as needed. It might look off if you're just looking at the imports, but it is much easier to understand the flow of your process if everything is labeled in the run order.
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