How to use notifications effectively

Vinay VaradarajM
Vinay VaradarajM
in Best Practices
Image: notifications

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

When you think about creating simple workflows or enabling collaboration between/within the planning teams, some of the features which can help achieve this are: sharing pages, card comments, notifications, and last but not the least — import actions. These can be used either independently or in conjunction with each other depending on the nature of the problem we are solving. In this article, we explore the notification feature and gain an understanding of how and where it can be effectively used with a simple example.

Premise: Ability to execute the purchase requisition (PR) approval process within the team, involving few different levels of approval:

  • The persona here is the buyer, whose responsibility is to purchase the required materials to make finished goods.
  • The buyer has raised a few PRs which need to follow the below approval thresholds:
    • Value <= $1000 will be auto-approved
    • Value > $1000 and <= $ 10000 to be approved by a team of purchase executives
    • Value > $ 10000 to be approved by supply chain manager
  • There are two purchase executives, whose responsibilities depend on the category of material being purchased; namely direct material and indirect material.

Now, let us take a look at how this can be modeled in Anaplan.

Below is the setup (page 01) consisting of inputs/ drivers required in this process:

Picture1.png

Note: The line-item format in the Approver Setup grid is Users List.

Here is the page Create PRs (page 02) for the Buyer to raise PRs.

Picture2.png

Note:

The format of Approver column above is Users list.
Approvers are identified using the Value column above and the approval level threshold (refer setup in page i).

The ask here for the buyer is to get the PRs approved by relevant approvers.
Now, let us see how this can be achieved using the notification feature by following the below steps:

  1. We know that there are more than one user roles (Purchase Executives and Supply Chain Manager) who would be accessing the PR list for the review and approval. However, this would have to be access controlled since we want to display rows which are only relevant to the approvers (and not others’ rows).
    The below module is one of the ways which can help achieve this:
    Picture3.png
    1. This is nothing but a copy of the PR List module, but with an additional dimension of Users list as can be seen
    2. Observe the additional line item = Filter.
      When we publish this to a page, the filter will ensure that we show only those rows which are relevant to the approvers.
    3. Now let’s create the page PR Approval (page 03) and publish this module
      .
    4. Our aim is to get the approvers review this information which has all the PR details, and then click the “Approve” checkbox.
  2. This is where we can use the notification action which would be created using the below steps:
    1. In the notification configuration, select the page PR Approval (page 03) in “Links to”.
      Picture4.png
    2. In the next step, select the module which has the PRs created by the buyer, and select the Approver line-item as the driver.
      Picture5.png
    3. Now, the buyer can select any PR row, and click the notification action.
      Picture6.png
    4. Buyer can also edit the message in the below window, to request approval not just for.
      Picture7.png
    5. This will trigger an email notification to the Approver Exec-1 as shown below:
      Picture8.png
    6. When the link above is clicked, it will take the approver directly to the page PR Approval (page 03). Now, the approver will have visibility of the PRs needing their review and approval, and can take the necessary action.
      Picture9.png

In this way, we can use the notifications to enable simple workflows and improve collaboration among teams. The same principle can be extended to build solutions in any other use cases where the nature of the problem is similar.

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Comments

  • JaredDolich
    JaredDolich

    @Vinay VaradarajM screenshots help a lot with this one. Thank you for taking the time to document this.

  • dameyer01
    dameyer01

    This is a very helpful walkthrough to see a use case of the Notification feature. To clarify this use case a bit further, the 'Notify to Approve' button is specifically for a buyer looking to escalate to the approver that their action is needed, correct? It seems like once the approver opens the '03 PR Approval' page that they would then address all of the open PRs. Is there any way to configure an action that an email would be sent to all approvers with open PRs (or multiple users based on a selection)? Based on what I've seen elsewhere in the Anaplan Community, I think the answer is no, but always the chance someone has figured something out!

  • Vinay VaradarajM
    Vinay VaradarajM

    Hi @dameyer01,

    Glad that you found it helpful, and yes your understanding is right that currently it notifies the approver based on the user appearing in the lineitem (formatted as users list).

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