Capture Current Date Time Stamp in a cell

Question

Hello, I want to capture Current Date Time Stamp in a cell when there is a change in line item?

Is it possible with out implementing something too fancy?

alexpavel · Answer

Well… If the "capture changes" need to be regular (like every day).. you could create a new line-item where  save/snapshot the values of the line-item that can be modified and create a filter to verify the differences between Last Launch and the current launch.

You can capture this way the changes made by users only going one 1: modifications made only after the previous launch and this can be quite easily setup (see below).

Main steps:

* Create in a module another Snapshot line-item. 
* Create an import action to copy values from Modification line-item to Snapshot line-item (create action without applying any filters to be sure all the cells are copied from source to target)
* create a filter boolean to check differences between Modification line-item and Snapshot line-item 
* Create export action where you filter data based on the filter from Step 3 (last modification made after previous launch)
* Create a Process where you put all these actions to be called with APIs :* Export action from Step 4
* Import Action from Step 2 ( this will make Modification Line-item and Snapshot line-item equal and all the modifications will be catched until the next launch of this process).

* Create a regular schedule (from outside Anaplan)  to launch the Process from step 5

Hope it helps

Alex

Javed2918 · Answer

Thanks Alex.

My requirement is to capture any changes occurring in a specific line item within a module and send only the modified line item data outside of Anaplan using the Anaplan API.

Do you recommend any alternative approach for this requirement, other than relying on the current date timestamp?

alexpavel · Answer

The manual modifications are always traced in the history log, but unfortunately, there is no default functionality to "publish"  or reference these modifications to the final users.

A fancy way to try to have this: export periodically the history log, import them in Anaplan and "connect" the manual modifications with the history log rows.

Another way to simulate something like this is to have in a system module a cell where periodically update the Current Timestamp / Current Date and the users should push some process to connect the cell modifications with the value in that moment of the current timestamp / current date.

Hope it helps,

Alex