In the current Anaplan UX, there is no native heatmap visualization option within pages built on spoke models. Users must rely on conditional formatting in grids, which:
- Is limited in visual flexibility
- Is not intuitive for business users
- Does not scale well across multiple dimensions
- Requires manual setup in each module
For planning use cases (e.g., workforce planning, financial planning, capacity planning), users often need to quickly identify concentration, risk, or variance patterns across two or more dimensions.
Heatmaps are critical for:
- Identifying high/low concentration zones (e.g., cost by function vs. location)
- Spotting risk or gaps (e.g., attrition risk by management level)
- Detecting outliers instantly
- Improving executive-ready storytelling in dashboards
Today, many teams export data to Tableau/Power BI solely to create this visualization — increasing dependency on external tools and reducing Anaplan’s value as an end-to-end planning platform.
Proposed enhancement
Introduce a native Heatmap card type in the Anaplan UX that:
- Supports two-dimensional axis selection (rows × columns)
- Allows gradient-based color scaling (auto or fixed scale)
- Supports conditional thresholds
- Works seamlessly in spoke models
- Allows export as image/PDF for leadership reviews
- Allows adding 2, 3 labels (total cost / count / average cost)
