Author: Dave Waller, Principal Product Manager at Anaplan.
Managing high-volume operational plans often introduces administrative friction. When an organization scales its planning cycles to handle hundreds or thousands of individual budget, headcount, or promotional requests, processing them one by one is highly inefficient.
To solve this, Anaplan Workflow Advanced has introduced batch approvals — an enhancement designed to group high-volume tasks into consolidated, single-click actions.
As a page builder, you can configure this feature to eliminate bottlenecks and shield your business stakeholders from email alert fatigue. Here is how to configure and deploy the three core pillars of batch processing in your Anaplan applications.
1. Setting up batch submission on UX cards
In a standard workflow configuration, planners must navigate through dimension contexts and submit line items or requests individually. Batch submission eliminates this repetition by letting planners trigger a bulk submission process.
To configure batch submission:
- Prepare the underlying model: Ensure you have a boolean or status-based line item in your target module that indicates whether a row or item is "ready for submission."
- Configure the action button: In the UX page designer, add an action button or link card to your page.
- Link to the batch workflow: Select the batch submission option in the card configuration panel. Map the action button to iterate over all items that meet your "ready to submit" criteria.
- Test the execution: Once published, a planner can click this single button to run the batch workflow, automatically packaging and submitting all pending items into independent approval flows simultaneously.
2. Managing batch notifications and the daily digest
If dozens of planners are submitting bulk requests throughout the day, the respective managers and approvers can quickly suffer from inbox fatigue. Instead of triggering a separate email for every single submission, you can now toggle on consolidated notifications.
Here is how batch notifications work:
- The consolidation mechanism: Instead of sending real-time emails, Anaplan Workflow Advanced caches pending approvals.
- The digest delivery schedule: At midnight UK time (BST/GMT), the platform compiles all outstanding tasks assigned to a specific user into a single, clean email digest.
- Approver workspace impact: This digest email summarizes the volume and types of pending tasks waiting for their attention, giving them a structured starting point for their day without constant interruptions.
3. Creating the side-by-side batch approval pane
The final element of the configuration is the review and approval interface. Approvers need to understand the context of what they are signing off on without having to constantly toggle between different dashboards.
To deliver this experience to your users:
- The entry point: When an approver clicks View approvals directly from their daily email digest, Anaplan automatically launches them into a dedicated side-by-side batch approval pane.
- Configuring context previews: In the workflow card configuration, you can specify which context lines and details are visible in this pane. This allows the approver to quickly preview critical data points (such as the cost, location, or justification of a headcount request) directly in the sidebar.
- Enabling mass actions: Users can use checkboxes next to each item to select specific records, or click the master checkbox to select all. With a single click of the Approve or Reject buttons, the workflow updates the status of all selected items in the model simultaneously.
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