Event recording available: Building Valuable Anaplan Workflows

JamiesonC

If you missed our event on Anaplan Community Experience: Building Valuable Anaplan Workflows, a recording is now available!

Anaplan experts Chris Stauffer (Director of Platform Adoption), David Elston (Director of Product Management Applications), and Elizabeth Schera (Architecture and Adoption Director, Operational Excellence Group) shared how organizations are utilizing advanced Workflow capabilities to streamline planning processes and manage enterprise scale.

The session covered:

• The new Advanced "Batching" suite: How Batch Submit, Batch Notifications (summarized daily at midnight UK time), and Batch Approvals work together to save massive amounts of time for planners and approvers alike.
• Standard workflow enhancements: A look at new platform capabilities including Decision Task Commentary writeback, a 20-action Canvas Undo/Redo session history, and running Anaplan Optimizer actions directly inside workflow steps.
• UX-driven workflow design: A practical demonstration from David Elston on how the Operational Workforce Planning (OWP) app leverages background Data Write tasks to automate cell confirmation and eliminate confusing front-end filters for a seamless user experience.
• Scale and performance safeguards: Essential architectural considerations from Elizabeth Schera, including managing model density with flat modules, leveraging native user dimensionality, and using machine tasks to offload commentary audit trails.
• Testing for concurrency: Best practices for simulating real-world production environments in UAT, testing user-journey bottlenecks, and mitigating core model queuing limitations.

ACE-Building Valueable Anaplan Workflows.pdf

Check out the recording below.

https://play.vidyard.com/12yS7eETKR1Z333qboxqSv.html?

Chapters

0:00	Webinar Overview
3:32	New Workflow Features
7:40	Batch Approvals Demo
14:30	Implementation Considerations
23:08	Commentary and Writeback
26:10	Operational Workforce Planning
41:14	Tips and Best Practices
49:55	Q&A and Wrap-Up

Additional resources

Configuring batch approvals

Stacey_Gibbens

What a great Anaplan Community Experience webinar!! Kudos!

Key takeaways of this webinar include three new “batch” efficiencies for Advanced Workflow that will make workflow processes easier for end-users, as well as three exciting updates to the Standard workflow.

Advanced Workflow

1.      Batch Submit: Users can submit multiple requests in a single action instead of clicking through them one by one. Selections are chosen via a Boolean line item to indicate which items are ready to submit, so one or multiple items can be selected to process. Access rules apply to batch submission, securing a workflow process so that it can only be marked as ready and submitted by the item’s owner/initiator.

2.      Batch Notifications: Are your decision-makers experiencing notification fatigue? Is a process notification time-sensitive or can the approver wait overnight to receive a daily digest? If it’s not time-sensitive, configure Batch Notifications at the task level at each approval step in a workflow to relieve some of the overwhelm for individual task flows.

3.      Batch Approvals: When a batch notification is sent to an approver, the email contains a link to the page to view a brand-new batch-level review and management interface.

Here’s a great best practices article to explain more about benefits and implementation: Say goodbye to inbox overload: how batch approvals transform planning cycles - Anaplan Community

Standard Workflow

1.      Decision Task Commentary: During a workflow, the approver can provide information about their decision to approve, send back, or reject a submission.

2.      Undo & Redo: A “restore” button for testing during workflow development. A “whoops, that wasn’t what I expected!” option within Workflow to accident-proof your build and design process! We’ve had this ability within a model since the beginning, now it’s available when designing workflows.

3.      Optimizer: YES, I SAID OPTIMIZER. Using data analysis workflows or just regular scheduling, you can automate and control when and why Optimizer is run without explicit user intervention. Check out this guide to how to set up using Workflow with Optimizer! Using Workflow to schedule Optimizer actions - Anaplan Community

I’m really excited about these new usability and back-end functionality enhancements to Workflow! These kinds of features continue to move the platform forward as the must-use planning tool.