Dynamic time on charts

AnaplanIdeas

Description of the enhancement required: 

Update chart time scale according to the model time settings. Right now, if Time is used as a X or Y axis on a chart, the chart must be republished to represent additional months/years added after the chart was published.

 

An example of the enhancement:
If additional months/years are added to the model, published charts will get this additional time across the dashboards in the model.

 

A story for why you want the enhancement:
Use case 1:
Almost every model I build has line charts with user selectable start and end months. The issue lots of folks are encountering is that their newly added year does not show up in the charts and they have to re-publish everywhere. It's not ideal, especially since it's a multi-step process to set it up so the end user can select a start and end date.

Use case 2:
I created a line item in a module that references 2 drivers, Start Date & End Date. The line item is formatted as a Boolean and based upon the set start and end dates. This is used to select a time horizon within the Time dimension. When I create a chart of this filter module and publish it and the 2 drivers to a dashboard, I noticed that the chart will only update to the original time horizon that the chart was created with.

So, for instance, if my model time goes from Jan 15 to Dec 22 and I had my model filtered to Jan 16 - Dec 17 and then created a chart and published it to a dashboard, I would not be able to change the filter dates to Jan 17 - Dec 18. The chart will only refresh to a view that was within the time horizon that the chart was created with. I feel like you should be able to pull in periods that weren't in the original filtered view. This also creates a potential issue down the road when we roll forward at year end, we would have to recreate all of our charts.

Use case 3:
As it is now, every year all dashboards need to be re-published to include the added year. Also, if a filter is used to show a limited number of periods the periods outside the filter will not show in the chart if the filter is changed. This means that when publishing charts the model builder need to be aware and first set the filter to show all periods, publish the chart and then set the filter to whatever it should be. If several charts use the same time filter, this needs to be repeated every time a new chart is added. Not very logical and missed in many cases and this causes irritation when periods suddenly stop showing in charts.

AnaplanIdeas

Status changed to: On Roadmap

Rebecca

Status changed to: On Roadmap

ryan_kohn

For anyone else looking this up, there is also a post on Community discussing workarounds: https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Best-Practices/Can-I-configure-a-chart-to-respect-a-dynamic-Time-filter/m-p/37672#M1713

HendrikDeCuyper

Would love to see this happen to improve the efficiency of dynamic forecasting!

nicole.johnson

I'm grateful for all the features in Anaplan, but republishing charts every year, especially with the work arounds necessary to keep the monthly rolling charts going each month, can be quite time consuming. This would be a beloved improvement!

ElizabethS

Another suggestion is to have the time filter built into the chart options.  For example, if you want the graph to only represent the next three months you could have a setting in your chart options allowing you to pick current month +/- or current year +/-.  This could use the current period as the anchor point.