Intraday Best Practices

My client is interested in forecasting their headcount requirements using Erlang-C intraday, with 30 minute increments. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some good instructions/posts on best practices. My going-in strategy was to create a daily module and use an intraday list with 48 list items (one for each half hour). I'll create a system module for the intraday list that has all the properties of the half hour increments. Any good apps in the app hub? Posts? Thanks for the help.

Accepted answers

DavidSmith

@JaredDolich

A few points to consider

1. There are some call centre apps out there, but most are a few years old and so a little outdated in terms of some functionality and Best Practices. Not saying there is not some good functionality within them, just exercise caution about using without care

2. What is the timescale required? The minimum timescale we can support is 1 year. If the requirement is less than that you might want to consider a fake timescale.

3. You could also then add the 30 min intervals with parent of Day, if appropriate but the downside is presentation, so "it depends" again

4. If you do use a real timescale, depending on the functionality required, it is better to use PREVIOUS than CUMULATE when using highly granular timescales

I hope that helps

David

DavidSmith

@JaredDolich

You might need a "real" daily module if you need to use native time functions, opening, closing balances, lags, offsets, previous etc. but you should be able to map those from real to fake.

Just remember you cannot use SUM with a time module as the source. You need to create the mapping module with fake time as the dimension and the time format as the lookup. Then you can use LOOKUP.

In terms of whether to use 365 days, or a list, again, if you can avoid 365 days' worth of calcs then that would be better

If you need to though, you can always "cap" the calculations by putting if a conditional saying something like

IF "day to calculate" THEN calculate ELSE 0. That will help prevent unnecessary calcs

Hope that helps

David

All comments

DavidSmith

@JaredDolich

A few points to consider

2. What is the timescale required? The minimum timescale we can support is 1 year. If the requirement is less than that you might want to consider a fake timescale.

3. You could also then add the 30 min intervals with parent of Day, if appropriate but the downside is presentation, so "it depends" again

4. If you do use a real timescale, depending on the functionality required, it is better to use PREVIOUS than CUMULATE when using highly granular timescales

I hope that helps

David

JaredDolich

Thanks @DavidSmith. Client has asked for one year but to be honest, I can't see how forecasts out that far in 30 minute increments is value-add except to maybe forecast headcount budget at a more aggregate level. The most important forecasts are going to be the next couple of months forward. I'll try your ideas and see which perform the best. If I use "Day" as a parent will Anaplan create a structured hierarchy on time? Never thought to do that. That might be helpful if I need to rollup line items on the time hierarchy. Or, should I create a list that is independent of time?

DavidSmith

@JaredDolich

You might need a "real" daily module if you need to use native time functions, opening, closing balances, lags, offsets, previous etc. but you should be able to map those from real to fake.

Just remember you cannot use SUM with a time module as the source. You need to create the mapping module with fake time as the dimension and the time format as the lookup. Then you can use LOOKUP.

In terms of whether to use 365 days, or a list, again, if you can avoid 365 days' worth of calcs then that would be better

If you need to though, you can always "cap" the calculations by putting if a conditional saying something like

IF "day to calculate" THEN calculate ELSE 0. That will help prevent unnecessary calcs

Hope that helps

David

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