How to Use Below Functionalities

Misbah · January 2020

There are certain functionalities which you might have ignored, seldom used or don’t know if they are available in Anaplan. Here are a few functionalities, their location in the model and the usage of these. Hope you make best use of these functionalities.

Brought-Forward: You can see this functionality in the blueprint mode of the module. What this functionality does is that it brings the closing balance of the prior year or the last periods’ value even if that year or period gets excluded from the model timescale when the planning year changes. This comes quite handy while planning for Balance Sheet Accounts.

Notes: Can be found on the blueprint view of the Modules, General Lists, Actions and Dashboards. This feature is really helpful when the model/app is transitioned to the Support team and also doesn’t tax the workspace. This not only talks about the authenticity of the line item, lists, modules, actions, dashboards etc. but it also gives an idea about the rationale behind creation of that particular artifact. It saves a lot of time and helps quicker understanding of the overall model. Notes has a character limit of 250 characters.

Data Tags: This feature helps in quick searching and grouping of various artifacts like Lists, List Properties, Modules & Line items. This is like search engine within Anaplan that will save you a lot of time when you want to search for List Items and List or Text formatted Line items and Properties. If it is Number formatted it will be excluded from the search. Once Data tags are created, artifacts tagged you can find the tagged data by clicking on “Find Tagged Data”.

Start of Section: Can be found in the module blueprint view. Although this used to be a powerful feature when setting the dimensionality of the line items – it has now become quite obsolete because we tend NOT to create any subsidiary views (and goes against the best practices). This feature, if marked true, assumes to share the dimensionality with other line items which are just beneath that particular line item. Here the order of the line items plays a pivotal role

Compare: This can be found on the task bar of the module front view (not visible in blueprint view) and can be seen as a weighing scale. Allows you to compare the data against any list item, version or time period enhanced with the color coding feature. Greater Values are green coded whereas the lesser ones are coded as Red. Remember “Compare” can’t be disabled directly on the dashboards, you will have to disable it in the modules and republish the grids.

Please don’t get confused with the Logical Function “Compare” which compares text values and throws 0 as an output if they match otherwise 1 or -1 if they don’t.

Code: This is not the code of the lists, it is code of the line items which can be found in the blueprint view of the module. You can have the codes for each line items of the modules and these codes can be utilized while writing the formula for other line items. For example if the Code of the Line item is ABCD and Name of the Line item is Correlation Factor, you can activate the formula bar of the target line item and write ABCD instead of Correlation Factor.

Tool Tips: This can be found on the dashboard designer of the classic dashboard. This little functionality can add a great value to your dashboard when users interact with it by displaying additional information about the grid, action, process or any artifact. When you hover over the button on the dashboard or module name of the published grid the tool tip will be highlighted. Remember there is a 250 character limit on it but you can write your tip in a succinct manner.

Excel Add in - Send and Refresh: One of the powerful and coolest feature Anaplan Excel add in has. It lets you override/input the data with a single click. Once you create Read/Write Connection with Anaplan it will let you pull the data out of Anaplan into Excel. You can make the changes in Connected Excel and Hit “Send and Refresh” button and guess what, data gets pushed back into Anaplan. All this without import buttons, import templates etc. There is a limitation to this method though that it has a limit on the number of rows being extracted.

Thanks,

Misbah