OEG Best Practice: Best practices about Microsoft Office for the add-Ins

AnaplanOEG
AnaplanOEG
edited February 2023 in Best Practices

General information

  • We have listed below some of the best practices we recommend for the Anaplan product. These are based on our experience and are subject to change as we deliver new functionalities and learn more about how our customers use the product.
  • If you would like to contribute or comment, please contribute to this forum post.
  • You do not have to apply these best practices; we will still support you if you don’t follow them. These are recommendations and there are times when it may make sense to do things in a different way.
  • We have highlighted in red the most important best practices.

About this Article

We focus on best practices for using the Excel and PowerPoint applications.

Best Practices

1 Colorful mode

Our add-in has been optimiZed for the use of Excel with the “colorful” theme of Office.

 

Colorful.png
2 Name ranges

It is best to use name ranges in your formulae, rather than relying on formula references (having A1 referenced in a formula for instance).

Avoid using the name ranges created automatically by the Anaplan add-in, instead, create your own name ranges and make those formula-driven with an offset function so they automatically adjust when rows/columns are added to your data.
3 General best practices

Build your report in a flexible way following the Excel and PowerPoint best practices (lots of them are available online through a regular search, for example the FAST Standard Organisation). For example:

  • Use VLOOKUP formula or INDEX(MATCH()) when possible

  • Avoid hard-coded formulae

  • Create some data validation checks (with the data validation functionality, conditional formatting, IFERROR…)

  • In PowerPoint, do not try and fit as much as you can in a slide so it remains readable when you present it

Author Magali Pelissier.

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