Planual Explained - Day 4
Note from @JaredDolich : I'm proud to be collaborating with @Misbah to add some detail to the Planual.
You can refer to @Misbah's original post here.
The Planual is located here.
"Rule 1.05-02": Article 1, Chapter 5, and Rule 2 “Always use a code.”
Using codes is more efficient for loading and using lists so strive to always have a code for lists. This is especially important for numbered lists.
Pre-Planual Era
Creating a List is easy especially when you know your list items are all unique. In the past, lists were loaded without codes. Here's an example of Counties in one state in the United States.
What happens if we add another state that has the same County name?
Post-Planual Era
It has been shown that lists, especially large ones, are more practical and efficient to load if codes are used. Most importantly, however, codes can save you a lot of trouble if any of these conditions arise:
- The user wants to change the list item name
- Another list item name has the same name as another list item but is meant to be different
- The IT department only provides the surrogate key or the short code for the list item
- You need to create a 60 character or less code that requires you to concatenate more than one dimension
For List Items that require more than one code, e.g. a product SKU may have an UPC-12, UPC-14, GIN, Internal Code, Manufacturer's Code, etc.., select the most common to use as your code. The other codes can become properties in your system module - do not add list properties (discussed in 1.05-03 Planual).
Use-Case: A very common situation with Anaplan implementations that utilize a data hub is when a user wants to change the name of the list item. This may be because of legal reasons, for business reasons, or for strategic reasons.
Without codes, you would have to identify the original name and manually find it in the data hub, change it there then go to all the spoke applications and manually change it there too. This is not practical if 100 list items change. With codes, you can automate the process because the name may change but the code does not.
Let's say in our example above, I want to remove the word "County" from all my list items. Now that I have codes, this is an easy process.
Run the import script and map to codes:
We get the desired result
Answers
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This is so important especially when trying to transfer data across systems. Names change but codes should not and having this static identifier can be a lifesaver when dealing with large data sets.
Thanks @JaredDolich!
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