Pro tip: Process & Import IDs
When setting up data integrations the process or import actions are often referred to by name, however, this practice isn't robust and can cause process failures if names are changed in the model. During development and enhancements, a model builder may choose to edit the name of a process or import to the model. This would have no impact when running the actions within Anaplan, but an unintended consequence is any API imports would also need updating to reflect the new name.
Much like you would import against a Code ID instead of a possible changing name a solution, in this case, is to refer to the process by its inherent Anaplan ID which does change but is instead fixed as soon as the action is created — but how do we find these IDs?
The IDs aren't a visible column on the actions tab for a model builder to view, but they can be found by pasting the following link into a browser and substituting (model_ID) for the id of your model, (which you can find in the URL of your browser).
- https://us1a.app.anaplan.com/2/0/models/(model_ID)/processes
- https://us1a.app.anaplan.com/2/0/models/(Model_ID/imports
Doing so lists out all of the imports or processes within the model by their name and shows their Unique ID.
Imports example:
Process example:
Once you have the action IDs I have found the best practice is to copy and paste them into the notes column so that they are easy to find moving forward. The IDs are consistent between Development and Production models so this only needs doing once and can be easily referenced moving forward. Finally, you can then replace the process name with the Process ID code in the API or Connect script, future-proofing it in case of future name changes.
How do you find and store the process IDs?
Check out additional blog posts from Certified Master Anaplanners:
- Winning at wireframing
- Custom views versus module views
- The three most useful applications of the data write action
Comments
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@AWhitworth This is a fantastic tip! Thanks for sharing!
I would love to hear if others already knew about this and had used these steps to get the action/process ID's for their jobs, or if they plan to use this now that they know about it!?
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Thanks for the tip, @AWhitworth! In recent months our team has begun to explore the capabilities and enhancements made possible through the use of numerous Anaplan IDs and this will be a great addition to our optimization tool belt.
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Oh nice, I didn't realise that if you've already got an authenticated session of Anaplan in your browser, that you can use these endpoints.
We've been using the Anaplan API endpoints to retrieve the IDs, which returns the same set of data.
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Hi @AWhitworth
Thank you so much for that idea.
While I was trying to post the URL into the browser, Iam getting this error. Need your help for this
SS
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@AWhitworth Nice one, I never thought to test these calls directly through the browser. I always used postman, this is much simpler.
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Great tip @AWhitworth, thank you. I also have used the additional two links for other integrations if helpful:
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Thank you. I have always used Postman, so this is much simpler. I love the idea of adding the ID's to the Notes. I have added the id's to a module before that can be referenced for automation.
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Thanks for sharing this @AWhitworth. This is a really good tip.
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Do we have similar way of getting integration IDs from cloudworks?
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