ALM - Updates to Module Import Action - Manual Mapping not promoting

With a Production List, the contents of the list are essentially completely different between DEV and PROD (and any other compatible models). This is by design and exactly what you want when you have ALM enabled.

When you manually map items in an import, you are mapping on the underlying unique ID of the list item. Each model in Anaplan maintains its own set of unique identifiers as you add items to a list. The starting point for the unique IDs is the same when you initialize any model. Over time, the set of unique IDs between two models will diverge as you add/remove various items in the model. What this means in practice is that sometimes there will be an overlap of unique IDs across models. However, we cannot expect these unique IDs are actually referring to the same item in the list, and any overlap would be a mere coincidence.

Unfortunately, this unique ID is not actually published anywhere in the UI, so it can be hard to tell that the items you are looking at are not actually the same. Since you are using a numbered list, you can actually get a better sense of the underlying unique ID by looking at the "#" associated with the list item. You can use the NAME() formula to expose the #ID associated with a numbered list item.

This is why you should never use manual mapping in a production list (and I wouldn't recommend using manual mapping in general either).

While the Planual doesn't specifically call out manual mapping in imports, there are several related Planual rules that tell you not to directly reference list items anywhere in a model. See below for reference:

• 2.02-14 Avoid using SELECT
• 2.02-12 No Hardcoding to List members
• 6.02-02 Formula protection - Hard coding
• 6.02-03 Review the need for Production Lists

If you absolutely need to manual map items in a production list, then you need to set the import as a Production Import so that you can set and save the mapping in the deployed model.