Calculation Effort column
In the world of Anaplan modeling, performance is key. Slow model calculations can be a major bottleneck, impacting productivity and decision-making. But what if you could pinpoint exactly what’s causing the slowdown? Enter the Calculation Effort column — a powerful new feature designed to help you identify and address performance issues in your model.
This innovative feature provides visibility into the computational effort required for each line item in your model, allowing you to self-diagnose problems and optimize performance. Whether you're a Model Builder, Solution Architect, or Administrator, the Calculation Effort column empowers you to take control of your model's efficiency.
In this article, we’ll explore how the Calculation Effort column works, its benefits, and how you can use it to streamline your model. From understanding its real-time updates to comparing it with traditional Model Open Analysis (MOA) reports, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make the most of this feature. Let’s dive in and discover how you can enhance your model’s performance with the Calculation Effort column.
What is the Calculation Effort column?
What does the Calculation Effort column show?
The Calculation Effort column displays the percentage of computational effort required for each line item.
Opening a model initiates the calculation of all its line items. Therefore, the opening time varies depending on model complexity and data volume.
Once opened, the Calculation Effort column shows the line items requiring the most computational resources.
Analyzing these high-impact line items against Planual and Best Practice guidelines for formulas reveals opportunities for optimization. This process can improve the overall model's performance.
When does the Calculation Effort recalculate?
The Calculation Effort column updates automatically whenever you modify a line item in the blueprint, change the formula or its dimension. It does not change the calculation effort with other user actions such as cell input.
The calculation effort column will update only to the specific line items triggered to recalculate from the action mentioned above. For line items that don't recalculate, the original calculation effort values remain unchanged.
The modified line item's calculation effort values are recalculated and reflected as a percentage. The other line item calculation efforts will then change relative to the new percentage of the modified line item.
Improving a line item's performance (lowering its calculation effort) will result in increased calculation effort for other line items, as one percentage goes down others will raise to make 100%. However, the overall calculation time of the model is still reduced. Therefore, a higher calculation effort on other line items does not mean they are slower, they are just slower relative to line item that was modified.
Here's an example:
Line Item
Calculation Time (ms)
Calculation Effort
1
3
50.00%
2
2
33.33%
3
1
16.67%
Note: Calculation Time column is not shown in the platform.
Decreasing Line Item 1 Calculation from 3 ms to 1 ms
Line item
Starting - 3 ms
Lowering to 2.5 ms
Lowering to 2 ms
Lowering to 1 ms
Line item 1
50.00%
45.45%
40.00%
25.00%
Line item 2
33.33%
36.36%
40.00%
50.00%
Line item 3
16.67%
18.18%
20.00%
25.00%
Consistently monitoring the calculation effort following each modification may reveal increases; however, this does not necessarily imply a decline in model performance. You can always re-open the model to evaluate the overall impact of any changes made.
Additionally, when a new line item is added, the calculation effort percentage of all the line items in the model will be updated.
What is the difference between M.O.A. and Calculation Effort column?
Model Open Analysis (MOA) is a report containing modules and line items along with their corresponding calculation time, similar to the Calculation Effort column. It can also show list property calculation times which the Calculation Effort column does not show.
The Calculation Effort column shows the % calculation effort of a line item, whereas Model Open Analysis shows the calculation volume in milliseconds. Both show calculation based off the line item running on a single calculation thread.
Model Open Analysis requires a case through Anaplan Support where a model copy is taken to the Anaplan Support internal tenant. The turnaround time for generating this report may take up to 10 days. In contrast, the Calculation Effort column is a built-in feature, there's no waiting period.
Results appear directly in your model blueprint after opening the model.
Benefits of using this feature
For Model Builders and Solution Architects: This feature addresses model performance issues during development.
For Administrators: It helps maintain optimal model performance.
Overall benefits: The Calculation Effort column highlights the source of performance problems, which can cause slow model opening times.
Where to find Calculation Effort in a model
You can find the Calculation Effort column in your model in two ways:
- Blueprint view
- Line Item view
Blueprint view
- Navigate to the module that you wish to work with.
- Within the module, navigate to the blueprint view.
- Once in the blueprint view, scroll to the right and you will see the Calculation Effort column beside the Cell Count.
Line Item section
- In the navigation bar, go to the Module Panel:
- Navigate to the line items section.
- To see the Calculation Effort column, scroll to the right.
Exporting to sort and find Top 10
If you want to export all the line items and their Calculation Effort columns, once you’re in the Line Items section page, just click the export as shown, allowing you to export all the line items to different formats.
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How to use Calculation Effort and how it can help you
In this module, there are four lists:
- L1 Transaction ID
- SS S4 Direct Payee
- LIS_Transaction Measures
- Time (month level)
And one formula which is summing data and multiplying that summation by the summation of two other line items in a different module:
CALC Transaction Measure Lookup.Collect Measures[SUM: 'LIST L1 Transaction ID'.Booking Month] * (CALC Rep Credit Amount.Final Credit Split + CALC Rep Credit Amount.Final Credit Split[LOOKUP: 'LIST S4 Payee'.New Payee Mapping])When the model opens, you can see the Calculation Effort is 9.996%, which means this one line item is taking almost 10% of the calculation time of the entire model.
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When reviewing this formula, it breaks Planual Rule 2.02-18 Break up formulas. So if you create a line item for just the SUM, that reduces the Calculation Effort to just under 4% (3.79%).
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Now, look at the second part of the calculation, you can see both conditions are coming from the same module:
(CALC Rep Credit Amount.Final Credit Split + CALC Rep Credit Amount.Final Credit Split[LOOKUP: 'LIST S4 Payee'.New Payee Mapping])In the CALC Rep Credit Amount module, you can see it is dimensionalized by two lists (Time is not one of them): L1 Transaction ID, S4 Payee
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We need to create a new line in this module for three reasons:
- This part of the original calculation does not need Time, so if you create it in this module, the number of times it is doing the calculation will be much less and therefore more efficient.
- Do the calculations in the source module and then get the final number instead of making multiple “trips” to the source module.
- If this calculation is needed for other line items/modules within the model, it is now calculating as efficiently as possible.
The new formula is:
Final Credit Split + Final Credit Split[LOOKUP: 'LIST S4 Payee'.New Payee Mapping]and will have a Calculation Effort of 0.15%.
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Back to the original module, we have the SUM done, which uses the native Time dimension, but the second part of the calculation doesn’t. With that knowledge, we create a new line item (subsidiary view because we don’t need it by Time) which references the New OEG line item in Calc Rep Credit Amount. This part of the equation has a Calculation Effort of 0.20%.
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Lastly, we need to multiply the SUM result by the Calc result which will result in a Calculation Effort of 1.42%.
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The Calculation Effort for this line item has now decreased from 9.96% to 5.56% (3.79 + 0.2 + 0.15 (from the new line item in CALC Rep Credit Amount) + 1.42%), which is a 45% reduction in calculation effort (1 – (5.56 / 9.96)).
Conclusion
This new Calculation Effort can greatly help understand where the model calculations are and their percentage of the model opening time. Remember, when reviewing these numbers, it is best to review them when the model has just been opened. If the model has been opened and you create a new line item with logic, it is best to ensure you are the only one working on the model as other “new” line items can and will impact the calculation effort percentage.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who can use this feature?
This feature is available to users having Workspace Admin access to the model who can review the blueprints of modules.- Do I need to set up anything before I can use this feature?
No additional set-up required, as this feature is viewable in the blueprint and line item section views.- Can I still request MOA reports?
MOA reports are still available, but it takes about 10 business days to get them processed. To save some time, we suggest checking out this feature first.Authors: Anaplan's Kenneth Privaldos (@KennethP), Model Performance Specialist, and Rob Marshall (@rob_marshall), Director of Architecture and Performance.
