OEG Best Practice

This article is part of a series on Polaris best practices. Click here for more Community content or visit Anapedia for detailed technical guidance. Polaris is Anaplan's next-generation calculation engine, designed for highly dimensioned calculation at scale. It represents a paradigm shift in the ability to model business…

You may have heard about a model called a Data Hub, but perhaps you aren’t confident that you understand the fundamentals, primary functions, or considerations when architecting one. There are three main advantages to incorporating a Data Hub: Single source of truth : Stores all transactional data from the source system.…

Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…

Author: Rob Marshall, Director of Architecture and Performance at Anaplan, Operational Excellence Group (OEG). Prior to the February 2024, users were not allowed to use aggregation functions (SUM, ALL, ANY, AVERAGE, FIRSTNONBLANK, LASTNONBLANK, MAX, MIN, RANK) when having the Users list in a module because the system could…

Overview Imports are blocking operations. To maintain a consistent view of the data, the model is locked during the import, and concurrent imports run by end users will need to run one after the other and will block the model for everyone else. Exports are blocking for data entry while the export data is retrieved, and…

Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…

Line item subsets are one of the most powerful and efficient features in Anaplan, yet one of the least understood. The COLLECT() function is probably the only “black box” function within Anaplan as is it not immediately apparent what it is doing or where the source values are coming from. In the following article, I will…

Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…

Introduction Anaplan, a leading platform for enterprise planning, has revolutionized the way organizations manage their data and streamline processes. However, leveraging Anaplan's powerful features often requires scripting with Anaplan Connect—a command-line utility for interacting with the platform. To simplify this…

Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…

Filters can be very useful in model building and are widely used, but they can come at the expense of performance—often very visible to users through their use on dashboards. Performance can also hit imports and exports, which in turn may lead to the blocking of other activity, causing a poor perception of the model. There…

Hello! Welcome to the Model Optimization team's monthly blog post. This is an eight-part series, following the topics we see occurring most frequently in slow customer models. Our aim is to inform and guide how to build with best practice intentions for these model building topics. Each month, two of our analysts will take…

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…

What is pre-allocation in lists? Pre-allocation in lists is a mechanism in Anaplan that adds a buffer to list lengths. It is not added by default for lists; it becomes enabled when a role is set on a list. Please follow 1.03-01 though. Only add roles when needed. When it is enabled, a 2 percent buffer is added to the list,…

Problem statement When using CUMULATE over a list—this is when using the format CUMULATE (x, y, z)—the performance can be poor with anything that exceeds a few million cells. This is because the function is running on a single CPU thread, which differs from nearly all Anaplan functions. Anaplan gets its efficiency from…

As organizations continue to embrace Anaplan's powerful platform for connected planning and decision-making, maintaining robust security and compliance measures has become increasingly essential. The Anaplan Audit Log serves as a critical tool in achieving these objectives, providing granular insights into user activities…

In cloud-based business planning, the ability to swiftly and effectively upload large datasets is an important aspect of maintaining up-to-date planning. This post introduces the concept of multithreading to enhance data upload speeds to Anaplan significantly. This approach, however, is specifically tailored for data…

The Anaplan Python OAuth Example demonstrates using the Anaplan REST API with OAuth with device-based authorization. The code highlights how to generate a device_id, access_token, and refresh_token. Additionally, the code highlights a multi-threaded approach to request a new access_token while performing other,…

Author: Andrew Martin (@andrew_martin_1), Operational Excellence Director at Anaplan. Overview Many stakeholders ask this question for different reasons. Examples include: A CoE leader needing comfort that best practices have been followed in the build A Solution Architect seeking affirmation that the architecture is the…

We built this app to make getting started on your Anaplan data integration journey simple with a quick questionnaire and helpful information and links. A common question that arises during Anaplan implementations (or even after go-live) is "How can I automate data feeds into and out of Anaplan?" While the ultimate decision…

As discussed in the OEG workshop, here's the Excel blueprint analysis worksheet. It contains an example sheet with the model shown in the workshop. You will see how the conclusions and optimization opportunities were found using this analysis. Uses of CUMULATE and TIMESUM for example, or the amount of text line items used.…

Details of known issues Challenge Recommendations Performance issues with long nested formulas Need to have a long formula on time as a result of nested intermediate calculations. If the model size does not prevent from adding extra line items, it's a better practice to create multiple intermediate line items and reduce…

This Anaplan Connect Quick Start guide is specifically for the Microsoft Windows platform. Its purpose is to help you swiftly set up and get started with Anaplan Connect. Please follow the steps below to guide you through the installation process. If you are utilizing macOS, kindly refer to the Anaplan Connect Quickstart…

Building well performing models is a balance between the complexity and functionality of a model versus the number of concurrent users. If you have seen software development / project management triangles, where scope, time and cost control quality, this will be familiar. It is a good way to show the constraints of any…

This Anaplan Connect Quick Start guide is specifically for the macOS and Linux platforms. Its purpose is to help you swiftly set up and get started with Anaplan Connect on these operating systems. Please follow the steps below to guide you through the installation process. If you are utilizing macOS, kindly refer to the…

Introduction Anaplan CloudWorks enables seamless data integration between Anaplan and other cloud-based applications. To optimize performance and efficiency, it's crucial to follow best practices when scheduling integration tasks. This article outlines recommended guidelines for creating integration schedules in Anaplan…

Introduction Hopefully, by now you've heard of the D.I.S.C.O. methodology for model and module design, but do you fully understand how to put it into practice? D.I.S.C.O. is part of the wider P.L.A.N.S. standard for Anaplan model building and falls under the L for Logical. D.I.S.C.O. provides a logical structure for one to…

Reducing the number of calculations will lead to quicker calculations and improve performance. However, this doesn’t mean combining all your calculations into fewer line items, as breaking calculations into smaller parts has major benefits for performance. Learn more about this in the Formula structure for performance…

The process of designing a model will help you: * Understand the customer’s problem more completely * Bring to light any incorrect assumptions you may have made, allowing for correction before building begins * Provide the big picture view for building This process includes the following steps: * Understand the…

What are blocks? How blocks are calculated – General Lists How blocks are calculated – Native Time/Native Versions Hyperblock performance Summary block counts Should I worry about blocks? A reason why we shouldn’t focus on just the block count Focus Points We recommend this article to Experienced Model Builders and…