Source Models & IDS

[Misbah]

Hi,

Can you please help me understand the use case of Source Models. Also How does IDS play a role in it?

Let's say I have imported into List from WS1 Model 1 to WS2 Model 2. Now under Source Models Command an action will be created. Under what scenarios can we change  this mapping in Source Model Command. And How does that affect IDS?

Thanks,

Misbah

[PaulRitner]

Hi, 

there's more on the topic here:  https://help.anaplan.com/anapedia/Content/Modeling/Manage_Models/Source_Models.html

In short:

• Source Models addresses the model level aspect of Import Data Sources
• Import Data Sources is at the next level down (either a module/view or a list)
• When a particular source model affects many Import Data Sources, we can redirect all of those IDS's to the new source model with a single edit, rather than updating each IDS to indicate the new model... much more efficient. 

Cheers!

[Misbah]

@PaulRitner Thanks!

Anapedia on Source Models is not exhaustive. I still have some doubts and here are these:

Question 1: How does IDS->New Source->Upload A New File or Connect to Anaplan Model help. Under what scenarios do we use these. 

Let's say I want to upload the flat file which is on my local machine on a daily basis. I was under the impression editing the import data source will actually help me do that. But its not the case.We have to create new import action altogther and delete the redundant one. Kindly share some insight on this

Do we have any videos related to this functionality?

Thanks,

Miz.

[PaulRitner]

Hi,

I'm enjoying this exchange because, to be honest, I don't use the Source Models tab very often and pretty much skip over it when introducing people to Anaplan.  I look forward to comments from other community members!

Here are my thoughts:

Question 1: How does IDS->New Source->Upload A New File or Connect to Anaplan Model help. Under what scenarios do we use these. 

Thoughts:  The Source Models feature helps you redirect (potentially) many Import Actions from one model to another very quickly.  A key assumption is that the source objects within the model you are switching to are identical to the old source.  This is especially helpful if you are refreshing your DEV environment from PROD... we can redirect our interconnectedness quickly.  Conversely, if we just need to update one action, we probably wouldn't want to use the Source Models tab.  We might think of updating a single action's source as a Local operation, and the Source Models tab as a Global operation.

On the 2nd part:  Let's say I want to upload the flat file which is on my local machine on a daily basis. I was under the impression editing the import data source will actually help me do that. But its not the case.We have to create new import action altogther and delete the redundant one. Kindly share some insight on this

• If we publish the Import Action (for the daily file) as a button on a dashboard, Anaplan will always ask you for the location of the file to import... in this way, you can reuse an import action without having to go through the nuisance of identifying a new upload file.  the only requirement here is that the header in the file be consistent with the import action definition.  the name of the file can be anything.
• Also, we could use Anaplan Connect (batch files) to run that task if we wanted.  (The batch script allows you to name the file). If you do any batch scripting, there's a lot of flexibility to customize how the batch script idenifies the file to upload dynamically. 

Cheers!

[Sheethal]

Generally, I use Source Models when a model has been moved from one workspace to another workspace to change the source model without recreating a new import process.

In your example, if you move the Model 1 from WS1 to WS3 & named it as Model 3, then you can use Source Models to change the source of all import processes from WS1/Model 1 to WS3/Model 3. This avoids recreating all the import processes again by remapping the source model.

This page gives detailed description of IDS.