About David_Elston

In classic, when I make changes to a dashboard and try to close the page, I am given a choice whether to discard or save the changes.  Perfect.     In New UX, i have lost major edits without realizing it by clicking an action, my page gets changed to where the action points.  Then my edits are left unpublished and therefore erased.  Not good.   Please add a warning to a model builder that tries to leave page with unpublished edits ... View more

This seems pretty basic to request, but I'd like to be able to drop down a line or two in a text field, without having to use another text field (classic does this).  For example, in our classic model, all of our pages have a Single text field below the page's title that include something like this...   PURPOSE: (description of what the page is for, what a user is expected to accomplish on it) INSTRUCTIONS: (step-by-step instructions to describe the basics of how the page works)   I ask for this feature because the minimum white space on text fields in New UX is enormous, so adding another text box for a single line of text is silly, and takes up a ton space on the page, pushing the data further down the page. The text fields appear to remain large regardless of whether I type a single word in small font.    ... View more

When modeling in the New UX, I've saved a few card templates for the various types of text I plan to use in my designs.  Saving a template card means I've gone to the trouble to do all the work upfront, presetting all the formatting the way I want it to be. However I still have to enter the card's edit mode just to actually add / change the text.    The following changes would make a really positive impact on streamlining the workflow: 1. Let me type my text directly into the card without having to enter the editing mode.  2. Let me to enter the card's editing mode by simply double-clicking it, no need to hunt for an icon 3. (Bonus) Add a right-click menu option for cards to include all of the icons...give workflow options as to how the builder would prefer to model ... View more

Our model has 700+ users so the list is quite overwhelming to deal with. They're also in some who-knows why randomized order.  I see no easy way of changing this order short of removing them all and re-importing them in a different order.    It would be really helpful to deal with this size of a list by allow admin to:   Easily reorder the list (Like you can actions, dashboards, modules); Reorder by Drag & Drop  Sort the list, preferably by whatever column I choose Create groups of users.  Useful for say contractors, employees, temporary accounts, integration accounts etc. Roll up / Unroll those groups so I can better focus on specific users Apply filters to the list, again by any column ... View more

Today I had been involved in some major rework of a dashboard when that little green button on the dashboard shows up telling me that my version of the dashboard is out of date because changes are pending.  That meant I could no longer save the many dashboard edits I had made until I refreshed to the latest version.     The trouble is when I refresh all of my edits were wiped clear and one new button appeared.  This was because while I was knee deep in redesigning the page another model builder published an action to the same page and saved it.     When a page is open for editing, and another model builder tries to edit the same page, they should be shown a warning indicating that the page is already open for editing.  ... View more

I'd like to be able to select a bunch of actions in a list, and alphabetize just those actions.  Currently you can alphabetize the list of actions but it only does the entire list.  Our model has many actions (just shy of 2 thousand)...some of these are specifically grouped together by function, or by dashboard they're on instead of by name, so I can't really use the alphabetization function at all or it'll do more harm than good.     The same function would be nice for the lists of modules and dashboards  ... View more

No small amount of problems have been caused in our model by someone unknowingly altering a saved view that is used by an import action.  It seems reasonable to me to tell the builder who is about to delete, or overwrite a saved view that is used by an action so they can make a decision to proceed or not.     Ideally, it would also identify WHICH action(s) are using that saved view so you can know where to go if a change to the action is needed as well. ... View more

It would be very helpful to have user role and user access to a model to be separately managed values.    In some instances, we use ALM to move a big group of changes into our production model so we will remove access for non-admin users and reinstate them later.  Instead of changing each of our 700 users roles to "No Access" and later turning them back to the correct value our 8 roles, If I could just toggle a "model access" boolean it would greatly simplify things. No reimporting users, no scripts, no fiddling with roles.  Just On / Off. ... View more

When model building I find myself regularly want to see a module AND it's blueprint mode simultaneously so I can scan formulas, change things in blueprint, and immediately see the effects without having to toggle back and forth. This would be like using split screen in Excel to compare two workbooks side-by-side   Toggling is no issue in small modules, but if the line you're viewing is two screens down in the blueprint list of line items, and you leave blueprint mode, then come back, you have to find it again because it starts you at the top of the list again.     To work around this I duplicate the Anaplan tab, but have to open the same module and get it configured the way I like.  But even then when I select a line item in one tab, it doesn't communicate with the other tab.  Ideally they would be in sync. ... View more

I think the title says it mostly, but to be clear I'd like to be able to do the following:   1. Create a saved view of a module 2. Create and export action using the saved view as basis 3. Modify and re-save the saved view (i.e. add a new column, change the filter etc.) 4. The export action should update itself based on my changes to the saved view without me having to recreate it   This would be super helpful 🙂   ... View more

As a model builder I'd like to be able to create a module template for use when anyone clicks "create new module" so that when any model builder begins making a new module the "empty module" they start from is my designated template.  This would likely include various pre-named and formatted line items, categories, with summary settings, etc.    While we do have a template module in our model, 9 times out of 10 a model builder just clicks "create new module" and begins working from a totally blank module because they forget to open the template module and copy for use as their starting point. Ultimately this results in no real standard list of items found in modules, and a complete toss up of various styles used to build modules.    I would also like a similar template approach to be used for creating new Lists (I would always include certain list properties, i.e. Display Name etc.) and new dashboards (we use certain text fields, styles, fonts in the sample places on all dashboards).  Any time a user creates one of these it should open with the set template instead of a blank canvas. ... View more

I would like the ability to perform a model wide find and replace of a word.  I should have the option to include text boxes, dashboard names, module names, line item names, action names, help text, tool tips, and literally ANYWHERE else in the model this word or string occurs.  It should basically behave like Excel's find and replace, allowing me to choose options of what I want to apply it to, where to limit looking to, whether to be case specific etc.   This would be really helpful when a simple change is needed for a large model.  For example: with hundreds of modules, thousands of actions and all the content on dashboards, if I want to make all variations of "OPEX", "OpEx", & "opex" to all be standardized to be "OPEX", I should be able to do that simply through a global find and replace.  Currently this is fully manual making a simple idea into a massive undertaking.  ... View more

When I can't remember where I saw a particular line item, I go to Settings ---> Modules ---> Line Items and search for it.  When I find it, it would be very natural to just click "Open" in the header.  However Anaplan only allows this open button to work if you have the MODULE name it belongs to selected. So I have to scroll up and figure out which of the lines above is the module's name.  This may sound trivial, but since all modules are strung together one after another, I commonly find myself searching for the name, passing it and basically wasting time trying to do something that should be very simple.     I would like to be able to simply select the line item I just found, click Open and have it take me to the module.   ... View more

I would like to be able to replace a dashboard with another dashboard and have Anaplan automatically make all the changes needed to make the replacement be and act as though it was the original the whole time i.e. do all the renaming, change all actions, filters, permission etc.    WHY When trying to prevent new features on existing dashboards from going live before they're ready, we have resorted to building a dashboard mockup so it can be tested. Then right before it goes live, there really seem to be two options:   Option 1. The mockup dashboard replaces the old dashboard, i.e. it must be renamed, all actions pointing to the old one must be adjusted, dashboard permissions must be copied over to the new one etc.   -- OR -- Option 2. The new features must be rebuilt on the existing dashboard.     Both of these options basically duplicate work and have leave a lot of room for error.  Because of how challenging it is to track down all the things that must change to accomplish Option 1, we currently just rebuild the features, which is a huge waste     ... View more

Similar to some other feature requests I've made... 1. Open From Drill Down (delivered) 2. Open From Filter View   it would help model building workflow if I could right-click a module or list that appears in a formula and it give me the option to open the module, or show the list.  Again, this is so I don't have to leave what I'm doing and go search through the stack of modules / lists to find the part I'm looking to see.    Here's how I see it looking...     ... View more

The Situation I currently help manage a set of models ranging from Dev, Test, & Production.  Our Production model is live with close to 700 users. We release changes into production on a 2 week cadence but there are times where a fix must be pushed live immediately patching.     Some new features may take longer to develop 2 weeks, so when is not ready to go live and we need to push other fixes into production, we need a way to prevent half-finished features from being accessed by the user.  For new dashboards this may be as simple as not publishing a button, or turning off role access.  But what about when something model wide is going to change like a formula, or a new table on an existing dashboard that is not easily hidden?   We have tried the following to attempt to solve this ourselves: * Completely reverse certain changes, push the model into production, rebuild them * Turn off role access to certain buttons, contents pane access etc. * Develop a mirrored dashboards with new features etc, test that and then rebuild the dashboard when ready to go live. (same for modules etc.)   The Ask Anaplan needs a way to designate which parts of a model are to be pushed via ALM and others that are not ready and need to be left out. I realize this is not a simple request, but otherwise it is incredibly difficult to keep from pushing half baked features into production accidentally.     ... View more

When Opening a filter, It would be really helpful if I saw a filter I wanted to dig further into and be able to right-click and open the module it's coming from.  Currently a user has to back out of the filter view, and go there manually.  When there are a few filters I have to screenshot this view temporarily because I struggle to remember all of them.       Being able to access a module directly like this is the exact same purpose behind the recently delivered (thank you!) feature for directly accessing the module from drill down. These types of features really make the model builder's workflow much smoother instead of having to go down a dead end, find something, back all the way out again and search a module list / action etc. to find what I'm looking for.   ... View more

In certain cases the Name of something that goes into a report can only be so long before it starts to conflict and overlap with something else and make the report unreadable.  In other cases the user is expected to be concise and not write a whole dissertation to name something or.    I'd like to be able to set a numerical value for the maximum number of characters allowed in a text field where if the user keeps typing it'll flash the text box border or even just stop do anything at all etc. ... View more

Some dashboards end up with large tables with lots of columns shown. It is normal that some of these columns may need a few notes to help a user understand its purpose / intended interactions etc. Currently I use an instructional text box at the top, but this can be very long, hard to read, and frankly overwhelming amount of text.   I'd like to be able to add column-specific instructions so when a user mouses over a column they see a tooltip with only the instruction I set. This would improve user experience for end users by having instructions show up when & where a user needs them and disappear when they no longer do. ... View more

It only recently occurred to me that the search feature built into a module when on a dashboard only returns values from the dimensions, but not the data...which really feels like a missed opportunity.  Search should be able to return values from the data itself (maybe even highlight it?)   For example, Say I have a module on a dashboard that uses a list of Project Names as a dimension, and "Project Manager" & "Program Manager" as line items.  If I used the module's search feature, and typed in my name, search should should take me click to all the different projects where my name appears in that table.  Right now if i search, it just shows up blank, when I can see that it's in there.  The only thing that will return a value is if I search for a Project Name...which is useful, but very limited. ... View more

Anaplan only allows for 1 user to be deleted at a time.    Recently, we realized 680 users were loaded into the wrong model, so I had to click "delete user" then mouse over to click "OK" 680 times...I'd like to be able to delete more than 1 user at a time. ... View more

As a Work Space Admin, I can click a list and see it's hierarchical tree view, dig down into various levels and see how things roll up. In our model we have 3 major hierarchies that traverse the entirety of the model.  There are cases where a few non-WSA users need to be able to visualize the hierarchies (because some are 6 levels deep and very complicated)   The trouble is I can't show it to them without having to export it to Excel and let them do it manually.  I'd like an object that I can place on a dashboard that lets me display a list's hierarchy.  This object should be interactive so they can expand and collapse the levels as they need i.e. the same way I can in a list's settings "tree view" tab.  See the example image below for clarity.   ... View more