About David_Elston

It is pretty common that I need to publish a module to a dashboard to show data as "Read Only".   While I can turn off the "Open Source Module" option for a grid, any user can still right-click and select "Show all columns" to see all line items if they choose.  And worse this function is not something an Admin can prevent.   So in order to prevent unwanted user access to the source data, as a workaround I typically create a read-only module (taking up more space) that house the specific line items I want shown on the dashboard that all simply point back to the source module. This would all be unnecessary if an Admin could disable users' ability to "Show All Columns".     Much like my feature request to have the "Open Source Module" function controlled globally by role, this too should allow control by Admin at the role level, meaning I could allow certain roles to show all columns, and restrict it for other roles. ... View more

I commonly find myself battling Anaplan for screen real estate to see what I want when I want it, and NOT when I don't want to see it.  One of the culprits is the Contents Pane, and another as a model builder is the dashboard editing panel or the settings tab.  When the Contents Pane is open and one of these others as well, the amount of useable screen is pretty small.     As bad as it may sound, it is not uncommon to find myself working in this tiny little box before realizing I could close the Contents Pane and have a much larger work area.  I believe having a hotkey to toggle the Contents Pane open / close would be a really helpful addition to Anaplan, so I don't have to take my mouse off what I'm doing to go click it. ... View more

WHAT: I would like to be able to temporarily toggle the Preview mode / Design mode on a dashboard by holding a key on the keyboard, (I suggest CTRL)   WHY: This would allow a model builder to... Quickly jump between the preview state and design state in order to view dashboard's final state, and then return to making adjustments.  Click an action button on a dashboard while editing it. Currently the model builder must click the toggle to go into "Preview" mode, click the action button, then reset the toggle back to "Design" mode again.   ... View more

It would be really helpful to be able to query a user's model role, and with that information be able to do things like: * Allow / Limit access to information based on a user's role * Use in dynamic cell access formulas * Allow a module on certain dashboards to be read-only (for larger audiences), while the same module on another dashboard can be writeable if the user's role is a match (perhaps for admin users)   To work around some of these issues we end up creating many almost duplicate copy dashboards with almost duplicate modules on them except some are source data and others are read-only.     I'm sure there are many other ways model builders could benefit from such a function being added. ... View more

When working with a team of model builders sometimes changes to a dashboard aren't obvious, so it would be helpful to be able to leave a note behind for others to read.  I could see this being helpful for when a button is added to a dashboard, or a filter is adjusted or a section is moved to a different place, a name of something is changed etc.   A model builder could leaving comments that look something like this:    20 FEB 2019: Added button X to the page because Project Managers needed direct access to the page" 18 FEB 2019: Changed the filter on module XYZ to be able to show ABC, also added conditional formatting to line item "Project Name" ... View more

I would like the ability to interrogate when a Module has received changes to specific line items to help in troubleshooting bugs. For example, when someone changes a line item's summary type, or formular, or data type, or name etc. this should ideally change the "Date Last Modified" for that line item.   I could see this "Date Last Modified" column being next to the "Notes" column in the module itself, being a read-only system generated date.  This would be helpful to quickly tell which line items have recently changed when tracing the source of newly discovered bugs.     ... View more

There are many times where I find I'd like to select dashboard text to use as a reference or to send to someone in my company via email etc. It would be nice to be able to select the text on a dashboard's Title, Instructions, headers, notes etc. to use for copy & paste purposes.     Better yet, let the model builder have the option to allow the a text box to be selectable or not.  ... View more

On larger models, the list of modules, dashboards, actions etc. can become very difficult to sift through.  When setting user role access for these lists in Roles-->Modules, Roles-->Actions etc. it is difficult to notice issues because the whole list becomes just a sea of blue words, all of similar lengths.     It would be helpful to a model builder if Anaplan somehow made the differences stand out more by either changing the text colors, or even better coloring cell's background to show a color based on it's value.  Here are two quick ideas:   One Idea: Another Idea: Write Read None ... View more

I like to use the tooltips to be able to customize what a user sees when hovering over an action button on a dashboard.  But in larger models it means if I want each instance of a button to all tell the same story, I have to hunt them all down and change them 1-by-1.    It would be very helpful to be able to set the button's tooltip text from the actions list (maybe next to the Notes column) so that everywhere I publish that button it automatically inherits the text from the actions list.   ... View more

The search feature in these lists is nice, but anytime I have to switch between them I have re-find what I was looking at when I go back.    A major, yet simple quality of life improvement for model builders would be when I switch between these lists, hold the scroll position I was on and take me there when I return.  For example:   If I'm looking at the 1287th item in the list of actions, and want to go look at the dashboard it's used on, I go to the dashboard list, find that dashboard and open it.  When I return to the actions list load it and scroll me back to #1287 (so I don't have to scroll to it or search for it again)     ... View more

During Anaplan training a user creates 5 or 6 modules / dashboard etc. Easy.  Our model has a staggering list of actions, modules and dashboards. In our model are we have: 593 Modules 248 Dashboards 1767 Actions Model builders need a more robust wayto manage this. Having the ability to filter these lists by a type (Import, Export, Open, Create etc.) or by word(s) "Project Manager", "Program", would be life changing as a model builder.    Being able to put these into more meaningful groups would be incredibly helpful.  Why?  Within the 4 existing action groupings (Processes, Imports, Exports, Other Actions") we have nearly 900 items under "Imports", and many of which are doing similar things that could be further categorized to help the model builder find things and speed up their workflow tremendously.   I equate the current organization in these lists to something like having every file on your computer taken out of folders and put on your desktop.  Good Luck with that. :D   ... View more

Seemingly across the board in software the "Delete"/"Backspace" keys can be used to delete a selected item and "Enter" accepts the default button on a dialog.     Building a dashboard in Anaplan is unnecssarily tedious because neither of these work.  Lack of small quality of life workflow changes like these add up and makes it really tedious to do simple tasks due to requiring excessive mousing & clicking to get an otherwise simple job done.   For example, to delete a text box from a dashboard, due to the default textbox's width, I have click to scroll all the way to the right just to see the little red X button, click it, and click OK (which pressing "Enter" won't do). When deleteing more than one or two items, this sort of roundabout action seems totally unnecssary when just a few keyboard shortcuts would totally streamline the process ... View more

We have many different models our team of builders uses, all of which have a slightly different name, but sometimes that's not exactly obvious if one is working in the Revision 1 model, or the Revision 2 model, Staging, or Production etc.    I would like the ability to alter the color of the blue anaplan header bar so that I can tell very easily "oh this is red, i.e. the color used for the Staging model, or "oh it's blue, I know at a glance that this one is the Production model" ... View more

When creating an Open Dashboard action in a very long list of actions, the action gets created and the list gets scrolled all the way back up to the top.  Our Actions list is over 1500 items long, we have hundreds of processes, imports, exports and other actions to scroll through making this simple task of adding a new open dashboard button incredibly maddening.    Please add a quality-of-life improvement that scrolls back to the newly created action to bring it in view after creating it.  The chances are probably quite high that a user who just created a new action will want to do something with it right after creating it. (For me it's 99.9% of the time) and if they don't, it doesn't affect them ... View more

It is common to use the exact wording between actions, modules, dashboards etc., however in order to see the results of items from these different groupings, currently I have leave a view (say the module view) to go to another view (actions) and search the results again (which also resets my search from the last view).  This makes figuring out how things are linked and troubleshooting unnecssarily tedious to find what I need to find.     I would like to be able to type a word into a search box and it give me the option to see where this word appears from ALL of these view types.   ... View more

There are times I would like to show or hide data, allow access, etc. based on the user's role.    For example, some data is sensitive, and I would like to use Dynamic Cell Access to allow someone with the user role "Admin" to read/write the sensitive information, while someone without the Admin role would see nothing.    Another use example, I want to allow users with the role of "Project Manager" to edit only their own projects, while others that either don't have the "Project Manager" role, OR who aren't the active project manager, can see the project's information as read only.     Both of these require that I be able to somehow check they have proper role. Currently I believe the only way is whether they can get to a dashboard, which makes for a lot jumping through hoops to prevent unauthorized access.   ... View more

I find the workflow to Add / Delete a line item to be unnatural and slow.  Currently a user must go to blueprint mode, select a line item, then go up to the top of the module view and click the "+" or "-" button.    Ideally I'd like to be able to right-click on a line item and get the "+" or "-" options here as well (similar to inserting /deleteing rows in Excel), and would like this to also be available in the normal module view as well.     ... View more

Similar to how a column for "referenced by" can show me other modules where a line item is used, and "used in dashboard" can show me where it's on dashboards, as a modelbuilder it would be helpfult to have a way to tell where a line item is being used to drive a filter.  ... View more

I would like a way to help prevent accidental clicking of buttons that run important / irreversible actions (like a large deletion for instance).   Here are some ideas on how I think one might go about tackling this, when the user clicks a button with this prevention measure enabled:   * Show the user a warning message, where I can designate the text they read, and they have to acknowledge by clicking a second "OK" button. * Allow me to disable a button unless a checkbox I point it to is checked. * Give me the option to require the user type in some specific text (something like "DELETE"), * Allow me to designate a certain amount of time the user must wait (maybe 5 seconds?) before they can click a second button to perform the action (think: "display some warning text, give them time to read it")   ... View more

I would like to be able to see the changes I make while in blueprint view of a module affecting its data view in real-time.  Currently when I change something in blueprint (ie. a summary method) and have to toggle back and forth to see its affect.  Unfortunately, depending on how far down in the list of line items the one i'm working is each time I toggle I have to re-search for it to see the summary method, or in data view I may have to scroll a long way or search for it to see the data produced.   My Ideal solution would be the ability to open blueprint as a tab and the data view as another tab instead of only toggling between them.  This way I could undock and view them next to each other ... View more

In our model, we use navigation action buttons to help a user see "where they are" in a workflow with respect to other similar pages. Usually this amounts to ~4-5 buttons near the top of the dashboard in an order logical to the workflow, which are in the same order across all of the workflow's pages.     Unforunately when a user scrolls through the page it means the navigation buttons scroll up and out of sight.  Ideally I would like to be able to create a short header area (like a frozen pane in Excel) within which I can put text, or navigation buttons etc. so that they remain visible no matter where the user scrolls on the page.  A footer area of this same nature would also be helpful too. ... View more