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OEG Best Practice: Performance issues with CUMULATE over lists
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…
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[Part 1] Enhanced Reporting of the Anaplan Audit Log Summary
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…
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Unlocking High-Efficiency Data Uploads in Anaplan: A Multithreading Approach
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…
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[UPDATED] Summary Calculations with the User List
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Anaplan Python OAuth Example
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,…
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How to review models and applications to drive improvement
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…
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Introducing the Anaplan Integration Script Generator: Simplifying Anaplan Connect Scripting
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Line item subsets demystified
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Data integration decision app
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Formula structure for performance
Thinking through the results of a modeling decision is a key part of ensuring good model performance; in other words, making sure the calculation engine isn’t overtaxed. This article highlights some ideas for how to lessen the load on the calculation engine. Formulas should be simple; a formula that is nested, or uses…
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OEG Best Practice: Data Hubs: Purpose and peak performance
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.…
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[Part 2] Enhancing Anaplan Audit Log Data Extraction with a Streamlined Python Solution
The Anaplan Audit History project, consisting of several Python modules and a configuration file, works synergistically to streamline the process of fetching, formatting, and loading Anaplan audit log data into a preconfigured Anaplan Model. The project leverages the Anaplan REST API, the Python Pandas library for…
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[Part 3] Anaplan Audit History Data in an Anaplan Reporting Model
With Anaplan Audit, Enterprise and Professional level Customers can track audit events that occur in their Anaplan tenant. For the Anaplan Audit History project, we created a simple Anaplan reporting model and app to report on Anaplan Audit events in the Anaplan UX. Customers may download and use the Anaplan Audit Model &…
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OEG Best Practice: Statistical forecasting
Overview The following is a guide for the Statistical Forecasting Calculation Engine Models (monthly and weekly). It includes enablement videos, practice data import exercise, model documentation, and specific steps when using the model for implementations. 1. Enablement videos and practice exercise…
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OEG Best Practice: PLANS: This is how we model
PLANS PLANS is the new standard for Anaplan modeling—“the way we model.” This covers more than just the formulas and includes and evolves existing best practices around user experience and Data Hubs. It is a set of rules on the structure and detailed design of Anaplan models. This set of rules will provide both a clear…
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[Post-Event] Understanding and Identifying Model Optimization Opportunities
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.…
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OEG Best Practice: Formulas and their effects on model performance
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…
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Anaplan Connect Quick Start Guide - Windows Installation
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Anaplan Performance Triangle
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…
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Anaplan Connect Quick Start Guide - Linux & macOS Installation
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…
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[UPDATED] OEG Best Practice: Integration Scheduling in Anaplan CloudWorks
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Filter best practice
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Best practices for module design
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Reduce calculations for better performance
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…
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OEG Best Practice: The model design process
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…
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OEG Best Practice: Inside the Hyperblock
* 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…
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OEG Best Practice: Pre-allocation in lists (and impacts to model performance)
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,…
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OEG Best Practice: Blueprint analysis: Model analysis techniques using Excel
What? A model analysis technique using metadata from your Anaplan model imported in to Excel, utilizing purpose-built formulas to identify line items of interest Why? We do this so that we have some extra information with which to arm ourselves when trying to optimize a model. It lets us look at every line item, apply the…
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OEG Best Practice: Import action management best practices
An import action section can quickly become disorganized, making ongoing management challenging. Learn why this happens and explore steps to take to prevent this from occurring. Import action section: why does it become disorganized? Anaplan saves every import action that you perform, no matter what. For a new build, the…
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OEG Best Practice: Implementation best practices: Leveraging personas
If you are transitioning from Classic to the UX, you may have read this article about our recommended methodology: U.S.E.R. (Understand, Sketch, Execute, and Repeat). One of the key concepts during the Understand phase is to really get to know your users. For this, we recommend a classic UX tool: Personas. Personas What…