Imagine this scenario: You are working with a client on updating their existing Anaplan implementation. Your client was an early adopter of Anaplan. You notice that the model is very large, slow, and is not up to date with regards to the newest best practices. Upon further inspection, you notice that the model is saturated with list properties. What should you do?
Solution: Use line items in System Modules! As you have heard me say before, System Modules serve as the "glue" that can hold models together. In earlier implementations of Anaplan, use of list properties was a completely acceptable way of associating attributes to a list in model building. More recently, it has become widely accepted in the Anaplan Community that the best practice for storing attributes of a list is better suited in the form of line items inside System Modules.
Here's why:
- Formulas are more intuitive. Line Items in System Modules (and in general) offer model builders a more robust experience in constructing formulas. The formula bar with line items offers a click and point intuitive mechanism that is not available in the list properties formula bar.
- Filtering is more robust with modules and line items. Let's say you have 1000 products in a list. Your list has an attribute titled color. You want to view products with the color "Red". Of your 1000 products, 60 of them have the color "Red". Here, we run into another limitation of list properties. There is no way to filter down a list utilizing list properties. On the other hand, line items in modules can filter down data with the same list dimensionality. Therefore, you could create a filter in a module and only see products with the color "Red" in a module.
- Easier references. System Modules offer attributes a one stop shop to connect to lists. All downstream references to these attributes can be easily located in the appropriate System Module. Whereas using list properties may be more restrictive in terms of processing power and may be more sporadic in terms of storage in Anaplan.
Additional note: Adopting these principles will help drive towards a clean, modern, efficient, and powerful Anaplan Ecosystem. There may be exceptions to these principles. When deciding on when to use list properties or line items remember to factor in the PLANS modeling philosophy.
Below are some Do's and Don'ts with regards to attributes:
Finally, remember: just because you can build something does not mean you should!