Imagine this Scenario: You are working in an Anaplan Model. Perhaps, you notice that the model is performing slowly. Opening modules, lists, dashboards are all taking a long time. You may be met with spinning loading screen after loading screen. You may also be seeing the dreaded "blue toaster" box. Furthermore, you are met with an error message. What should you do?

Solution: Begin troubleshooting! Below is a series of general questions that you can use to troubleshoot your Anaplan environment. Each question will be broken down as to why that question is important and how to make a decision with regards to how to proceed depending on your answer.

Below is a troubleshooting framework you can apply when troubleshooting your Anaplan Environment.

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General Troubleshooting:

1. Is this the 1st time you are facing this issue?

This question helps identify if the issue you are facing is new or recurring.

  • New issues are treated with a different set of principles as compared to recurring ones.
  • If the issue is intermittent, see if you can reproduce the issue by recreating the set of variables that contributed to the issue. These are also generally tricky to resolve as the right combination of variables need to exist for the issue to appear. Sometimes it is difficult for those facing the issue to identify what those set of variables are. Therefore, it makes troubleshooting a bit more cumbersome.
  • Chronic performance issues are often tied to underlying model design associated with large models, hardcoded formulas, and long nested conditional formulas that require heavy processing power. These are often the trickiest to resolve as this may require performing an examination of your model open times and backend formulas. You may be able to reach out to your Anaplan Business Partner who may be able to point you to resources to address these issues. These kinds of issues require more of a long term approach to resolve the issue, the answer is seldom immediate.

2. Are other users facing this issue?

This question helps identify if the issue is specific to your user account or if the issue is widespread across multiple users.

  • If the issue is specific to your user account there are a few things you can try such as: double checking access to Anaplan models with an administrator, logging out and logging back in, clearing your browser's cache/cookies, and trying another browser. Saved passwords and outdated links can cause access issues as well. Notice all of these steps are specific to items that are tied to a user's environment or user's credentials.
  • If the issue is occurring to multiple users, this means that you are not alone in facing the issue. The issue must be workspace or model specific. Try to contact a Workspace Administrator from your Workspace. An administrator can take some administrative actions to potentially eliminate the issue by going to "Manage Models" > "Tasks" > and closing/killing any tasks or models. If this still does not resolve the issue, you should contact Anaplan Support right away.

3. Was this working successfully previously?

Similar to question 1, this question seeks to decipher whether or not there is evidence of the model behavior working successfully in the past.

  • If something was working successfully in the past and is no longer working now, jump to the next question.
  • If something was never working in the past or is being setup for the first time, consider if the setup is correct? Look at things such as formula syntax, logic, and underlying assumptions.

4. What changes were you making/have made since you last performed this?

This question is related to question 3 with a bit of a nuance. This question offers a supplementary response which helps isolate what things may have changed in your Anaplan environment since last performing the behavior.

  • A good place to start is seeing if you can "undo" the changes you have made to test if the issue is tied to any recent changes. If there is risk to model state, ALM sync, or data, consider "saving and archiving" the model in its current state and then begin testing. This ensures if you were to perform any kind of data loss or ALM structural changes, that you have a backup model saved which you can go back to.
  • Isolating variables and testing 1 variable at a time is key when troubleshooting. The goal of troubleshooting is always to understand the root cause of an issue. By testing variables 1 at a time, this can help narrow down the issue in a systematic manner.

5. When did you 1st notice this issue (with timezone)? 6. What is the modelID? What is the workspaceID?

If you have reached this far in the troubleshooting questions, you have tried resolving the issue on your own, you may consider reaching out to Anaplan Support.

  • When an issue first started can help narrow down the timeframe of the issue. This can help you look through History logs, ALM syncs/revision tags, and ask around with other users if they have noticed any changes.
  • Additionally, Anaplan Support can leverage this information to begin troubleshooting and diagnostic analysis from their side through the back end.
  • Your ModelID and WorkspaceID can be found in a few different places: in the about section of a model, in the URL of the model, as well as in the name of the models in the interface. Generally, Anaplan prefers to know the IDs of Models/Workspaces as it speeds up their research ability.
  • There might be multiple models/workspaces named "Data Hub [DEV]" but only 1 with the Model ID "123456789" and Workspace ID "987654321".

Other Resources:

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  • Anaplan Community is another great resource to search through. Often, you will find other users who have reported a similar issue. The forums on Anaplan Community are a great place to post a question. Here you will find experts from across the Community, featuring Master Anaplanners and Community Bosses. You may even encounter Anaplan employees who also monitor the forums regularly.
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  • If you are ever unsure of how to navigate an issue, Anaplan Support is the best place to reach out. Here you will find dedicated Support agents, 24/7, who can help you troubleshoot an issue. The online Support page also offers FAQs. To check if there is an Anaplan wide outage, remember to check the Anaplan Status page.
  • Remember if you run into an issue and resolve the issue, be sure to share it out with others in the Community or with Anaplan Support so that if others run into a similar issue, they can learn from your experience and solution!

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