Anaplan calculation function documentation
Click here to visit the current version of the Anaplan calculation function documentation. Although minor changes have been made to it since I left in July 2022, it remains fundamentally similar.
Calculation functions project
When I worked at Anaplan, I led a project to overhaul their calculation function documentation. This project took over a year and involved:
- developing metrics to understand the user need for an update
- learning a complex product and testing on a large scale
- finding and interviewing a large number of SMEs and stakeholders
- identifying edge cases and bugs through work with developers
- creating a component-based template to ensure consistency and extensibility
- project management using Jira and agile
Background
Anaplan offers a SaaS business planning platform that is visually similar to other spreadsheet-based platforms, but processes very large volumes of data more effectively. At Anaplan’s core is a modelling interface, where you enter formulas that use functions, similar to Excel or Google Sheets.
In Anaplan, these functions are called calculation functions. Calculation functions contain both required and optional arguments and specific data formats from your model.
When I started learning about the Anaplan product and testing modelling, I noticed that there was no easy in-product way of knowing what calculation functions were available. This meant you had to visit the docs to learn about them and jump back and forth between the product and the docs. I also noticed that certain edge cases or optional arguments weren’t explained in the docs.