Transcript
[Music] Hello and welcome to another Bedford Consulting spotlight video. In this video, we’re going to take a quick look at the different types of dashboards or pages available in Anaplan and when to use one over the other.
Board vs. Worksheet: Here I am in the new app, and you can see when I choose to create a page, I have the choice between a board or a worksheet. Both can be used for reporting, analysis, as well as data entry. They allow you to include grids of data along with charts and KPIs and are designed for multiple users, automatically filtered for each individual’s security. So, which one to choose? To show this, I’m going to use a couple I’ve already created.
Boards: Firstly, a board. As you can see, a board allows you to combine a variety of components or cards together on the same page. These components can include data cards such as KPIs, grids of information, and charts, as well as supporting cards such as images, text boxes with links to other dashboards, and actions, such as adding the ability to run a data import process directly from the dashboard.
If I choose to edit this page, you can see I have complete control over the placement and size of each card on this page. For example, I can choose to increase the size of this grid versus the pie chart, or I can make this chart span the width of the entire page.
Benefits of Boards: Boards are great at providing a clean, visual view of data, focusing on core metrics and KPIs. They also allow users to edit a small selection of data and immediately see the results of that change throughout the model. For example, changing the units sold in January to 50,000, and seeing the impact on net income and any charts on the board.
But what if you want to make changes to or analyse a larger set of data? This is where a worksheet can help.
Worksheets: In a worksheet, I’m able to include charts and other information on my additional insights pane, but more importantly, I can minimise this pane to focus on the core data set. In this case, planning down to gross margin by product. An end user can easily amend their view of data as they work by using filters, sorting, and the option to show and hide slices of data so they can focus on one area at a time.
Expanding the additional insight pane again allows for navigation to other dashboards, as well as being able to pop out any of these cards into the main contents pane. For example, I can change the price adjustment from 2 percent to 5 percent on last year, and you can see my unit sales price has increased to 126 and that has flowed through to the product as well.
Summary: In summary, the worksheet option is probably the best choice for any large-scale data entry or analysis performed by users, while boards are probably the better choice when you want to combine different cards of information together on the same page, especially if they’re used as a reporting summary. If in doubt, cards you’ve created on one page can be saved as a template for use on other pages, so it’s very quick to build both and see which one you and the other users prefer.
Hopefully, you found this video useful. If you want more information about building pages in Anaplan, or if you’re not using Anaplan and would like a more detailed demonstration, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help. [Music
