Retrieve data in Anaplan XL Reporting

Anaplan XL Reporting has several ways to bring data into the workbook.

Grids are the most commonly used approach in Anaplan XL Reporting. At the lowest level, grids are similar to a pivot table. Each grid is an individual component, with rows and columns. You can drill down to additional levels of detail, and use slice and dice.

Grids remove many of the restrictions of pivot tables, with simple user calculations, rich ranking, and filtering. You can modify grids using the report designer, through the grid task pane, or ‌by dragging and dropping the hierarchy labels.

Grids can connect to multidimensional cubes or tabular models and use MDX as the query language.

Anaplan XL uses formulas to retrieve values and hierarchy members from the cube. This approach gives total control over layout and formatting, and the formulas are easy to understand and have user dialogs.

Formulas are most often used in dashboards and formal financial reports, where the layout is key. The simplest approach to creating a formula report is to create a grid and then convert it to a formula.

Formulas can connect to multidimensional cubes or tabular models and use MDX as the query language.

User preferences vary, and often either reporting approach can be used, but considerations are:

• Grids are stronger for slice and dice analytics, supporting drag-and-drop analysis.
• Grids handle dynamic data by changing the number of rows and columns.
• Like-for-like, a grid is faster than a formula report returning the same data.
• Formulas offer total flexibility in terms of layout and formatting possibilities.

Tables can connect to multidimensional cubes using MDX, tabular models using DAX, or relational databases using SQL.

Tables have similarities to grids, but have no concept of rows — everything is a column.

Tables or grids?

• A grid is more flexible and dynamic if your data is in a multidimensional cube.
• For in-memory tabular models (xVelocity) you can use grids or tables. Grids give more flexibility. In some cases, tables may have a performance benefit due to running a DAX query.
• For SQL, you need to use a table.