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Crawl Anaplan

Extract metadata from Anaplan workspaces, models, and dimensions into Atlan's data catalog to enable data discovery and governance. This guide provides step-by-step instructions to set up a crawler workflow for Anaplan in Atlan.

Prerequisites​

Before you begin, make sure you have:

Create crawler workflow​

  1. In the top right of any screen in Atlan, navigate to +New and click New Workflow.
  2. From the Marketplace page, click Anaplan Assets.
  3. In the right panel, click Setup Workflow.

Configure authentication​

  1. Authentication: Basic is the default authentication method.
  2. Host: Enter your Anaplan host URL without the 'https://' and trailing '/' (for example, us1a.app.anaplan.com).
  3. Username: Enter the Anaplan username for the account you created during setup.
  4. Password: Enter the Anaplan password for the account.
  5. Click Test Authentication to confirm connectivity to Anaplan.
  6. Once authentication is successful, navigate to the bottom of the screen and click Next.

Configure connection​

  1. Connection Name: Provide a name that represents your source environment. For example, you might use values like production, development, gold, or analytics.
  2. Connection Admins: Modify the users or groups who can manage this connection. If you don't specify any user or group, no one can manage the connection - not even admins.
  3. Navigate to the bottom of the screen and click Next to proceed.

Configure crawler​

Before running the Anaplan crawler, you can further configure it.

Important

Include and Exclude filters still need list access for all the asset names to be displayed in the filters. Any name not visible in these filters is out of the scope of this crawler due to limited access.

On the Metadata Filters page, you can override the defaults for any of these options:

  • Include Metadata: Select the workspaces you want to catalog in Atlan. If none are specified, all workspaces are included by default.
  • Exclude Metadata: Select the workspaces you don't want to catalog in Atlan. If none are specified, no workspaces are excluded by default.
  • Exclude Empty Modules: Lets you exclude modules that don't have a line item. Use this to prevent ingestion of line-separator modules, as recommended by Anaplan training documentation.
    • Yes: Ignores every module during extraction that doesn't have a line item.
    • No: Ingests every valid module, even if it doesn't have a line item.
  • Ingest System Dimensions: Lets you ingest dimensions created by the Anaplan system separately under the Anaplan connection. Supported system dimensions are Time and Versions.
    • Yes, proxy: Ingests these dimensions directly under the connection as the System Dimension asset type. The System Dimension asset type won't hold any relationships and only exists under the Anaplan connection as proxy assets for metadata reference.
    • Yes, individually: Ingests each system dimension under each model along with its respective relationships as individual Dimensions.
    • No: Don't ingest system dimensions.

Run crawler​

  1. To check for any permissions or other configuration issues before running the crawler, click Preflight checks.
  2. You can either:
    • To run the crawler once immediately, at the bottom of the screen, click the Run button.
    • To schedule the crawler to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, at the bottom of the screen, click the Schedule Run button.

Once the crawler completes, you can see the assets on Atlan's asset page! 🎉

See also​