Anaplan-Clock

Give Anaplan a current date and time. A small scheduled script writes "now" into a line item every minute, so formulas can know what day it is.

Why I built it

Anaplan has no concept of the current date and time. The model has a current period, set by hand, and that's all. Anything that needs the real clock, like stamping when an action ran or telling a user their data is three days old, has to be typed in.

The fix is small. Push a timestamp in by API on a schedule. This repo is that push, packaged so it runs locally, as a cron job, or as a cloud function.

What it unlocks

• Action timestamps. Copy LatestDateTime into a log line item as the last step of a process, and every downstream module can show when it was loaded.
• Staleness flags. IF Loaded Date < Latest Date - 1 THEN "Stale" ELSE "OK" on a dashboard.
• Snapshot keys. Key a scenario snapshot on the timestamp instead of asking users to invent unique names.
• Working-day logic. Compare the real date with the model's current period and warn when someone is still editing last month.

How it works

1. Authenticate to the Anaplan v2 API
2. PUT a two-line CSV (LatestDateTime,20/09/2026-09:42:15) to a file in the model
3. Run the process that imports that file into the line item
4. Log out

Timezone is configurable. The timestamp is text in dd/mm/yyyy-HH:MM:SS form, which you convert with DATE and TEXT functions in the model.

Setup

In Anaplan:

1. Create a module with one Text line item called LatestDateTime.
2. Create an import action from a CSV file into that line item and wrap it in a process. Note the file ID and process ID (from the API or the URL).

Locally:

git clone https://github.com/klameer/Anaplan-Clock.git
cd Anaplan-Clock
pip install -r requirements.txt

Fill in .env:

user=you@company.com
password=...
workspaceId=...
modelId=...
fileId=...
processId=...
timezone=Europe/London

Then:

python main.py

You should see 20/09/2026-09:42:15 Updated and the line item change in the model.

Scheduling it

• Local: cron or Windows Task Scheduler, every minute or every five.
• Google Cloud Functions: deploy the folder as is. main.py already exposes run(request) as the HTTP entry point. Trigger it from Cloud Scheduler.
• AWS Lambda: same code, point the handler at run, trigger from EventBridge.

Keep the credentials in the platform's secret manager rather than shipping the .env.

Notes

• Each run is one file upload plus one process run, so it's cheap on API calls.
• Basic auth, for readability. Swap get_auth_token for certificate auth in production.
• Built on the same functions as anaplan-api-starter.

MIT licensed. I'm Karim Lameer, Master Anaplanner and CIMA-qualified accountant. I write about this at codelessops.com.