It's not as bad as it sounds. You can still use aeroplan.com to research seats. In fact, for our 2 last award flights, because they were booked > 11 months out, ANA tool didn't help anyway, as it restricted showing availability to a maximum of 330 days out. I ended up using aeroplan.com to do all the research. In fact, it helped us to find 2 x J seats on LHR - JNB on SAA. They were shown available for multiple days, as confirmed by ICC. By the time I could see them on ANA tool, they were all gone already.