Layout & Alteryx Basics

• You put tools and tasks onto the canvas, which then runs the entire flow

• Tool Palet: Used to Alter data (input / Output, Parsing Info or creating a report)

  • Bunch of tools such as Cleaning, Formulas, Select, Joins, etc.
  • Can drag the tools from the tool palet and drop it onto the canvas
  • Must be configured correctly
  • Running the workflow does not change the input data

• Save as a .ymd file → Saves the workflow

• Save with input data → yxzp format

• Quick Pros of using Alteryx:

  

Input Data, Data Types and Prepping Data

• Connecting to multiple data sources → Use Dynamic Input Tool
  • This requires to know the format of the data (for all sheets) — Needs to be .xlsx, and can have multiple workbooks
• Manual input Data → Use Text input tool to create manual rows / columns and add data in
  • Text Input tool lives in the workflow, and input data lives outside of the workflow
    • Data Is automatically categorized to a data type in Text input tool (the smallest space taking data type)
    • Data Types → Make sure you’re careful with this when using text data input and need to do data blending
• 5 Data Types in Alteryx

Formatting Data with Select

• Remove columns if not needed by deselecting them using the select tool (optimizes speed)
• Change the data type
• Rename Data columns
• Join Tool → Allows you to select aswell

Viewing Data / Browse

• Browse Tool allows you to see all of the data

  • Access the quality, distribution and the values of the columns easily

  

• These two icons allow us to see before and after values of a tool

  

Filtering Data

• Just like basic filtering, but with different data types we can do different types of filtering
• Custom Filters → Must have AND, OR, etc. between multiple conditions
• The output gives us 2 output files (T or F), where T = Conditions met

Sort

• Sorting Strings, Numbers or Dates (Default Sorting is Ascending)
  • Strings are sorted by ASCII (default)
  • Could also sort by Dictionary way

Sample — Getting subset of the data

• Dynamic Random Sampling
• 6 Different sampling methods, and can easily groupby data

Parsing Data, Uniqueness and Joins

Parsing Data

• Can Parse Data with a tool which allows us to read delimiters and turn 1 column into multiple columns (or rows → but make sure to have a PK first for this)
• If you want to delimit with multiple conditions i.e on Columns, just put them beside each other with a column