Get input Data file name from cell in workflow

Question

I have a folder that has a file dropped in there every week and I want my workflow to leverage the newest file without having to manually updating it.  The file names are all the same but have the date appended to the end in yyyy-mm-dd format.  I was thinking I could use the directory tool and then parse the date out and sort descending and then the newest file is at the top and then I could just use the file in the first cell.  Problem is I do not know how to access that file name as a input source to load the spreadsheet as the input tool wants you to select the file. I was thinking about the dynamic input tool but have not been able to figure out how that would work for me.  Any guidance would be appreciated.

Sample directory:

Report-2025-04-01.csv

Report-2025-03-25.csv

Report-2025-03-18.csv

apathetichell · Answer

@KGT- thanks for the details - looking back there are definitely some headscratchers in the product timeline.

KGT · Answer

To be honest, I don't know. And the below won't quell any desires either... Looking back, I wish it had have had focus.

It was an Alteryx SE (@CameronS)  who first built the Christmas gift XLSX reader in 2015, and then it was @MarqueeCrew & @Joe_Mako that built the one in the CReW macros now (circa 2017). Back then, there was a push to have less tools in the software, and so community sourced for specific functions was seen as a positive. I think there could be a lot done around the import of files, but it would quickly become a large project to cover most options.

It was 2013 when the price changed from ~$50k/yr to ~$5k/yr and so the user base really started to change from there, to more business end user. I never heard any conversation about it, but I can imagine that in 2016-ish, it may have been mentioned about productionising something for multiple sheets/files. But after that, I'm not so sure, as there was continual new data sources springing up every week from different/new vendors, mostly cloud in the back half of the last decade.

Also, from about 2018-2022, the thought would have been that it would be addressed with Cloud, but that hasn't happened as Excel formats are just as common in business now from what I can see, and what I experience (and in ProfServ it's going to be around for a time yet).

And on Multi-field Binning, (although just an example), that was created specifically for Predictive work, maybe v9.5 which would have been 2015-ish. I can totally understand the look of it, as to why was that a priority, but it was slipped in to complement the predictive set which was a definite push since the predictive set was added in 2012. It would not have been built by the team that may have looked at a better importer.

apathetichell · Answer

@KGT - inside question - why isn't this a tool? like was there a conversation where someone was like 'hey! let's bundle some macros and call it multi-sheet reader' -- 'hmmm... sounds good - but let's go with multi-field binning -> that's going to be super useful -- or a create samples tool which doesn't create variable consistent samples....'