Hello Alteryx Team and Community,
I’d like to propose an enhancement for the Join Tool to support multiple sets of join identifiers—essentially an 'OR' logic for joins.
The Use Case: In many real-world datasets, we deal with multiple levels of identification. For example, I might have a Specific Identifier and a Universal Identifier in the same column. E.g. a "Customer ID" field holding both legacy 6-digit integers and new alphanumeric UUIDs.
Currently, if I want to match records that could pair on either the specific or the universal ID, I have to build a 'Waterfall' logic:
- Perform the first Join.
- Take the L and R unjoined outputs.
- Feed them into a second Join tool with the second criteria.
- Use a Union Tool to bring the results together.
This 'Workaround' (Join -> Join -> Union) adds unnecessary complexity and tools to the canvas.
The Proposal: Allow the Join Tool to have a "Formula field" an 'Add Clause' or 'OR' toggle. This would allow the tool to check the first match condition, and if no match is found, attempt the second condition within the same tool. Or even find multiple matches.
This would significantly clean up workflows, reduce the tool count, and make the logic much easier to read for others. What do you think? Would this save you as much time as it would for me?"
Let me now your thoughts on it!
Best regards!
