Setting timing delay within the workflow

I am working on an Alteryx process that I want to output different parts of the process to a single Excel file with multiple tabs. Occasionally I run into timing issues where a tab can not be written to because of file locking issues. I want to get around this issue by inserting a timing loop that will delay the process run for X number of seconds before continuing to the next step.

Is there an Alteryx tool that has this functionality?

Thanks in advance.

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RolandSchubert

Hi @lmaughan ,

there is a CrewMacro named "Wait A Second" that could do the job. You also could consider using "Block Until Done".

Best,

Roland

lmaughan

Does the Wait a Second macro pause for X seconds between each data row calculation? I added it to a flow that has ~2000 rows of data and without the Wait a Second macro, the process finishes in .8 seconds. With the macro inserted, the process took 31 minutes to complete when the parameter was set to wait 1 second.

I am not sure how to connect the Block until Done to wait for one data stream to complete before writing out the second OUTPUT.

Can you clarify please?

Thanks!

CAJay

solution which I could think of using R tool, on Alteryx wait issue please find below

Basically 2 tools are being used to arrive at the solution –

Block until Done and R language Tool

Under Block until done tool

1st Stage add R Language tool and run below script – (”30” in script means 30 seconds , which can be changed accordingly)

2nd Stage add the relevant tool needed as per your requirement

R Script below

testit <- function(x)

{

p1 <- proc.time()

Sys.sleep(x)

proc.time() - p1 # The cpu usage should be negligible

}

testit(30)

aroumpelaki

Hello all!

I had the exact same issue, and the Block Until Done tool works just fine!
In my case, I had all the data gathered with a join, the first two rows are the headers and the rest of the rows are the numeric data.

So, I added the Block Until Done tool just before splitting my data.

This way, the flow first picks the header data, and writes it to excel in text format.
When that is finished, it picks the rest of the rows, converts them to numeric, and appends them to the sheet.

Hope it helps

EdP

Additional suggestions can be found here:

https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/Error-writing-Excel-file-to-Shared-Drive

AsmiDesai

I was trying this logic of adding timer in workflow, a lot of good solutions here.

I referenced them to do it using Block until done + Python tool as I don't have R tool.

Here it is:

Python Lines:

from ayx import Alteryx
from datetime import datetime
import time
import psutil
def adpause(x):
   p1 = time.process_time()
   time.sleep(x)
   return time.process_time() - p1
current_time=datetime.now()
print("Timer starts at: " ,current_time)
result = adpause(60)
current_time=datetime.now()
print("Timer ends at: " ,current_time)

jastamme

Is not the most elegant solution but this has also always worked for me... Just use Control Containers for each tabpage you want to produce and make sure you link each control container. it will process the first control container and then only moves to the next control container once it has finished with anything inside the previous control container. (The link Ed Phelps provided above was where i learned all the solutions on this a few months ago )

control containers.png

EdP

@JPSeagull

The Crew_DelayASecond does a single pause for the data stream rather than a pause between each record (as WaitASecond does), which is generally what we want.

The page below goes into options for writing multiple sheets of an Excel file. I agree with @jastamme that linked Control Containers are the best starting point. But in some environments, a delay may still be needed if the environment has background file replication or virus scanning active that opens the file after Designer finishes writing a sheet. In those environments, the pause will give the background process time to complete.

https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/Error-writing-Excel-file-to-Shared-Drive

MRapp

The CReW macro did the trick for me! Thank you for highlighting that one.

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