Populating a new template using an old template

kcoleman

I've been tasked with the below and am trying to figure out the best course of action from an Alteryx point of view... any pointers on best way to approach it? 

- I have a legacy template, which the company wants to move away from

- it has 4 tabs which they want to combine into two tabs in the new template

- some columns are being moved around in order

- this needs to be repeated for each legacy template -> new template

I'm thinking to start, I need to input an old tab and new tab side by side and map them over. Then I need to figure out how to combine the two sets of tabs that are being combined. In terms of "rebuilding" the new template excel file, I'm not sure. Multi-tab files scare me!

Many thanks

DavidP

Hi @kcoleman 

Whenever I'm faced with a problem like this (which at 1st glance seems big and complicated), I try to reduce it to the simplest version of the problem I can try and solve.

So my thinking would be to try and solve it for one instance first. 

I would load all 4 tabs from the old template with induvial Input Data tools.

Something I often do is to create a Text input tool with all the columns (in the right order) for my desired output format - you'll need 2 of these, since you want 2 output tabs.

You'll then use a Union tool to combine 2 of the input tools with each of the Text Input tools.

Of course, you'll need a select tool for each of the Input Data tools to map the fields to the new out put format, and you keep working through it until the output format looks the way you want.

Then you can write it out to your new template and once you have all that working you can decide how to make it repeatable for all templates

The Text Input tools are not strictly necessary, but it sometimes helps to organise what you have to do.

The solution will look something like this: