topic Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance in Weekly Challenges

Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

GeneR — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 16:52:33 GMT

The link to last week’s challenge (challenge #25) is HERE

This week’s challenge is a use case faced by one of our customers that can leverage the geo-spatial tools available in Alteryx. If you have the spatial data available you can output your results as drive-distance, in the event that you do not have the drive-distance data available, please use the straight-line distance. The basic tools and setup of the data needed will be identical. Output results will be provided for both methods. In the event that you use drive-distance and your results vary slightly from the sample output, it may be due to variance in the data set used for the exercise.

Use Case: in order to audit their employee expense reports, a service company would like to calculate how far (in miles) their technician is traveling from their hotels, to the worksite, then to their destination hotel on a daily basis.

The Data: The source is collected in a way that record 1 contains the spatial object for the beginning hotel for day 1, record 2 is the spatial object for the worksite for day 1, and record 3 is the spatial object for the ending hotel for day 1. This pattern repeats for three successive days.

Find the distance on a daily basis the technician is either driving or straight line distance if you don’t have the spatial data available.

Enjoy!

Re: Weekly Exercise #26: Service Technician Travel Distance (Beginner)

TaraM — Mon, 23 May 2016 14:46:08 GMT

A solution has been uploaded

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

LeahK — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 19:49:21 GMT

Challenge accepted :)

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

MarqueeCrew — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:49:54 GMT

@JoeM,

Here's my abbreviated take on this one.... I followed a different path from @LeahK :)

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

SeanAdams — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 17:37:47 GMT

solution attached - slightly different approach

- Simple open polygon for the day's travels using a row ID to sequence
- then took the distance using a spatial info.

Note: didn't work out the straight line difference between the hotels as a second set, I think I misunderstood the question a little :-)

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

NicoleJohnson — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 19:31:22 GMT

I used straight-line distance for this one. I feel like there was probably another way that wouldn't involve Tiles & Cross-Tab, but it worked... :)

Solution: Unique Value Tile by Date to determine 1,2,3 step for Hotel A to Site to Hotel B > Cross-Tab: Group by Date, Column = Tile SequenceNum, Values = Spatial Obj. > Find Distance between SequenceNum 1 & 2 and 2 & 3 > Join by Date > Formula: Hotel to Site Distance + Site to Hotel B Distance.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

estherb47 — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 03:59:52 GMT

My solution looks very much like @NicoleJohnson's

Spoiler

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

LordNeilLord — Mon, 22 May 2017 07:21:38 GMT

A nice easy one to start the day with

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

Laurap1228 — Tue, 30 May 2017 13:43:19 GMT

I really liked this one :) I always feel smart when I solve the challenge quickly.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

A_Twa — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 15:56:12 GMT

I arrived at a similar solution to the 'official' one. Although I did have to solicit some help from a colleague who ultimately put me on the right path.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

robcarroll — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:43:43 GMT

My solution is different to the provided solution but same answer.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

nick_ceneviva — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 14:47:51 GMT

See attached solution for the straight distance.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

jamielaird — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 15:48:05 GMT

Here's my solution.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

patrick_digan — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:23:42 GMT

My solution attached

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

Natasha — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 08:51:05 GMT

I love how this simple challenge sparked so many different solutions.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

iain_sterland — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:44:07 GMT

This solution used just two tools.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

marcreid — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 17:14:14 GMT

Solution

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

dominiklz — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 08:28:01 GMT

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

JoshKushner — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 04:04:14 GMT

Next step: Find out how to get spatial data.

Re: Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

samN — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 04:27:56 GMT

Pretty simple

Using Poly builder Polyline and Spacial info tool