Santalytics 2020 - Results and Recap

[WillM]

I want to start out by saying how thrilled I am with the participation that we got in Santalytics for 2020! We had some amazing entries from all around the community; people worked individually, in teams, and we had some fantastic user group submissions as well. I'd like to give a big "Thank you" to @DanM and @CristonS who helped judge the entries (and believe me this was not an easy task). We'll be announcing the winners in this blog, but before we do that, I'd like to run through some of our entries to give some shout outs to those that participated.

We had several entries that were great examples of the classic "Santa Route Optimizer" or some variation of that. Santa will no longer need help figuring out his timing or his most efficient route to deliver presents with all the help from the Alteryx Community!

• @Aaron_Harter's ETA to North Pole app included a mathematical proof and was very well structured
• @jtwmoore created an app that explains the Sleigh Pocket-Dimension Time.  It isn't necessarily a route optimizer, but gives the Murphy's Law explanation for how he can move so fast and maybe not need to optimize his route so much
• @David-Carnes didn't create a route optimizer per se, but his usage of prepositioning and the K-Centroids tool (which we LOVE) was a fantastic look at how to be effective at delivery in other ways
• @AkimasaKajitani created an optimized route app that was definitely a best practice example of the classic route optimizer
• @NeilR showed us an app based around equidistant locations, which could be an incredibly versatile tool in a lot of scenarios
• @phottovy gave Santa some options by providing multiple routes so he can decide which suits him best at any given moment.  It's also some of the most festive reporting that we saw!

There were also a few entries we received around media consumption and partnering with Amazon around the holidays.  Whether it's which music to listen to, which movie to watch, or what type of gift to order the Alteryx Community has your back!

• @cplewis90 showed a great way for Santa to distribute toys based on their rating from Amazon as well as the "niceness" score from tweets
• @T_Willins used some great tools to help Santa decide on which movie to watch with Mrs. Claus after a long night delivering presents.  Getting to narrow results by genre and decade is definitely a step up from endlessly scrolling through Netflix!
• @KevinHarrison paired the naughty and nice list with Amazon reviews to decide who's getting what this year.  Even though Bezos has enough money as it is, at least everyone's getting a toy!
• @ADerbak, @Derangedvisions, @EricMartinson, @RMohr88, @brandon7932, and @Mike_Fitz worked together in the NA Central User Group meeting to put together an app the helps narrow the workshop's production list based on item-performance data.

And we even had a few entries that can't be readily grouped into larger categories; they certainly still deserve some major kudos for all of the work that went into them!

• @grossal put together an incredibly useful tool for Santa to help with Alteryx version updating.  This is a really cool idea, and something you might want to look into for your own day to day!
• @marcusblackhill and @carlosteixeira worked together on a macro that should be on everyone's list if they're struggling to learn crosstab and transpose logic.  It's format is similar to a pivot table and it's super helpful to take it in!
• @mbogusz worked on an app to help Santa double his principle and purchasing power by... not buying any presents for the year and investing the capital instead.  I love the willingness to go there and not fear the disappointment of children the world over.  Santa believes in delayed satisfaction...delayed exponential satisfaction.
• @Dynamomo and @Amarendra   worked together to create an app that would format a letter to Santa based on input data.  This could be something really fun to do with your own kids next year, so bookmark it for the future!  This also happened to be Rafi's absolute favorite (check out his letter below)

And now it's time to announce our winners!  With all of your submissions, this was not an easy task and there was definitely lots of back and forth.  No one was on the Naughty List, that's for sure.  But a few entries rose to the top of the Nice List!

Our community members put in some truly great work to achieve very different outcomes.  I'd like to congratulate both @atcodedog05 and @Spalders for their entries, and for being selected as our runners up!  Let's take a look at what they put together for the challenge.

• @atcodedog05 created an Alteryx themed holiday card maker using the Santalytics 2017 periodic table of Alteryx tools. The app creates a randomized grid ot tool icons as a background pattern for the recipient and allows the user to enter the receiver's name on the card.  This is such a fun way to bring Alteryx into the holidays; check out the card below!
  
  
  
  
• @Spalders took another route entirely and created a Christmas Track Selector using the Spotify API.  This app provides a lot of user control by allowing the selection of Key, Danceability, "Acousticness", Energy, "Instrumentalness", Liveness, and Tempo.  There are a lot of track selectors out there, but few have this much control, and the PDF output with the album art really sets it apart!
  
  

And finally, it's time to announce that the winner of the 2020 Santalytics App Challenge is a team from the NA Central User Group! CONGRATULATIONS to @Deanna and the NA Central User Group members on the team who helped with the app build: Aimee, Austin, Dave, Emily, Eric, Jen, Jujlija, @JustinBabbitt, Kaush, Kelly, Kris, L. Scott, @lc_p, Pam, @DALAM20, Rachel, Raghav, Rajat, Renu, Scott, Sujana, @tareque, @mkcompton, and others!  This group took one of our sample datasets and created an app that allows a user to find the "Worst Christmas Songs" (or the best ones) based on their preferred criteria.

Again, a huge thank you and congratulations to everyone that participated in the challenge this year.  It was a change in form from our regularly scheduled programming, and you all really stepped up to meet the challenge in what was a particularly challenging year. Your creativity and dedication shone through and each and every person that participated put forth some incredible work. And for everyone that participate, you've got a shiny new badge on your community profile as well - here's to all of you!