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Alteryx Auto Insights Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Auto Insights experts

Auto Insights: One of The Consequences of Wrong Date Format

rkong
Alteryx
Alteryx
Created

Auto Insight's recommended date format is YYYY-MM-DD. However, it uses an algorithm to detect the date format. It works well when there are many discrete date values at a daily level. For example, Auto Insights is able to automatically determine whether the date format is YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY (UK/AU Format) or MM-DD-YYYY (US Format) given enough samples. This article shows one of the consequences if there is only data for four days: 1st Sept 2021, 1st Oct 2021, 1st Nov 2021, and 1st Dec 2021 when the date format is recommended and wrong format. 
 

Prerequisites

 

  • Auto Insights User Portal
  • Auto Insights Admin Portal
  • Data source from cloud MS SQL


Example


There are 1527 rows of data for four days: 1st Sept 2021, 1st Oct 2021, 1st Nov 2021, and 1st Dec 2021.

The reference input uses recommended date format YYYY-MM-DD.

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The problematic input uses UK/AU date format DD-MM-YYYY (MS SQL date format 105).

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Common Issues


Here is the correct result from recommended date format. It detects the data is for four months, so it uses a quarter as the unit of time.

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Here is the result from the wrong date format. It considers the data is for four days from Jan 9th, 2021, to Jan 12th, 2021, so it uses a day as the unit of time.

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Therefore, it is strongly recommended to use the correct date format YYYY-MM-DD.

Additional Resources