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Calling out something new in month over month data

HannahGriffith
5 - Atom

Hello! I am newer to Alteryx and loving it so far. I have a problem that I am struggling to solve, and haven't quite found what I needed in my searches.

 

I have a big data set that gets updated monthly, coming from an external source.  This feeds through a workflow with many different filters to produce my outputs, which is working really well. What I need now is a check to see when something new is showing up in 10 of my columns I use to filter....

 

For example, one filter is on "Employment Status." There are currently 8 different Employment Statuses, and I want to know when a new one is added.

 

I was able to export a listing every month of all my fields -- example attached -- but I need Alteryx to look at two months and tell me what's new. I have tried a join, but I think I need the join to look at all the columns separately? (The rows are meaningless.) Do I need 10 separate inputs per month (20 inputs) and 10 separate joins? It seems like there would be a more efficient option? 

 

Thanks!!

4 REPLIES 4
PhilipL
Alteryx
Alteryx

@HannahGriffith My first thought is to do Summarize (or Unique) on the values in your 8 fields for each month and compare them using Joins on the Summarized/Uniqued values. Your L and R outputs from the Joins will tell you what is different month to month.

Garabujo7
Alteryx
Alteryx

Hello @HannahGriffith ,

 

You can transpose the column names and the join them to get the ones that are new.

 

Garabujo7_0-1669833433757.png

 

 

Gabriel

Garabujo7
Alteryx
Alteryx

Also, as @PhilipL states, you can use the summarize and then a join to identify the ones that are new:

 

Garabujo7_0-1669833757201.png

 

 

Gabriel

PhilipL
Alteryx
Alteryx

@Garabujo7 wrote:

Hello @HannahGriffith ,

 

You can transpose the column names and the join them to get the ones that are new.

 

Garabujo7_0-1669833433757.png

 

 

Gabriel

 

 


With the transpose method, if you feed files in for both months, be sure to filter out null/empty values:

PhilipL_0-1669836232435.png

 

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