Confusion about the dynamic input tool

Question

I've recently been going through sample workflows on designer, but for some reason, I can't seem to understand the purpose of the dynamic input tool. I somewhat understand its purpose in regards to SQL queries (It works similar to that of a vlookup/join), but when it comes to using it with a directory, I'm having trouble understanding its purpose. I understand that the directory tool looks up all files in a desired path, but I can't seem to understand what changing the entire file path with the full path does. Does anyone know of an example that would make this easy to understand?

Matthew · Answer

you'll need to tell it which folder to read (either dynamically or a fixed location) but yes. any files that match a filename format, or match a template format (in that specific folder) will be brought in by the tool, even if there are multiples

messi007 · Answer

@wumbo1,

You can take a look on the example provided by Alteryx :

Hope this helps!

Regards

wumbo1 · Answer

I see. So in this case, the template would be an example of that report and the tool would just look for any instances of that report in the folder and sub-directories? So, in your example, you're saying that the tool can gather all the reports even though someone is putting them in folders grouped by the month?