Ensure that Alteryx does not drop variables added to early parts of the flow

[NP2022]

Dear all,

first of all, many thanks for all the answers provided in this forum, which were of tremendous help to me in the past!

There is one issue I regularly encounter for which I have not yet found a solution in this forum or the Alteryx Designer program itself: I currently work with a relatively large Alteryx flow for which I sometimes need to make changes to early parts of the flow, e.g., including additional columns from an input joined to the main data set at some place in the beginning of the flow. Whenever I do so, Alteryx does not seem to recognize that I want this new column to follow through the whole flow all the way to the end, i.e., I basically have to go through every Select and Join Formula in the flow to make sure that the column is selected and not dropped. For some Select/Join formulas, Alteryx seems to automatically recognize this, for others it doesn't - and I have not yet been able to figure out the pattern behind this.

Is there any way to tell Alteryx that a new variable shall not be dropped in subsequent stages of the flow?

Many thanks in advance for any help!

Best,

NP2022 

[Emil_Kos · Accepted solution]

Hi @NP2022,

I am assuming that you are losing those columns at joins/select tools.

Make sure that the unknown column is a ticket. Without it, you will lose the new columns and you will need to add them manually.

[NP2022]

Hi Emil,

many thanks for the lightning-fast response!

That was indeed the mistake as until now I did not know what the "Unknown" column represented and must have deselected it in some cases. Thanks a lot, this is super helpful!

Best,

NP2022