Excel chart images as input

[zehner_daniel_r]

I've been challenged with automating the collection of charts from a number of Excel sheets into a PowerPoint presentation on a monthly basis. Usually this is a manual process to pull together 100+ slides, but since each Excel file is the same and has a file name that is easily cycled through, I think it might be possible to automate this workflow. My question is, how do you point to an Excel chart to pull it into an Alteryx workflow? Is this possible?? Do I need to just bring in the data and build the chart in Alteryx for export?

[s_pichaipillai]

Hi Daniel

i dont Think you can pull the Charts from Aleryx and use it in your workflow

as far as i know, Alteryx helps to blend the data not the charts 

one way you build and automate your charts is , bring your raw data and prepare required data for you chart in put and use the Tools unders reports (see the below image) and design your reports whatver you want , and you can Render your charts into PDF,Excel, etc (see the 2nd image)

Render format

hope this helps

[MarqueeCrew · Accepted solution]

Daniel,

I would approach the problem by sourcing the data into Alteryx and using Alteryx to create the powerpoint presentation graphs.  If all of the input files have the same structure, you can use a single input tool and wildcard (*) the input so that you only need the one tool.  Within that input tool, you should use the 5th option (Output File Name as Field = Yes) and save the source for later use.  Within the Reporting tool, Charting, you can use the "Grouping" option to create your 100 charts.

Please bear in mind that this suggestion is a fix and not a solution.  I would want you to consider managing the data entirely in Alteryx and removing all of your inputs from Excel.  If the master powerpoint is the goal and the Excel documents are static (updated with data) you can use OLE objects to link Excel and Powerpoint to dynamically update the presentation slides.  Yikes!  I can't believe I would suggest that to you, but it is another way to get to your end result.

Blend the data in Alteryx and produce your Powerpoint.  That's the way to go. 

[chris_love]

I would implore you to investigate Tableau as an alternative to Powerpoint, no-one wants to be updating 100 slides every month! the whole process could be automated in Alteryx and Tableau easily - and the time saving would be vast and the result much more pleasing.

[zehner_daniel_r]

Believe me, I would love to use Tableau Server to serve up these slides, but Tableau isn't widely adopted at my company yet, and a lot of management just sees it as "pretty charts" (not sure how they're less usable than Excel's "pretty charts", but I digress) and don't want to deal with learning how to use it (even though it is much better for this!).

[zehner_daniel_r]

Great suggestion! This will be a good stop gap until I'm able to put together all the data in Alteryx (which is my ultimate goal, but that will be a longer term solution and will take a while to implement since there are a lot of calculations to put together these charts).