Migration from MS Access to Altryx

[kishorhk]

Hello All,

I am a newbie on this Altryx ground so please correct if any of my understanding isn't inline. 

We have a dashboard that has following workflow, get excel data which is processed by some set of queries in MS Access then it passes it to Qlik to build desired dashboards. We are exploring opportunities to migrate the MS Access coding and Qlik dashboard creation to Altryx. We have constraints on having any DB to store the input files as there are multiple sources and multiple formats. Can Altryx help to create on creating a scalable solution where we can plug and play it with required changes fro these flat excel files to a proper SQL DB in future.?

[wdavis]

Hi @kishorhk 

The short answer is yes! How this is implemented will the depend on the types of process that are currently built in Access and the DB you need to connect to.

The use case you have described is what many people use Alteryx for today though.

I would recommend downloading a trial of the solution and you will be able to get someone to assist with helping you build this out.

Kind regards,

Will

[kishorhk]

Hello Will,

Thanks for your reply, as I stated earlier. We don't have any DB at all to connect to. If I add some more details on our current process, it is as per below,

We get Excel files from multiple formats from 3 sources, 1 file each for 2 departments and 3 files from the third one. We process these 5 files as per macro created on 3 Access DB (3 Access DB contains monthly data and 1 Access DB has our static definitions to process the monthly data) created for each department and then that output is fed to Qlik which has some calculations defined it uses and creates the dashboards, with Nprinting process in Qlik we get these dashboards in PPT downloadable format.

We need to remove the MS Access dependency in this overall process, and we have a constraint to store the initial 5 excel files in any DB. So, can Alteryx do exactly what MS access does in above scenario?

[wdavis]

Hi @kishorhk 

Yes, Alteryx is very easy to connect to multiple Excel files in different formats. It would slightly depend on exactly the logic that is being defined within the Access DB, but you would almost certainly be able to replicate this in Alteryx.  It is then possible to output your data into a Qlik format, so that it can refresh the data in your dashboards. In some instances, it may also be easier to carry out the calculations directly in Alteryx prior to Qlik as well.

In terms of the constraint you mentioned, Alteryx itself is not a database so would not be storing any data. However, it can read / write files from a large variety of data sources. 

Thanks

Will

[kishorhk]

Thanks a lot, Will. This is very helpful!

If you don't mind, I will be coming back to you some more queries once we actually start on this migration project.

Thanks,

Kishore Karankal

[wdavis · Accepted solution]

Hi Kishore,

In this instance, it might be worth reaching out to your Alteryx account team who might be able to provide a more structured session to understand your current approach within Access and how you could go about transitioning this to Alteryx.

You can start a free trial of the software from here - https://www.alteryx.com/designer-trial/free-trial-alteryx

Kind regards,

Will