Repetitive process inquiry

[AbdullahMansour90]

Hello, I have this workflow i designed to arrange some economic data for a country, i need to change the input for other 4 countries i have (same format) i have the data for countries in different excel workbooks. so basically i need a dynamic input for the workflow that reads the files and apply the workflow on it, also that will be a part of other workflow so i was thinking of putting into a macro but i am little confused how does that works. any help please? 

[BrandonB]

You are correct that you will likely need to leverage a macro in order to do so. A macro can be thought of as a way to run a certain set of tools multiple times by parameterizing an input. So for example, if you have one file that goes through a series of transformations and then outputs, you could add a control parameter and an action tool that connect to the Input Data tool, then save this process as a macro. When you put this macro in another workflow to accept a list of file paths, it will run that exact same process one time for every file path that you are passing into it. 

I would highly recommend watching this video training on the process: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Videos/Build-Your-First-Batch-Macro/td-p/52900

[sazit]

Hi Abdullah,

From what I see, you can do it one of two ways. 

Firstly you could try to use the Dynamic Input tool for each of your four excel inputs and basically get all your countries files at once. This could mean you need to use a group by filename with the summarize tool to do ur parsings for different countries separately.

Secondly, and this one using a batch macro, you could add control parameters to all of your inputs in the macro and then in your main workflow can simply send the paths for the 4 different inputs to read them all at once (understanding that they have the same schema). Have a look at the files attached and if it was like something that you were trying to do.