anonymizing or hashing data to tableau server

HI all,

Does anyone know a way to anonymizing data in Alteryx? I have unique identifiers that function as keys in my current DB. When I publish data to Tableau server I want to be able to change these IDs so they are usable in Tableau but revertable to IDs in my DB. Any ideas?

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Accepted answers

danilang

Hi @JohnMaty

If you're willing to take an approach where you push fake IDs to Tableau and store a mapping table somewhere else, you can use this to generate the anonymous ids

Get the list of unique IDs and use a RecordID to generate a String key for each ID. Join back to the input data, giving you something like this to send to Tableau

The mapping table looks like this

Dan

AnonIDs.yxmd

All comments

danilang

Hi @JohnMaty

The problem with, and actually the Raison d'etre, of most hashing algorithms is that they're designed to be one-way. String A gives hash value B, but given hash B you can't recreate String A. That's where encryption algorithms come in. They can both encrypt and decrypt data. They can also be difficult to implement. Luckily, @Ned, one of the founders of Alteryx, has a post where he shows how to encrypt data using a key. He also provided the workflow that does it.

Dan

JohnMaty

Thanks I will be checking that out. I figured hashing was not feasible or logical here but thought, "hey, this is Alteryx, someone might have a 'thing'"

danilang

Hi @JohnMaty

If you're willing to take an approach where you push fake IDs to Tableau and store a mapping table somewhere else, you can use this to generate the anonymous ids

Get the list of unique IDs and use a RecordID to generate a String key for each ID. Join back to the input data, giving you something like this to send to Tableau

The mapping table looks like this

Dan

AnonIDs.yxmd

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