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Better way to filter / summarise?

Nicholas_White
8 - Asteroid

Hello,


An old project

I had a project where I am given a large data set, and I had to count things in it so that an audit team to put values into a compliance report.

 

Some values I need might look like this (this is completely made up):

 

Value 1: How many widgets were:

- manufactured after 2020

- origin of manufacture was Arizona, California, Nevada

- shipped to distribution center  

 

Value 2: How many widgets were:

- manufactured after 2020

- origin of manufacture was New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Colorado

- shipped to distribution center  

 

Value 3: How many widgets were:

- manufactured after 2020

- origin of manufacture was not in the South West

- shipped to distribution center  

Note: this would be a sum/difference of Value 1 and Value 2 and a third value calculated elsewhere.

 

I did the work using a series of Filter Tools and Summarize Tools, it's not very complicated.

 

This graphic below represents a logical mockup of the data split/group/count points of a branch in an actual workflow, take note of the 5 numbered data points: 

 

vitaminman12_1-1660927937442.png

 

 

A new project

So I've been tasked with doing some further filtering + summarizing. Let's say that there is a new field I want to add to the mix, and this field has 6 different values I need to split and count on, it would look something like this:

 

vitaminman12_2-1660928484430.png

 

Note that there are two scenarios here:

 

1. on the left side of the branch, 6 new fields were inserted between data points 2 and 4/5. This has effectively increased the number of data points I need to create by 12 (6 new fields * 2 fields beneath it)

2. On the right side of the branch, there are going to be 6 new data points.

My problem
 

This example above is a small sample of the fields I'm working with. My actual workflow has dozens of these filter/summarize combinations in it, it's already unwieldy. Adding more fields and values to filter/summarize on is going to make it an enormous Workflow. Just a mental calculation has it that I'll need somewhere in thousands of little filter/summarize combinations.

No one has time for that!

 

My question

 

Is there a better way to do this? I feel like the way I've been going about this is a brute-force 'work harder, not smarter' solution. I was wondering if maybe there is something like a dynamic way to create these filter/summarize combinations in a Workflow...something like an iterative macro where I can feed in a data set, and a list of filter/summarize combinations I need. Or maybe a better technique, something which is more intelligent than just manually splitting and counting the results. 

 

Thank you,

 

Nick

 

2 REPLIES 2
ARussell34
8 - Asteroid

Hello Nick,

 

Is the process of checking if the widgets were sent to a distributor a Boolean variable? as in "True" did get sent or "False" didn't get sent? If so, you could use the interface tools and documentation tools to make your selections. You can create two lists, one being a list of States and the other being a set of regions. Radio buttons could be used to decide if you're filtering by region or by State and turn off the other when selected. Then you could use the checkbox tools within each filter with the list of states or the list of regions to make multi-select of what regions you want to look at. From there your summarize would be based on those regions selected at the time of running and would have to be re-run again to answer further questions. You could also have an interface tool to filter by starting year as well. 

Nicholas_White
8 - Asteroid

Hi @ARussell34,

 

Thank you for your reply. 

 

Does the link below represent what your proposal is? 

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Dynamically-update-a-list-box-and-filt...

 

Thanks

 

Nick

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