Issue with column headers

[paulbr]

Hi All, on a monthly basis I run 7 reports. I save them down into a folder & have built a very simple workflow using the union tool (to combine all of the reports) & then I use the Select tool (to pull required columns) I then have an output tool saving required data. This works very well & saves me considerable time however. When I go to the following month & run my 7 reports the alteryx flow remains selected on prior month data. So in Feb I asked it to look at column J & get me Feb information, now I'm in march , column J contains the march info I need however the workflow is now looking at column I & still pulling Feb data. its something to do with the field name within the select tool that i cant figure out. i have tried renaming the field but when i roll forward a month it still selects prior month data. any ideas on how i can select a column each month without it moving on me?

Cheers & appreciate the support.

[echuong1]

Alteryx uses field names for everything - since you checked off to include a field called "feb", that is what it is going to look for.

If you'd like to select values based on position, you can use a dynamic select with the field number.

If you're able to upload a copy of your input file and workflow, I can mock up a workflow.

[Luke_C]

Hi @paulbr ,

If I'm reading correctly, your data looks something like this? 

If so, something like this might work:

1. Transpose the data so the month columns become rows
2. Filter on the month (I assume you are processing the prior month, so to make it dynamic I use the datetime functions to subtract one month from today's date)
3. Crosstab back to original format.

I'm sure there's also a way to do this with the dynamic select tool + datetime functions

[mattnason1]

If you want to just name the month column something like current month just update number to column position and current month to what you want it to say in the orange box.  Then you can connect to the workflow and it should work going forward.

If you want the name to eventually say January or whatever came across then it's just one dynamic rename after the workflow to take back the original names going back to the record ID.

[apathetichell]

Not 100% sure what you are looking for - but let's say your trying to do a join where you pull out the current month data from a larger spreadsheet - you can use dynamic rename with a formula option like:

datetimeformat(datetimetoday(),"%B") (for full month name)

or

datetimeformat(datetimetoday(),"%b") (for abbreviated month name) and it will update it to reflect the current month.

Assuming there are multiple identifiers within the column you may do something like datetimeformat(datetimetoday(),"%B")+replace([_currentfield_],datetimeformat(datetimeadd(datetimetoday(),-1,"month"),"%B"),"")

that would update March Invoice to April Invoice.

A few notes:

1) case sensitive.

2) that's set up for full month name - not abbreviated month name.

3) that only updates last month's name to this month's name.