Join Tool - Output for Left and Right Inputs

[jmmart08]

Hi All

I have a question regarding the Join tool that I was looking to get some opinions on.  I have a workflow built that is joining 2 different spreadsheets in hopes to reconcile each different input.  I currently just look at the left and right input tabs of the join tool to figure out what the discrepancies are in the 2 data sets, if there are any.  Simple enough.

That being said, is there a way that I can filter down (so I can place 1 output somewhere that shows exactly what hasn't "matched" between the sets) to only see what the true exceptions between the 2 inputs are?  The reason I am pursuing this now is because I am about to publish workflows for users and it doesn't appear that the Alteryx Server lets a user place in their own output or look at the workflow to see the left and right join outputs?  I am brand new to the server so I am probably very wrong here.  But it would be nice to have 1 output so a user does not have to look at the left and right tabs of the Join tool and any exceptions are the final result.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you very much!

[MichalM]

@jmmart08 

Would using a Union which will stack the Left and Right output of the Join on top of each other work? You could then feed this into a single output the users could consumer.

You could also automatically append the filename as a field to indicate which of the two spreadsheets the unmatched records came from.

[Emil_Kos]

Hi @jmmart08,

I am not sure how the Alteryx server looks like but you can use block until done to save the left and right join's on the separate sheets if your output will be the excel file.

Thanks to that full report and each of joins will have their own sheet. 

[jmmart08]

@MichalM 

Thank you for your response.  Much appreciated.  I understand the piece about changing the input file to have the file name as an Output field, but does that still require the union before?  I still have the output file attached to the join so I'm still not sure how to have the exceptions in the left and right as part of the process.

I am also unsure of how to make the union piece work in this instance.  I attempted to place a union after my join and made flows from the left, join, and right to the union but everything came up null.  Not very familiar with how to make this work.

[MichalM · Accepted solution]

@jmmart08 

This is what I had in mind.

I'm assuming both workbooks have the same structure - in my example two columns - name and value. When I use the Join, J output will show me the matched records. I can output these into one file.

L and R are going to show me records that didn't match. If I Union these, I will get all the exceptions and can output the as a second file.

When I publish the workflow into the Gallery, the end user will be able to choose which output they'd like to download.

Attached is the example workflow.