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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

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reginawhelan
8 - Asteroid

I am creating a repetitive flow which is comparing the data within our system to files received from the customer. These files are very large (~40,000 lines).

 

I need to compare the children's information but some families may have more than one child. Our system has an unique identifier for each child but the customers file doesn't. Both the system and customer's file has an identifier for the entire family.

 

I need to find out if there are new children, children no longer on the plan, if the child's first name, last name, DOB, etc.. is different between our system and the customers file.

 

If I concatenate the data by the parent's identifier and join by the concatenation the children are not matched/lined up properly (as some families have more than one child). I want to be specific with the required action, example; new child, remove child, name error, etc. so if I concatenate the first name with the parent's identifier it will not be specific enough, it could be a spelling error, new child, etc.

 

Any ideas?

6 REPLIES 6
Emil_Kos
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hi,

 

Can you provide some kind of sample data set and can you show the problem in details. I will be glad to help you but I need a little bit more details. 

 

Sample data set would help me to understand the problem. 

rafalolbert
ACE Emeritus
ACE Emeritus

@reginawhelan,

 

I had a similar use case 'on my drawing board' over the pandemic, where my org was working with government agencies on providing support for vulnerable individuals.

 

We had to match internal customer records with a few external instances of the same, however the format was different each time/entity.

 

The way we've resolved this was by using a waterfall logic: a sequence of direct joins across multiple fields, a wider set of fields to start with, followed by less restrictive (multiple joins in a stream with fewer joining fields in later steps, each time we annotated with a Formula tool what list of fields the match was made against). The last layer used Fuzzy Matching and whereas this only brought a handful (maybe less than 5% of total matches) this was very important as misspellings were present in the data, also things like addresses were described across a different set of fields like city, street, postcode vs. address1, address2, address3, address4, address5 (the values were the same/similar, but scattered across different fields). 

 

In terms of the other problem you have around the 1-to-many relationship between family and respective children, I would suggest keeping 2x sets of identifiers, so a family gets one/has one already and this is the parent key and you can use Multi-Row Formula to create ids for children (please make sure to organize/sort your data explicitly prior this step). When you create your concatenations for family+child, you should also carry the pair of ids through your stream, so that you can 'unpack' your data at later steps to the 'common' and comparable format, this is where you can compare by counting before and after states (more/fewer children etc.).

 

Hope this gives you some ideas, let me know how you get on?

 

Thanks,

Rafal

 

#Excuse me, do you speak Alteryx?

 

 

reginawhelan
8 - Asteroid

@Emil_Kos 

 

Hi, attached is a data sample (System & Customer). You will see that the Child ID# is missing from the Customer file.

 

I am good with the Parent data as they are identified in both files. It's the children I'm having a hard time joining properly. 

 

Data within a coloured cell should be identified as a discrepancy or new.

 

Thank you for your help!

Regina

reginawhelan
8 - Asteroid

@rafalolbert 

 

Hi, I don't see how this process could work for a repetitive flow (executed every week) with over 40,000 rows in each file. I attached a data sample similar to the files (just much smaller). My issue is not with the parents, it's with the children. I need to compare the data but can't seem to join them properly. 

 

Thanks,

Regina

 

Emil_Kos
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hi @reginawhelan,

 

I have prepared a solution for you. It should identify positions that are incorrect. The same for new children or children that aren't longer in the list. 

 

Emil_Kos_1-1614931023161.png

It will currently not work for twins (as if two children in one family will have the same date of birth if will create a duplicate).


Do you have situations like this? 

 

grzegorzs
5 - Atom

Dzień dobry Panu Rafałowi :)

 

Ciężko Cię znaleźć w świecie. Jak żyjecie?

 

Pozdrawiam,

Grzesiek

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