Using Interface Tools to Select a Text Input

[aarhintz]

Hi everyone,

I am working to generalize my workflow, and part of that involves being able to select which text input "template" gets used.  Is it possible to use interface tools such as a drop down to accomplish this?  I imagine I could create my own "templates" in excel and use a file browse, but I would like to keep everything in Alteryx if possible.

Thanks! 

[tcroberts · Accepted solution]

You could add an extra column to each of these templates, let's call it "Code". For each template, all records would have the same value, say A, B, or C for templates 1, 2, and 3.

You could then have a dropdown input update a filter to drop all rows that do not contain the template code you've selected, and a select afterwards could remove the unwanted 'Code' column.

Could you provide some rough information about differences between the templates (different column names/number of columns, etc) that could lead to some complications?

Let me know if this would help,

Cheers!

[aarhintz]

The main purpose of the text inputs is to specify the dimensions of the tables I'm building.  Currently I have one with 120 rows and another with 100 fields.  It may sound silly to do it this way, but the data source doesn't necessarily populate all of the cells, so I union/join these text inputs to make sure the table has the correct dimensions.  The reason I need to select which template to use is because I will be producing tables of varying dimensions.