Common Fuzzy Matching between multiple sources simplified

[Olga]

Hello, I am very new to Alteryx, so my suggestion might appear elementary for the veteran-users. From the standpoint of adoptation by less technical people (moving from Excel to Alteryx), would it be possible to take common scenarios of Fuzzy Matching and automate them?

For example, if you have 2 databases and you want to match and clean them up, you have to have close to 10 steps, with sorting, adding unique identifiers, joining, fuzzy matching, etc. Just look at your video named "Fuzzy Matching" or other videos for Tableau+Alteryx. They idea is basic. If you know most common use cases and you have already developed a methodology for how to solve these cases, why not have them as part of the tools library?

Also, when matching, for example universities, wouldn't it be easier if all those common, aka appearing many times, words were automatically suggested to be removed from the "match". Example: University A and Univeristy B are two different Universities, but they share the common word "University". While it's important that this word is there, it is not the reason to pair these two together. Maually going through and identifying and typing these common words is an extra step. It would be much easier to have a pop list of these common words and the count of records in which they appear, sorted by the count, and a check box to include or exclude the words.

Thank you,

Olga

Link to the Fuzzy Matching video. Check Minute 9:41.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZiM2YSCCY&index=13&list=PLfSLx4WE4q52YoGEzJEBalfNou6jfRTF0&nohtml5...

[dataMack]

Hi and welcome to the community. I think there are 2 different ideas in your question, the first I don't believe is specific to fuzzy matching but is actually a bit broader. (1) How do i automate common data prep tasks that I routinely perform based on my knowledge of my data. (2) How do I customize the Fuzzy Matching tool specifically. The first is definitely where Alteryx shines, especially with macros. You can build a flow that does the steps you routinely perform and then leverage that macro as part of other workflows. For example, lets say that you know every time you get data from a particular database (database A) you need to perform a set of steps on it such as fix the date columns, remove null values and parse the IDs. You could build a 'Database A' macro that has these steps. Then you just add the Database A macro to your workflow after the Input connection to Database A. Your second question gets a bit more complex, but it is actually possible to add your own fuzzy matching methods into the tool. This is an advanced feature that requires admin rights, so it's probably better for a Knowledge-base type post from one of the Alteryx engineers.

[Olga]

Hi jason_m_mack, thank you for your response. I think this is exactly what I will end up doing - building a series of macros for quick re-insertion in the process. Is there a library of available cool macros?

[Joe_Lipski]

Hey @Olga I'm sure in the past 5 years you've probably found some libraries of cool macros, but here are the places that I would start:

1) CReW Macros: http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/p/macros.html

2) Alteryx Gallery Districts: https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!districts

3) Google whatever you need (e.g.) Alteryx Google API Macro