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Rank Tool (New Tool)

The introduction fo a rank tool would be hugely beneficial. Whilst there are currently means to rank using a combination of other tools formula/running total/multirow etc... a specific "Rank Tool" would be provide a seemless and smoother way to rank your data either for further analysis or purely to output this field.

 

This tool should include a sort by and group by functionaility as well as options for ranking (such as dense ranking or unique ranking) and in addition multi levels of ranking (ie. Rank by "Field A" Then By "Field B" etc...).

15 Comments
jt_edin
8 - Asteroid

I agree. I find it crazy and insulting that you have to build your own ranking tool from scratch (eg https://help.alteryx.com/10.6/index.htm#Common_Tasks/RankField.htm?Highlight=rank) when this is such a commonly used feature.

RachelW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Status changed to: Comments Requested

Can you tell me a little more about how you might use a Rank tool? How would it be similar and different from current tools in the product?

martman
8 - Asteroid

This would save me a lot of Real estate

(Screen Space)

brianprestidge
8 - Asteroid

Hi Rachel 

 

I think there are many use cases but as a couple of examples:

 

Just to get the records with a top value you would have to use summarize tool and group by customer and get max sold in and then join back to the original on max sold in = sold in and customer = customer. Or you could create a field with 1, sort by customer and then sold in descending and do a running total (grouped by customer) then filter to only keep where this running total = 1 (ie. the first record for each customer). This is a lot of steps for something so simple.

 

Also, if you want to analyse (just say) the top 100 you need to use a few tools just to sort and create a ranking and then filter. This should be a lot simpler. and becomes even more long-winded when you want to sort on multiple levels (e.g. field A 'desc', field B 'asc', field C 'desc'). This can be anywhere from 4 to 10+ tools just to rank.

 

I would like to see it alteryx have the most common ranking options (Unique, competition, fractional etc...), multiple field and also have group by options and maybe for alteryx to take it one step further like they often do with some clever additional functionality.

 

Thanks and please let me know if you want any more info or ideas on this

 

martman
8 - Asteroid

Im with Brian on this


@brianprestidge wrote:

The introduction fo a rank tool would be hugely beneficial. Whilst there are currently means to rank using a combination of other tools formula/running total/multirow etc... a specific "Rank Tool" would be provide a seemless and smoother way to rank your data either for further analysis or purely to output this field.

 

This tool should include a sort by and group by functionaility as well as options for ranking (such as dense ranking or unique ranking) and in addition multi levels of ranking (ie. Rank by "Field A" Then By "Field B" etc...).



rian on this

RSK
7 - Meteor

A raking tool with plenty of ranking options. For example, I'd like to see a raking tool with capability of performing the ranking below. Thx

 

 

Sample output:

Total

Rank

14

1

14

1

13

3

12

4

NigelW
7 - Meteor

If looking at SQL there are many Rankings

    Rank

    Dense_Rank

Etc

 

I am looking at doing ranking now in my flow and finding some extremely convoluted ways of having to achieve this

 

Link to Microsoft Ranking page 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/ranking-functions-transact-sql?view=sql-server-...

 

amitsrivastava
6 - Meteoroid

If I have duplicate data in my data set then it's not a good practice to use multiple available tools to give ranks. We should have a rank tool or may be a function should be there in formula tool for ranking purpose.

robsuddaby
7 - Meteor

100% agree, very infuriating - especially if you need to calculate Competition Ranking and need to build a macro to do more than 1 field at a time!

williamchan
10 - Fireball

I agree. In Excel there's a simple RANK function. Here we have to use a combination of sort tools and multi-row tools. It should be available in the formula tool as an expression.