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Alteryx Designer Desktop Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Designer Desktop experts.

Data Profiling in the Browse Tool

DanM
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team
Created

The Data Profiling in the Browse Tool was created to assist the user in better understanding the quality of their data at any point within the workflow.

This option will assist users in understanding the quality of their data, assist in troubleshooting and help fix issues that may arise when attempting to parse, join, or output their data.

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How Data Profiling works:

Add a Browse Tool after any tool you want to check the quality of your data. We highly recommend getting into the habit of adding a Browse Tool after your Inputs. This will allow you to understand right off the bat what your data’s condition is in.

You can then run the workflow and select the Browse Tool. The Configuration Window will display graphs relating to each of your columns in your data as well as some specific information on the field and the type of data. By selecting a specific column in your Results window the Data Profiling in the Configuration Window will change showing you the quality of the data within that column. You will receive different graphs and information depending on the data type in the field.

Please see our wonderful online Help document for the Browse Tool which contains all of the information on the charts and Metadata, click on View data on the page to find out more. We also have a short video that will walk you through the Data Profiling.

Tips and Tricks:

The Browse Tool will only render the Data Profiling when the Browse Tool is selected. Depending on how much data you are running into the Browse Tool, it may take a little time for the Browse Tool to render the Data Profiling reports. If you don’t select the Browse Tool when you are working in the workflow it will not use any memory until you select the Browse Tool to render the reports.

Basic Data Profile.png

If you would like to capture this data and use the data in a workflow or extract that information you can use the Basic Data Profile Tool. This tool will grab the information from the Data Profiling in the Browse Tool. At this point in time, we do not have the option to export the graphs.

You can turn the Data Profiling feature off by going to your user settings and uncheck the "Collect and display data profile information". However, as recommended earlier in the article, using the Data Profiling after your Input Data Tool is now considered best practice and at the very least the Data Profiling should be used at this point. You can always turn the option off after you have reviewed your data.

Comments
adrianloong
11 - Bolide

This is a fantastic addition to alteryx for both new and existing users. 

7 out of 10 problems i have relate to data quality.

I'm getting such good value out of this already!

 

Tharashasank
8 - Asteroid

This a nice feature for alteryx users.

BPurcell2
9 - Comet

I love this new feature.  It is so useful in finding issues with my data.

 

One thought though... could we change the box plot to set the whiskers at 1.5 IQR for outlier detection?

JessicaS
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

HI @BPurcell2,

 

Have you thought about posting your comment to our Product Ideas page?

 

Thanks!

cwilcoxmtn
7 - Meteor

This is Great, Thanks


jacob_kreider
5 - Atom

Great idea for small data, but thank goodness we can turn it off. We regular have outputs > 500M rows, and it would take either forever to render or make the entire software fail. If anyone is frustrated with 11.x releases and has very large outputs, turning off this feature makes everything run extremely smooth. Alteryx is back to feeling like Alteryx!

What is the difference between Empty and NULL in data profiling feature of Browse Tool?

syacoubi
5 - Atom

Bonjour,

Cela nous permet de faire de superbe analyse.

Mais malheureusement je n'arrive pas à exporter les graph du dataprofiling automatiquement pour les joindre à mes fichiers, à part de faire des captures d'écran.

Est ce qu'il y a un composant ou un workflow qui nous permet d'exporter automatiquement ce résultat (Graph et stat ) dans un fichier excel ou pdf  SVP ?

gcflemming
5 - Atom

Hi,

 

The video is no longer available. Can you all repost to YouTube?

 

Thanks

Sara94
7 - Meteor

great feature, thanks for sharing!

ShirleyW
5 - Atom

What is the difference between Empty and NULL ?

nadiralam
7 - Meteor

This a nice feature for alteryx users.