Analytics
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Last week I presented a webinar with Matthew Hughes and Daniel Boyce of Sager Creek Vegetable Company. Sager Creek is a growing canned vegetable company out of Arkansas that supports numerous brands through great-tasting, affordable and high-quality canned vegetables. Below I’ve included the Q&A from the end of the session. You can watch the webinar recording here, and you can download the slide deck here.
I hope you enjoy this great session, and that you’ll give us feedback below in the comments.
In that example, you appeared to be pulling from Excel. Is it only "real time" to the extent that you are updating the excel file?
- Brian Dirking: Alteryx can pull directly from the source too as well as a spreadsheet. CRM systems, transaction databases, Hadoop instances - Alteryx can directly connect and update the information.
- Matthew Hughes: It is as real time as the process that feeds excel. If the source really isn't excel, then it need to be connected to the source.
Can Alteryx be used as ETL or ELT solution before using it for visualization in Tableau?
- Brian Dirking: Yes. Alteryx can be used to access multiple data sources, cleanse and manipulate the data, blend the sources together, and then put them into analytics processes to create new insights.
How the data is refreshed in Alteryx?
- Matthew Hughes: The workflow is initiated by the user or the schedule if you are using Alteryx Server.
What was the time savings in Alteryx compared to Excel - caught 3 minutes in Alteryx, but didn't catch how much time is was taking them?
- Brian Dirking: Week's worth of work became a couple of minutes. And with the dashboards available, they've been able to eliminate 4 hours of weekly meetings.
Do I need the Alteryx and Tableau be installed on the same machine?
- Brian Dirking: No, you can have Alteryx and Tableau on separate machines. Alteryx has the option to output directly to the Tableau TDE file format. Alteryx can launch that file into Tableau, or can output that file to a network directory where Tableau can access it.
Can we schedule the Alteryx Solution to give a *.tde file for a Tableau solution?
- Brian Dirking: With Alteryx Server, you can schedule Alteryx to update your Tableau TDE files.
What type of users typically use Alteryx? Do they need computer science background or can a non-programmer/business person use this?
- Brian Dirking: Alteryx users tend to be line of business analysts - not necessarily trained in data science, but understanding the business questions that need to be answered.
Do you use Alteryx Designer + Alteryx Server or only Designer?
- Brian Dirking: Dan and Matthew are using Alteryx Designer only.
How you manage scheduling having only Designer?
- Matthew Hughes: I log in and turn them on. HAHAHA. The outputs go wherever I have chosen.
Do you have a central Data Warehouse? Or are you creating specific Analytic Marts directly from your source systems?
- Matthew Hughes: We are building data buckets from Alteryx and outputing the result as its own data-mart using the Alteryx .yxdb files.
How long did it take to build these workflows?
- Matthew Hughes: These were a few days spending maybe a couple hours a day.
How do you include all the transactional data in tableau? I have found at a million records tableau is slow with visualizations.
- Brian Dirking: Dan and Matthew put the data in the background on another tab and filter it to the dashboards. Many folks find that using Alteryx to move the data into TDE file format it makes rendering the data in Tableau faster.
- Matthew Hughes: Also, you can use Tableau's optimize function after you have an extract for the workbook.
Does Alteryx help with master data management related challenges?
- Brian Dirking: Matthew says Alteryx is good for blending information in a few minutes to make sure departments are seeing the same information. Alteryx can also handle different metadata/item names and automate blending different taxonomies.
Once publishing the dashboards, how does the client access it? Is it presented as a pdf or where/how do you post it for other non-tableau servers to see?
- Brian Dirking: Sager Creek distributes the information in Tableau Dashboards that Alteryx updates automatically. You can present results in reports from Alteryx, or you can use the Alteryx gallery to present results.
Where are you capturing Historic data?
- Matthew Hughes: All data we are capturing is coming from various tables in our different transaction systems. Did you want to know what specific systems?
How frequently do you run Alteryx?
- Brian Dirking: Matthew and Dan say they are running Alteryx all the time.
How do you append to the final Alteryx files, is that an option in the output tool?
- Brian Dirking: Alteryx has added new append features in the 9.1 release, including the ability to append Tableau TDE files with new updates.
