Get Ready for Data Adventures in the Solution Center at Inspire 2016

[MacRo]

I started at Alteryx a few months prior to Inspire 2015 in Boston. It was my first time attending the Alteryx user conference, so I really had no expectations going in, other than helping out in the Solutions Center throughout the week. I was totally blown away by the passion people had for Alteryx. Working together with attendees to solve different problems was really fun, and the energy that filled the Solutions Center made being there a great experience for everyone involved. As a developer, I learned so much myself, seeing the challenges users face in the real world and how they uniquely approach their problems was extremely valuable.

There is no problem too big or too small to bring to the Solution Center. It is staffed with some of the most knowledgeable Alteryx folks you'll ever find, including engineers who build the product, product managers, Alteryx ACEs, and even the founding engineer of the Alteryx Engine himself, Ned Harding (@Ned– community, @AlteryxNed - twitter). When you walk into the Solutions Center, you'll be paired up with someone who can help you based on their area of expertise. I promise, you'll be in good hands. If the person you're assigned to doesn't know the answer to your specific question, it's never hard to find someone who can (why isn't this predictive tool giving me the results I want? Let's ask the engineer who designed it!).

Thinking back to my first Solutions Center experience, a few questions and problems from attendees stand out:

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One of the really satisfying but simpler questions that came my way was from an attendee who wanted to build a macro to make a specific tool sequence in her workflow repeatable. I helped her fix her workflow, and we also walked through the macro creation process. At the end of our hour together, she told me she had always been intimidated by the idea of making of a macro, but after our chat, she saw how simple and intuitive it was. All she needed was some guidance to get started, and she was quickly empowered with this new skill.

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A couple consultants came in with a potential bug in the product. It turned out they were right, and we easily addressed the bug in a subsequent release. The Solutions Center is a great place to find an audience for things like this, and although we can’t make any promises, we'll work hard to address the problems you bring!

The same consultants were also developing some workflows involving predictive models and very large quantities of data. They wished Alteryx would allow them to run portions of a workflow at a time, because the workflows took several minutes or many hours to run with the quantity of data being processed and the heavy predictive processes. I could really relate, because I was in a very similar role in my previous job as a consultant in fraud detection analytics. I started thinking about how we might be able to run portions of a workflow in Alteryx. This discussion was the catalyst for the Cache Dataset macro, which allows users to do exactly what the two gentlemen were asking for. Further, there was such a positive response to the macro that we added it as a feature on the product roadmap!

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My favorite challenge tackled during Inspire 2015 was from one guy (shout out to Joe S!) who came in with some spatially-focused workflows. These were fairly complex and sprawling workflows, and he had a few issues that he needed help with. We worked through the questions one at a time, but didn't have enough time to get through everything before his next breakout session started. Joe came back later, and it wasn't long before he mentioned one really tough problem he was stuck on, but didn't want to waste our time given the complexity of it. I assured him that was exactly what the Solutions Center was for and that I was more than happy to crack into it with him. He was right about the complexity, and what he was trying to accomplish involved some pretty complicated spatial logic. Over the next few days, he kept coming back when he had time in-between sessions. Together, we ended up building an iterative macro to handle the spatial logic and implemented it within his workflow. After days getting into the weeds with this problem, we finally arrived at the solution and high-fived, totally exhilarated and feeling like we had just solved the Reimann hypothesis! That was probably my favorite moment of the week!

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This year, even more Alteryx gurus will be available in the Solutions Center than past Inspire conferences! Don't hesitate to bring your Alteryx related challenges and your data to the Solutions Center during Inspire, we love to help. The Solutions Center will be open all day Monday from 12-5 pm, Tuesday from 9:30 am – 5 pm, Wednesday from 9:30 am – 3:15 pm, and 8:00 am – 12:00 Thursday. For additional details, take a look at @TashaA's informative post on the Solutions Center at Inspire 2016.

If you haven’t registered for Inspire, you can register here.

Looking forward to seeing you in San Diego!