Tableau and Alteryx Q&A with Chris Love, Tableau Zen Master and Alteryx

[RamanK]

We recently hosted Chris Love, an Alteryx Ace and Tableau Zen Master, and Brian Dirking, Director of Product Marketing at Alteryx, as they presented a session on best practices for combining Alteryx and Tableau for data analysis. In case you missed it, the session recording can be accessed here, while slides can be viewed on SlideShare. Audience engagement was high throughout the session and as a result, we were not able to address all of the questions…until now! Please find the complete webinar Q&A below:

Q: ­Can you allow other select users to see your R or SQL code?­

BD: ­Yes, you can expose your R or SQL code inside of Alteryx, or you can lock your macros to protect them from view.­

Q: ­I have seen in the very first slide that it is possible to connect with Twitter, is it possible to connect to other social networks?­

BD: Yes. By the way, a great example of connecting to Twitter and enabling sentiment analysis was done around the Tableau Conference by Alteryx ACE Jason Mack – you can see more here: https://twitter.com/dataMack/status/657193928744157184

Q: ­Can you run multiple workflows in the same canvas and assign them an order?­

CL: Yes, Adam Riley has developed a set of macros in his CREW Macros. Note that this may be unsuitable for some enterprise deployments as it includes a custom .exe but in general clients find this solution more than suitable – I’d love to see them integrated more fully into the product at some time.

Q: You see inside a lot of different companies. Do you find better success to (A) bring in Alteryx + Tableau to an org that lacks existing analytics capabilities or (B) an org where it’s used to challenge/replace legacy analytics tools­?

CL: Essentially we don’t see too many companies that don’t have some sort of analytics capabilities. But in either case, the ability to introduce an organization to a self-service 1-2 punch like Alteryx and Tableau is a great thing.

Q: ­What value did the Alteryx tool just add to this process instead of importing into Tableau directly?­

CL: The advantages to me of using Alteryx are that I could see the data structure as I worked, I could easily unique records (something that is easy in Alteryx but hard in Tableau) and then pivot later. Then with the mapping data I was able to use a geospatial boundary file to create a new column – something that just isn’t possible in Tableau. This was a very simple workflow – most data processes are more complex than this and building them up in Alteryx in a step by step process, where the data flow can be laid out in a diagrammatic flow, is not just convenient - it’s essential.

Q: ­Is TDE generated in Alteryx compatible with all versions of Tableau­?

BD: Tableau has not updated the TDE file format since it was introduced in version 8.1. Alteryx TDE output is compatible with all Tableau products since 8.1 (Desktop, Server and Public).

Q: ­Is there a good source for best practice around publishing data sets from Alteryx to Tableau online and having that Tableau online content auto update?­

BD: Two good sources for this information:

• Frederic Pinchon’s blog: http://insightsthroughdata.com/upload-directly-to-tableau-server-from-alteryx/
• JC Raveneau’s video: https://youtu.be/1F0m-8_OXLg

Q: ­Re: the unique tool - could you also create an avg. of the survey results? Perhaps they had varying experiences?­

CL: Yes, this can entirely be driven by the business rules you need. You could take duplicates and average them and then feed them back in via a Union tool for example. The possibilities are endless and require only a few additional tools.

Q: ­Can this TDE file automate?­

BD: ­Yes, Alteryx can automate the TDE file creation. You can schedule Alteryx to run on a regular basis, and have it update Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, or Tableau Online automatically.­

Q: ­Can Alteryx read/input TDE files?­

BD: ­Alteryx cannot read TDE files at this time.­ To clarify - no products are able to read TDE files at this time outside of Tableau­.

Q: Is this demo going to show us how to run a schedule and update it on Tableau Server?­

BD: No, but I highly recommend JC Raveneau’s video: https://youtu.be/1F0m-8_OXLg

Q: ­How does Alteryx handle calculated fields?­

CL: Alteryx creates new fields in the data using the Formula tool (and its derivatives). These calculations use a similar syntax to Tableau.

Q: ­Spatial data can be exported to Tableau?­

BD: ­Yes, spatial data in Alteryx can be exported in a number of formats, including Tableau TDE files and SHP files.­

CL: Check out the Alteryx for Tableau Starter Kit for nice examples.

Q: ­How do you obtain the controller token when scheduling a workflow?­

CL: Ask your Server Admin who can find this in the Server Settings.

Q: Are default spatial files available via Alteryx (e.g. spatial files for state, region, country, etc.)?­

CL: These are available through additional spatial data or demographic data add-ons, depending on Geography. If standard boundaries are all that is required though I would advise looking at Open Data sources which generally provide suitable alternatives for most use-cases.

Q: ­This is all great... but we're looking at very small csv and Excel files. What if I'm dealing with hundreds of millions of records to billions? Does this have to run on a laptop/desktop?­

BD: ­Alteryx can be run on a Desktop or on a Server. Alteryx is very scalable. It is used by some of the largest data processing companies in the world such as Experian.

Q: Specifically from Hadoop­?

BD: ­We have customers who are using Alteryx with Hadoop in the retail industry that are processing billions of records.

Q: Where does the processing take place?­

BD: ­Processing of the data can take place wherever Alteryx is running, or it can take place in-database. The easy drag and drop UI of Alteryx can send SQL messages to Hadoop to process the data in Hadoop, using Impala or Spark, for instance.­

Q: Which Hadoop platforms and versions are the product compatible with? ­

BD: Alteryx can use Hive, HDFS, Impala, or Spark to interact with data in Hadoop, so as long as your distribution supports one of those you are good to go. For in-database processing, only Impala and Spark can be used.

Q: ­Is the Twitter data scraper free, or is it a private tool that Chris created? Is there a central online resource for common web scraping tools in Alteryx?­

CL: The Twitter tool is available in Alteryx Desktop (and there are Apps showing it in use available on the Alteryx Gallery)

Q: ­Can you handle BLOB data type in Oracle DB?­

BD: Yes. (Blob data is unstructured information such as files attached in an Oracle database). You can read more about this here: http://help.alteryx.com/current/index.htm#Reference/DataFieldType.htm?Highlight=blob (scroll down to the section on Blob files).

Q: ­Are there good/better resources/blogs that look at things like dynamic visualizations in Tableau -- such as making scatter plot tables appear based on X, Y, Z occurring in the dataset? Akin to conditional show/hides based on user selections/drilldowns­.

CL: Action Filters are used for this and perhaps the best resource is Peter Gilks’ excellent blog post: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/a-rough-guide-to-tableau-filter-actions-by-peter-gilks/

Ready to start generating deeper insights faster with Alteryx and Tableau?

The Alteryx Starter Kit for Tableau is a great way to get going with data workflows, similar to those Chris shared during the webinar.   Download your Starter Kit at www.alteryx.com/kit .

Not ready to get started quite yet?

Check out our weekly demo of Alteryx for Tableau – every Thursday at 11 am PST. In the 30 minute demo, you’ll get a deeper look at how Alteryx self-service data blending and advanced analytics complements Tableau visualizations. Register today!