Cloud Quests
Elevate your workflow skills by solving real-world challenges using the Alteryx Analytics Cloud Platform.
Hi Maveryx,
We posted the solution JSON file to Cloud Quest #8. Check it out and let us know what you think! Send suggestions to academy@alteryx.com or leave a comment below!
Let’s dive into this week's quest!
- Upload the provided Cloud Quest 9 - Start File.json file into your Analytics Cloud library.
- The necessary datasets are pre-populated in the Text Input tools.
For more detailed instructions on how to import and export Designer Cloud workflow files, check out the pinned article Cloud Quest Submission Process Update.
Scenario:
In this week’s quest, a general contractor needs your assistance assessing his business using date-time analysis.
Bob, who had been working as a home builder, decided to transition his business towards leasing construction equipment. Among other equipment, he has two cranes he has been leasing for a while. He wants to get a better idea how his crane leasing business has been going.
Create a workflow that will show how many days both of his cranes have been leased at the same time during the years 2016-2018, the only years where he has a full set of data for both cranes.
Hint: In Designer Desktop, the Generate Rows tool would be the most efficient way to tokenize records within a date range. Unfortunately, the Generate Rows tool is not yet available in Designer Cloud (coming soon in 2024!), but you can still solve this quest thinking outside the box with a cartesian join from the Append Columns tool.
A combination of the Summarize, Filter, Append Columns, Formula, and Sample tools should solve your problem, but not necessarily in this sequence.
If you find yourself struggling with any of the tasks, feel free to explore these interactive lessons in the Maveryx Academy for guidance:
- Getting Started with Designer Cloud
- Building Connections in Designer Cloud
- Building Your Workflow in Designer Cloud
Once you have completed your quest, go back to your Analytics Cloud library.
- Download your workflow solution file.
- Include your JSON file and a screenshot of your workflow as attachments to your comment.
Here’s to a successful quest!
This one was difficult without Generate Rows...
I started by creating a bunch of flag fields and different Filters to find the rows where the Maximus crane dates fell within the Tiny Tim crane dates, and then reversed it to find when Tiny Tim fell within the Maximus dates. After reconfiguring over and over I gave up and peaked at a spoiler... Thank you @Qiu for the hint I needed to solve this with 2 formulas and a filter instead of what was turning into 5+ formulas and filters and a union.
Here we go
I'm glad for the many Trifacta users that the Trifacta experience still exists because generating rows (or joining using inequality operators) is such an important capability to haveDebug time!
I did not notice my mistake as the data previews were all empty, but I fixed a missing filter, because we need to use only the rows where the status="Leased" (and I really really hope that this filter is appropriate because I cannot appropriately verify the data quality and case sensitivity without datapreviews
This was a bit a pain without range matching functionality or Generate Rows available at the time of completion (Hello future people, and if you have this functionality by the time you read this, please realise how lucky you are. Now go and enjoy your flying car and multi-clause Filter Tool.)
I converted the dates to the correct format then parsed out the Year to make filtering easier. I then filtered out those that fell completely out of the date range. I then split the cranes into two streams and appended all back together (yeesh). I then created a Joint Start and Joint End date field based on the offset, thereby creating the start and end of the joint period of lease. I then calculated the days between (adding 1), and then summarised.
