March Community Highlights is here! For first time readers, this ongoing blog series delivers a just the right size dose of the best community happenings so that you can keep a pulse on what’s hot, who’s in, and all of the latest trends.
In Case You Missed It
In honor of Women's History Month and to celebrate the introduction of an exciting new Community driven research project, @SydneyF showcases the presence of women in analytics and describes how analytics and data science can be applied to support equality in the workplace: Analytics as an Equalizer
The latest Community release was chock full of enhancements, including a major improvement to the Alteryx Certification exam process. The newly automated process will empower you to take control of your certification destiny with on-demand exam access. Check out @AlexKo's latest Community Release Blog to learn more!
Never. Stop. Learning.
*Alteryx Academy. All the training resources you need.
Certifiably Awesome
We're thrilled to announce our newest Alteryx Designer Expert Certified user! Ryan Lambert passed the Expert exam at Inspire On Tour APAC in Sydney, Australia on March 21st. Congratulations @Inactive User!
Enhancements to Interactive lessons
The improvements to Interactive Lessons on Alteryx Academy continue! We are excited to announce that the course Writing Expressions has been re-vamped and updated. In addition, we've made some changes to the process for collecting information on your experiences with the Interactive Lessons.
Trouble with streaming or audio? We want to know about it!
Having a great time learning with us? We want to hear that, too!
Submit your feedback via the Feedback survey within each lesson so we can better track, understand, and improve our learning offerings.
Upcoming Live Training
April 9th | Calgary Databases
If you have 100's of millions of records and/or need to quickly retrieve certain records or get counts of those records? The Calgary database engine within Alteryx provides the ability to create a large indexed database that provides rapid retrieval of data and/or counts.
You’ll Learn How to:
- Create a Calgary database and load data into it
- Perform Joins against the Calgary database
- Quickly pull data or counts from database
April 16th | Advanced Certification Prep - Part V
Data comes in all shapes and formats. Learn a variety of techniques for parsing data. You'll parse survey data coming from text based files.
You’ll Learn How to:
- Automatically split data into separate columns
- Do calculations across rows
- Take field names from a chosen row of data
- RegEx Crash Course
April 23rd | Born to Solve - Chapter 4
Join us for a second edition a four part mini-series named 'Born to Solve'. If you find yourself in a position where you know and understand Alteryx at a very high level, but have difficulty seeing how experienced users see a solution, think of a problem, or envision a way to solve - join us! In this informal session, we will put a analytic problem (not seen prior) in front of an Alteryx user and see how they figure it. Our hope is that you walk away understanding not only a problem, but the different approaches and mindsets that can be taken to solving a problem.
April 30th | Advanced Certification Prep - Part VI (FINALE)
Join us for Part 6 of our 6 Part series on preparing for the Advanced Certification Exam.
- Part I - Spatial Analytics in Alteryx
- Part II - Building Macros
- Part III - Building Apps
- Part IV - Reporting/Publication
- Part V - Advanced Prep/Parsing Concepts and Tools
- Part VI - Recap and Exam Day Overview
If you missed a live session, or are curious to see what's available on-demand, check out the Live Training Index & Welcome.
Nuts & Bolts
*Alteryx in Practice. Noteworthy Articles, Blog Posts + other pearls of wisdom.
Early this month, @MikeA and @RithiS shared a slick trick for the Text Input tool in Designer in How To: Create a Text Input tool with Multi-Line Data
Our Support team has been working hard to publish more content on troubleshooting our platform. Don't forget to search the Community next time you run into an error or unexpected behavior. The solution might be there waiting for you in a Knowledge Base article! Here are a few newly added troubleshooting articles:
Is your Gallery failing to start in a timely fashion? Check out this article from @MichaelF to get help diagnosing the cause and troubleshooting: Gallery Service failed to start in a timely fashion
Blogs on Blogs on Blogs
We have had some fabulous publications from a wide variety of contributors this month!
- In Become “Lightning” Fast in Alteryx Designer! @danielbrun2 shares his tips and tricks for optimizing your workflow development and run time experiences.
- Alteryx Ace's @NicoleJohnson and @SeanAdams share their experiences and perspectives on workplace mentor ship in Mentoring: It's a Win-Win Situation
- To round out the Ace contributions this month, @dataMack breaks down buzzwords in the Data Science blog AI vs. ML for the Layman
- Power user and weekly challenge master @JosephSerpis writes about a nifty spatial trick in Dispersing Spatial Points
- For some philosophical insights to the world of Analytics, check out @RithiS's You're Creating Algorithms with Alteryx and @SydneyF's There is no Free Lunch in Data Science
Do you have something to share on one of our blogs? We would love to publish it! Please reach out to community@alteryx.com with your idea or draft, and we will work with you to share it with the masses right here on the Alteryx Community.
Culture & Events
*Immerse yourself in data and analytics culture.
New episodes | Alter Everything Podcast
This month was an ACE extravaganza on the Alter Everything podcast!
In episode 28: Mess it up, fix it, rinse & repeat, ACEs @jarrod and @michael_treadwell shared their out of the box thinking when it comes to creating fun Alteryx workflows and what the ACE program means to them. Brian and Jarrod also geek out over their favorite cars (can you guess what they are?) and debate who is the most fashionable ACE.
Episode 29: Keep Learning. Keep being curious. kicks off with a warm “Bienvenidos!” from @Aguisande all the way from Panama where him and fellow ACE @mbarone had a chat with @BrianO about trends in the data science and analytics world. From smart homes to edge computing to the importance of data literacy, be sure to tune in to this insightful episode!
Alter Everything Producer @MaddieJ wants to hear your feedback on the podcast. Message her on Community, email her at podcast@alteryx.com, or use the hashtag #AlterEverything on Twitter to let us know what you'd like to hear next, or if you'd like to be a featured guest!
Don't forget to subscribe on your app of choice: Apple Podcasts | Soundcloud & more.
Women of Analytics
The recording from the Women of Analytics networking mixer we hosted at the Alteryx Broomfield office earlier in March is now available on Community! Topics covered include tackling performance bias, salary transparency, mentorship & more.
Watch on-demand:
- Join the Women of Analytics Group -- Not only is this a great place to network with like-minded peers, you’ll also find everything you need to know about upcoming events, as well as best practices & resources.
- A big initiative of ours in the upcoming months is to collaborate with YOU to develop a women of analytics data science project related to diversity and equality in the workplace. If you have ideas for data sources or problems to take on, please share your thoughts on the Analytics as an Equalizer Research Ideas thread. We can’t wait to hear your ideas!
- And finally, be sure to subscribe to the Women of Analytics Blog feed on Alter.Nation for the latest news and updates.
Inspire 2019
If you plan on attending one of our Alteryx Inspire conferences we recommend tuning in to the Inspire 2019 Buzz forum! Ask questions about the events, connect with peers & share your experience! Visit the Inspire 2019 Buzz today.
Share your use cases for a chance to take home an Analytics Excellence Award at Inspire Nashville! Don’t wait! Submit your stories by April 30th to qualify. Learn more here.
We're excited to welcome Malcolm Gladwell, five-time The New York Times best-selling author, as this year’s keynote speaker at Inspire North America 2019! Read the announcement.
User Group News
*Find your people. Build your network
With March Madness off to crazy start, this month was no exception for our Alteryx User Groups. In March alone there were over 27 meetings worldwide! These meetings consisted of hearing our latest Alteryx 2019.1 updates, Weekly Challenges, and Use Case presentations from our very own Alteryx Addicts.
Alteryx User Groups are the perfect way to meet people with similar interests and truly connect around the ways that Alteryx has amplified your life both inside AND outside of work.
If you missed any of our local or industry/departmental User Groups meetings, or are just curious to see what all the fuss is about, we got you covered! Check out the Meeting Round Up to find out what you might have missed.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back with more highlights next month!
