Engine Works
Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
Oftentimes being the Admin for Designer at your company is in addition to other tasks and responsibilities. For that reason, we have put together this collection of resources to help you encourage your users and grow your own skillset all at the same time.
By following these best practices, admin users will be able to optimize their use of Alteryx Designer, enhance collaboration, and streamline their workflow development and management processes.
1. Leveraging Alteryx Tools
Give your new users time to explore the Alteryx Tool Mastery Index. This Index covers 50+ Alteryx Tools and provides working examples. Encourage your users to begin familiarizing themselves with popular tools such as Input Data, Formula, Summarize, and Output Data.
Use the Interactive Lesson for Excel Users to learn how to replicate common Excel manipulations using Alteryx tools. Users will learn about inputting data from Excel, formatting techniques, replicating Excel formulas, troubleshooting, and working with multiple Excel sheets within Designer.
2. Creating Visually Impactful Workflows
We encourage users of all experience levels to design workflows with a clear and intuitive layout. Users can explore this topic with our Three-Part series on making workflows visually impactful. Users should choose colors and visual elements that enhance readability and highlight valuable information.
Source: Make Your Workflow Visually Impactful - Part 1: Your Preparation
To make understanding workflows easier, suggest that your users use tool containers to group related tools and improve organization. In addition, leverage annotations to provide additional explanations or instructions within the workflow.
3. Using Comments in Workflows
Review the Best Practices on how to use comments in your workflows. Use comments as much as possible with different background colors for different purposes. Comments help document and explain the purpose, logic, and key steps within a workflow. Comments should be used to provide context, describe transformations, and outline decision points. Commenting also aids collaboration, troubleshooting, and understanding of the workflow for yourself and others.
4. Documenting and Organizing Workflows
Documenting workflows improves transparency, knowledge sharing, and future troubleshooting. Read Ben Moss's blog on documentation best practices for valuable insights. From there, consider your own personal and organizational approaches to documenting workflows that you would like your users to be familiar with.
5. Following Workflow Governance Best Practices
Refer to the Top Tips on workflow governance to ensure efficient and effective workflow management. It is good practice to implement version control to track changes and maintain a history of workflow modifications.
When you introduce your new users to Designer, introduce them to the established guidelines and standards for workflow development, naming conventions, and documentation. It is also recommended that users regularly review and optimize workflows to improve performance and maintain data integrity. Depending on your company’s policies, you may also want to consider security measures and access controls to protect sensitive data within workflows.
Source: Alteryx Workflow Governance: What Are Your Best Practices
6. Digital Onboarding and Certifications
As we mentioned earlier, we know you have many things on your to-do list each day. To shorten that list, encourage new license holders to start with the Digital Onboarding experience for a guided introduction to Alteryx.
Once they have completed their Onboarding, consider having them pursue Alteryx certifications, such as the Foundational Certification and Core Certification, to enhance data proficiency and knowledge of essential concepts. Certifications can provide structured learning paths and validate skills for better utilization of Alteryx capabilities.
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