Engine Works
Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
Data is powerful, but it can be overwhelming—especially when you’re just getting started. That’s where Alteryx Copilot comes in: a built-in AI analytics assistant that helps you turn plain English into powerful workflows. Whether you’re new to Alteryx or a seasoned user, Copilot helps you build faster, learn as you go, and unlock deeper insights with natural language.
In this post, we’ll explore how Copilot helps across common analytics tasks, from first-time onboarding to workflow optimization, and we'll show how it delivers value across industries like finance, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.
Get Started Fast (General Use Cases)
Learning Alteryx? Just ask Copilot - New users can type questions like “How do I input data?” or “How do I clean this dataset?” Alteryx Copilot doesn’t just explain, it adds the right tools to your canvas and walks you through the configuration. No Googling. No guesswork.
Error Resolution – Ran into an error while working on workflows? Easy! Just ask Copilot. Alteryx Copilot might help you identify potential causes and suggest solutions, while helping with relevant documentation for it. It might also go to the extent of automatically adding tools in your workflow to help you resolve the error.
Tool Recommendations – Not sure what tool to use for a specific function? Alteryx Copilot has your back. Just ask your question like “Which tool should I use to calculate average sales per region?” It will suggest the Summarize tool and will help you through it!
Automated Tool Addition – If a user needs to join the two datasets, they can simply prompt Copilot, and it will automatically add the tool in the canvas and configure it to perform the function error-free!
Formula Generation – Alteryx Copilot makes formula assistance easier than ever! If you are not sure of how to build a complex formula, you can explain what you’re trying to do to Alteryx Copilot, and it will generate a formula for you with correct syntax.
Industry-Specific Use Cases
Leveraging Copilot in Alteryx Designer, here's a tip that can transform how you build workflows. Start by outlining your business problem and the goal you are trying to attain.
Copilot is not only a tool that explains how to use Alteryx the best, but it is also designed to map your goals and help solve complex challenges with tailored, actionable guidance. The key is specificity, which empowers Copilot to offer more actionable solutions.
Sales Performance Analysis
Let’s say you're a sales operations analyst preparing for next year’s planning cycle. Your goal is to build a workflow that helps assess performance and set realistic sales targets. Here's how you might describe the problem to Copilot:
“I need to build a workflow that evaluates overall sales performance and sets goals for next year. Specifically, I want to: (1) calculate the average sales for each employee, based on their first three consecutive months of sales starting from their first sale of the year; and (2) identify the top five sales performers in Q4. My dataset includes monthly sales records for each employee throughout the year.”
With this input, Copilot can immediately start guiding you on the best path forward. For example, it might suggest:
- Using a Multi-Row Formula Tool to identify the first sale and track for the next two months.
- Applying DateTime functions to isolate Q4 performance.
Leveraging the Summarize, Sort, and Filter tools to calculate averages and rank top performers.
Why This Works
By describing both the problem and the desired outcome, you're giving Copilot the context it needs to recommend a meaningful solution. Whether you’re working in sales, finance, marketing, or operations, this approach makes your interaction with Copilot more strategic—and the results far more relevant.
Tip: Think Like a Business Partner, Not Just a User
Copilot works best when you think of it as a collaborator. Don’t just ask “how do I use this tool?”—explain what you're trying to accomplish. This allows Copilot to help you build workflows that are not only technically sound, but also aligned with your business objectives.
Ready to try it? Next time you open Alteryx Designer, start with your goal and a short description of the challenge. Let Copilot take it from there.
Financial Services
Fraud Detection – If a Financial Analyst aims to highlight suspicious transactions, they can turn to Copilot and ask for help with building an effective workflow. It can suggest tools like ‘Fuzzy Matching’ for such analysis.
Risk assessment – A risk manager can leverage Copilot to assess risk associated with a loan application (for example) and help calculate risk scores for it, sorting out the higher risk cases and streamlining the overall process. It might suggest the Summarize & Filter tools.
Healthcare
Patient Data Analysis – A healthcare administrator can explore Copilot to better understand hospital readmission rates. It might recommend tools like Summarize and the Reporting tools to visualize those trends.
Drug Utilization Review – A pharmacist can ask Copilot to create a workflow to spot possible drug interactions or medication overuse. Copilot might suggest leveraging tools like Join & Filter for error-free medication management.
Retail
Customer Segmentation – To delve deep into the customer behavior, a marketing analyst can leverage Copilot to build a customer segmentation workflow. Copilot may suggest the Tile tool to organize customers by purchasing patterns, proceeding with a Profile tool to enable more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
Sales Forecasting – A sales manager can rely on Copilot to build a workflow to predict sales by analysing past data. Copilot may recommend tools like Time Series Analysis or Regression Analysis to automate planning & forecasting.
Manufacturing
A quality engineer can call on Copilot to analyze production data & highlight potential defects. Copilot might recommend using the Filter tool to signal data outside of tolerance limits and the Summarize tool to calculate defect rates, allowing quicker insights and proactive quality management.
Supply Chain Optimization – A supply chain manager can consult Copilot to optimize the flow of goods across various locations. Copilot might recommend spatial tools like Distance & Optimization to isolate the most efficient delivery route to minimize logistics expense.
Conclusion
To conclude, Alteryx Copilot is changing the way users interact with analytics. It is not just a suggestive tool but an exploratory tool of various possibilities of looking at a particular use case and delivering the best output. It welcomes real-time intelligence and support at every step of the data journey, so much so that even a user from no technical background can build any workflow without a doubt!
Copilot bridges the gap between technical complexity and practical decisions, even if you’re just a beginner to the analytics world!
Get started with Alteryx Copilot and learn as you go—available in public preview here.
