Tool Spotlight: Browse Tool

[TaraM]

In this series of blog posts, I will be featuring an individual Alteryx tool to break down and sing its praises. I will be picking tools at my own discretion, but if there is a tool you’d like me to spotlight, shoot me an email: tmccoy at alteryx.com. I will want to know why you are asking for a particular tool, but I will be happy to write about it.

The topic this week is the Browse tool. The handiest yet deadliest weapon in the Alteryx arsenal, it can give you all the answers you need but the temptation to know it all can prove expensive. Used with a bit of discretion and common sense, this little guy is the data artisan’s BFF (Best Fact Finder).

The primary function of the Browse tool is to temporarily (I’ll come back to this) display data to the user. The user can view the data in one of 4 views: Table, Map (if spatial objects are present), Report (if reporting snippets are present) or Behavior Analysis (if the data is a behavior profile). You’ll also get some stats on your data: how many records, how many fields, and the size of the data are all displayed at the top.

But of course the functionality doesn’t end there…you can split your views between tabs, such as the map and table for instance. Select a record on the map or the table and have the other view adapt to show your selection. The map tab has all sorts of navigational controls including pan, select, zoom, zoom to selection and reset. You can turn base maps on and off and even control which spatial objects from your data stream to show on the map.

And speaking of selections in the Browse, you can do a bunch with them too. You can select a cell and find out more about it in the Cell Viewer, identify special characters in your data, copy selected records, send your selection to a new window, and output selected records.

Need to compare a couple of Browses? There are some handy tricks for this since the Browse tool always floats on top and all new Browse windows remain static. This means you can juggle the new windows and arrange them side by side, even between modules. Say you tweak a formula upstream, you can be sure any free-standing Browse window will keep its contents while you re-run your module, and you can browse the “before and after” views, side by side. Another little trick to keep multiple browse windows in check is to rename the Browse tool from the Annotation Properties View and the tool name will display across the top of the window.

The data used in a Browse is stored in a *.yxdb file in a temporary directory and is cleared out when Alteryx is closed. This is means, depending on what your module is doing, coupled with how much space you have allocated to temporary space, your temporary drive could fill up. So stay alert! Keep an eye on the connection progress and know how much space you have. If the module is doing a ton of heavy lifting, an abundance of Browse tools can substantially slow down the runtime. For this reason, there is a setting in Module Properties to disable all Browse tools.

So how do I use the Browse tool?

Now, keep in mind, I am not a typical Alteryx user… I troubleshoot a lot and craft functional examples. So, when it comes to the Browse tool, I use it often and everywhere! I typically use the same Browse tool as I build a module, deleting the connection from one tool and moving it to the next. I can easily add a Browse by right-clicking any tool and choosing Add Browse After.

I use it to sample data to use elsewhere – I take a selection of records and choose Copy --> Selected Cells with Headers, and then open a new module, click on the module canvas and Paste. You know what happens? A Text Input tool auto-magically appears with the data I just copied. All of it in its highly organized table schema, spatial objects and all!

I also use the Export feature - A LOT. I really do not use the Output tool that much, well not as much as the Browse tool. I am not creating modules that necessarily produce output, I am creating examples of solutions, so when I do need to create output, it is usually after the fact – the module has already been run. No need to run it again with an Output tool, I just click Export and save it to my favorite file format…*.yxdb of course!

So this week, the Browse tool gets the spotlight and I’ll hint at a little teaser…someday in the future this handy tool will see itself in a more public spotlight. And that is all I will say for now. That and it’s my BFF.