Everyone has to start their Alteryx journey somewhere. This month's Maveryx Chatter is all about workflows, more specifically, your first-ever workflow!
What did your first-ever workflow accomplish? If you can't remember, share a recent workflow of yours and what it accomplished!
My first Workflow got 2 batch macros and started with a tool for 2 data files.
it combined 1 file with 5 tabs/categories into 1 sheet and added the categories as additional columns to avoid repetition of data from 1 tab/sheet to another. 2nd file provides that status of the owner of each record/data.
it provided an output automatically posted/ appended on a template and tableau WB as well.
I can't remember if I did sample workflows first, but my first workflow that I built to do something was using mail distribution data across North Sydney (from St Leonards Distribution centre) and modelling the package size and trends in order to predict what the next year would look like. It was an open question for an interview where I just had to show "something" and I went way too involved with about 100 tools on a full model, as opposed to a 10-tool workflow that blends and shows a few other functions that would have been enough.
What did it accomplish? It got me a job, that turned into the better part of my career.
I started my Alteryx journey from Japanese Weekly Challenge #4 on 04-Dec, 2020.
I want to advise old me..."Don't leave connections messy!"
I can't remember exactly, it was so long ago! But I have to imagine it was a weekly challenge or following along in one of the training videos.
My first workflow, built over 11 years ago, is a bit hazy now, but it likely involved spatial analysis since I was working as an analyst for an advertising company managing Sears' paper media. However, the first workflow that really excited me and made me realize the power of Alteryx was one I built to scrape the BandsInTown website for my favorite bands and their concert schedules. I added spatial data to pinpoint restaurants near the concert venues within a 25-mile radius of where I lived. The workflow output included concert dates, ticket sale info, and a map of the best restaurants and bars around each venue. I even scheduled it to run on my own machine. Thanks to that workflow, I ended up going to 10 concerts I wouldn’t have known about otherwise!
The first major workflow I worked on was using APIs and web scraping to get COVID-19 data from every US state (I started as a data analyst in the summer of 2020). The very first workflow I built was probably to do some data prep before loading data into PowerBI
My first major workflow was revamping a process from Access that used to run for 18 hours. Studying it without domain knowledge was difficult, but I got it after working together with an SME on the topic (Actuarial).
Using my knowledge of Alteryx, and also understanding the user's pain points + requirements, I was able to recreate a more user friendly and enhanced process that only takes 45 seconds now without the use of macros at all. Just plain old vanilla Alteryx BaseA tools.
It's major because that propelled me to stardom (haha) in my org.
My first workflow was for pulling stats on item usage, order quantities and spend related to Distribution Line Construction. I was a month and a half into my new role in Supply Chain and I remember that workflow looking like a spider web. 3 years later and I'm Advanced certified and have learned so much from this community!
My first workflow pulled data from a recently created Teradata warehouse table sourced from a mainframe dataset. The output was published to Tableau and provided a dynamic report that did not require an IT team to make updates to the static monthly report job when new products were added. I think I replaced the workflow a couple years later with some custom SQL in a published Tableau extract 😆