Inspire Tips & Tricks: Calling out our users to share their favorite Alteryx tips & tricks

[MargaritaW]

Dear users, thanks again to all of you who attended our 2016 Tips & Tricks sessions. Several of you shared your tips & tricks with me during the conference and I was able to present some of them during our T&T sessions and guess what? They were a HIT ! .... Thank you!

If you have a tip or trick you want to share with us, no tip or trick is too small or obvious, please share it with us by replying to this post. We will give you full credit if included on the Tips & Tricks booklet and inspire session. 

If you see a tip and trick you like, please star it. 

And as always, thank you for being the best users we could've possibly asked for.

Looking forward to seeing you at Inspire !!!

[JessicaS]

Tagging all Aces to kick it of

@Ken_Black, @mbarone, @ThizViz, @danielbrun2, @Dan_Compton, @catherine_desesa, @jdunkerley79, @MarqueeCrew, @mandycgray, @Hollingsworth, @alexhuang, @Joe_Lipski, @Joe_Mako, @patrick_mcauliffe, @AndyMoncla, @tom_montpool, @jack_morgan, @JohnJPS, @bsharbo, @tsturge, @michael_renwick, @jarrod, @michael_treadwell, @Aguisande, @adrianloong, @chris_love, @dataMack

[chris_love]

No 1 Tip from me is Copy and Paste from a Browse back to the canvas to create a Text Input containing the data. Great way to great fast "test" inputs or to create fast lookups / data cleanes. 

[mbarone]

Here's a few of my favs:

1.  If you have a numeric field that has a bunch of nulls and you want to quickly change them to zero, just use the ToNumber funciton:  ToNumber([Field1]).

2.  For the Gallery, if you want to capture the user that is running the app, use a Text Box interface tool, and set the annotation to "__cloud:UserId", and select the option "Hide Control".  This will capture the user ID at the time of run, without alerting them that it is doing so.

3.  Use the Tile tool to create group IDs for nested Keys.

[dataMack]

Make use of the aliases (Options > Advanced > Alias Manager) if you need to share and develop workflows among a team.  Also think through a strategy for local file references - make use of network shares or keep everything relative.

Use the tools in the 'Documentation' toolset to keep things clear and clean for others to understand (or your future self when you get asked to update something you haven't touched in 6 months)

[Aguisande]

One of my Favs is to use the Connections that use credentials (DBs, Download Tools, Sharepoint, etc...) as encrypted macros (connected to a Macro Output). This allows to distribuite the access to the datasource as an encrypted connector, not sharing credentials with anyone.

[danielbrun2]

Great idea!

We have a rule that our workflows can't have any errors, warnings og conversions errors. Especially the last can be difficult to get around.

Use ToNumber([Field_1], 1) to ignore conversion errors (if you decided, that it is okay).

A bit like what Chris said: If you are reading large DB inputs or bulk loading excel/csv files, it is in most cases worth to write it to a .yxdb and continue to work with that .yxdb until the flow is done. This is also the case when using the download tool. Save the data locally and work on from there.

[Hollingsworth]

I have created a .map file that is just counties. I often use that when I am prototyping. This speeds up the time it takes to load the map browse window.

I just have to remember to switch the .map files back if I want to print a report with a map.

[JohnJPS]

 A few more.

1. Options > Forget All Missing Fields, (in the config panel on several tools)

2. Editing the .yxmd or .yxmc file to alter the Alteryx version

3. Auto-expanding tool containers: put long/short comment along the top and tall/skinny comment along the left: stretch these to size the tool container to your desired fixed size.

[tom_montpool]

1. You can use the Union tool to set field order and data type. If you Union two tables together, by default Alteryx 'forces' the second table layout (including data type) to match the first table's layout.
2. The ToString() function has a parameter to add the comma as the thousands separator.
3. Tools with an Expression pane support block comments (/*Comment*/) and single line comments (//Comment) allowin more documentation capabilities over and above the Comment tool and the tool annotations.