Weekly Challenge Index & Welcome (Page 1)

[AYXAcademy]

Hi @Shelbey! We're so glad to hear you'll be joining in the fun here with the Weekly Challenges!  To share your solution to a challenge, just reply to the most recent post.  You can post a picture of your solution with a spoiler tag, and upload your workflow as a file attachment to your post.  Happy Alteryx-ing! 

[Shelbey]

Thank you! 

[ianwi]

By Golly you’ve done it; You’ve solved a weekly challenge! Now it’s time to show everyone you’re unique approach and collect those sweet badges on community. “But how?” you ask…

1) Reply - when you post a solution, it’s best practice to reply to the original posting. While you can click the reply button on another user’s response, we try to reserve that for questions you about their workflow/initiating a conversation with that specific user.

2) Write Your Response – We recommend attaching your workflow to your post so others can see the configurations you used when building your solution.

Spoilers are another popular option. Click the Insert a Spoiler Tag icon to create a spoiler container. This is essentially a mini response box that will be collapsed so as not to give away any tricks for those who haven’t solved yet.

Many folks like to insert a screen capture of their workflow. Make sure your cursor is in the spoiler box and use the “Photo” icon to upload an image.

3) Stay Active – by default, you’ll get notifications when someone replies to your post. You can opt out but why would you?

[bdelarosa]

new to alteryx, challenge 2 solved

[jamielaird]

How would we all feel about ranking the 'top 10' based on completion times?

I.e. to snag the top spot you'd need to be first to complete the challenge? It's taken me a while to figure out that the ordering is alphabetical within each rank so usernames that start with capitals will always appear higher up, which feels a bit arbitrary.

I am overthinking this and it clearly does not matter all that much, but it might be a nice way to keep things interesting now the field is getting so crowded at the top. Although I suppose we're then just introducing a bias based on time zones :-).

[kelly_gilbert]

@jamielaird- it never even occurred to me to consider how we were sorted within the challenge counts! Clearly, I'm not very competitive. "Tied for nth place" is motivating enough for me, but I can see how you might want something else once you've completed all of the challenges!

I don't have any great solution ideas, however, in addition to the time zone issue, it seems like it could be discouraging to newcomers to promote/reward/celebrate jumping on a challenge as soon as it is posted. Trying to make the leader board was extremely motivating to me as I was working through Weekly Challenges, so I support any solution that keeps it inclusive, achievable (and not demotivating) for others, especially users who are just starting their climb! 

Possibly, users who have completed every challenge could be moved to a separate list (and use some motivating sort method: time, stars, posts to the weekly challenge threads, etc.) to rank within that group?

[jamielaird]

I was definitely overthinking it, and I totally agree just getting on the leaderboard is a massive achievement. Now.. where do I click to change my username to Aa_jamielaird? 😉

[bdelarosa]

in my opinion the tiebreaker should be least bytes used not fastest, that will negate the time zone factor for the world. And give kudos to the most efficient problem solver... Yes?!!! 

[jamielaird]

Interesting idea.. although it opens up the debate (which I love to have) about whether fewer tools is always best (hint: I don't think it is).

[mceleavey]

Couldn't agree more @jamielaird .

Fewer tools may mean having one tool where you spend three months writing a SQL script, rather than using three tools in Alteryx and building the whole thing in five minutes.

Ultimately, there are use cases for all things, but something that you can build quickly, that runs efficiently and can easily be interpreted and maintained by other users is a good workflow.

There's no point in building something that is immensely complex that can't be understood by your replacement when you are hospitalised in a freak cheese-juggling accident. 

M.