Challenge #26: Service Technician Travel Distance

[GeneR]

The link to last week’s challenge (challenge #25) is HERE

This week’s challenge is a use case faced by one of our customers that can leverage the geo-spatial tools available in Alteryx.  If you have the spatial data available you can output your results as drive-distance, in the event that you do not have the drive-distance data available, please use the straight-line distance.  The basic tools and setup of the data needed will be identical.  Output results will be provided for both methods.  In the event that you use drive-distance and your results vary slightly from the sample output, it may be due to variance in the data set used for the exercise.

Use Case:  in order to audit their employee expense reports, a service company would like to calculate how far (in miles) their technician is traveling from their hotels, to the worksite, then to their destination hotel on a daily basis.

The Data:  The source is collected in a way that record 1 contains the spatial object for the beginning hotel for day 1, record 2 is the spatial object for the worksite for day 1, and record 3 is the spatial object for the ending hotel for day 1.  This pattern repeats for three successive days.

Find the distance on a daily basis the technician is either driving or straight line distance if you don’t have the spatial data available.

Enjoy!

[TaraM]

A solution has been uploaded

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[LeahK]

Challenge accepted  :)

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[MarqueeCrew]

@JoeM,

Here's my abbreviated take on this one....  I followed a different path from @LeahK :)

[SeanAdams]

solution attached - slightly different approach

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- Simple open polygon for the day's travels using a row ID to sequence
- then took the distance using a spatial info.

Note: didn't work out the straight line difference between the hotels as a second set, I think I misunderstood the question a little :-)

[NicoleJohnson]

I used straight-line distance for this one. I feel like there was probably another way that wouldn't involve Tiles & Cross-Tab, but it worked... :)

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Solution: Unique Value Tile by Date to determine 1,2,3 step for Hotel A to Site to Hotel B > Cross-Tab: Group by Date, Column = Tile SequenceNum, Values = Spatial Obj. > Find Distance between SequenceNum 1 & 2 and 2 & 3 > Join by Date > Formula: Hotel to Site Distance + Site to Hotel B Distance.

[estherb47]

My solution looks very much like @NicoleJohnson's 

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[LordNeilLord]

A nice easy one to start the day with

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[Laurap1228]

I really liked this one :) I always feel smart when I solve the challenge quickly.

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[A_Twa]

I arrived at a similar solution to the 'official' one.  Although I did have to solicit some help from a colleague who ultimately put me on the right path.