Happy New Year, Community Members! A big thank you to Erin Miller (@Erin) for this special submission. Erin, you've contributed so many fantastic challenges throughout 2025, and it’s only fitting that Challenge #500 comes from you. We truly appreciate your creativity and dedication. Thank you again! A solution to last week’s challenge can be found here. It’s 2026: time for resolutions, fresh routines, and rethinking your media diet. Your friend has been deep into true crime podcasts, so deep, in fact, that their spouse is starting to give them some serious side-eye. It’s clearly time for a change: something lighter, brighter, or just totally different. Luckily, you’ve come across a daily dataset of Spotify’s Top 200 Podcast Episodes, complete with detailed show and episode info from the Spotify API. What better way to kick off the new year than with a chained analytic app to help your friend discover their next podcast obsession? Your 2026 Podcast Discovery App – Let’s Build It! Create a chained app experience where each selection refines the next. The app should include the following filters: * App 1 – Filter by Region * App 2 – Filter by Language (Feeling a little extra? Let the user select multiple languages!) * App 3 – Filter by Average Podcast Duration (Really feeling extra? Group durations into 15-minute intervals for a smooth user experience!) After all filters have been applied, calculate the average show rank and identify the top-ranked episode for each show. The final result should include a summary of the selected filters and a table displaying the top 10 shows by average rank, along with the show description, average show duration, publisher, highest-ranked episode, and episode description. Did you know that Alteryx has a podcast within the Alteryx Community? Check out the Alter Everything Podcast here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alter-Everything-Podcast/Alter-Everything-Podcast-Episode-Guide/ba-p/450065 Once you have completed your challenge, include your solution file and a screenshot of your workflow as attachments to your comment. Good Luck! The Academy Team Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/daniilmiheev/top-spotify-podcasts-daily-updated Challenge_500_start_file.yxzp

Re: Challenge #500: New Year, New Ears Challenge_500_Solution.yxzp

Challenge #500: New Year, New Ears 500.yxzp

Spent way too long working on formulas for the 15 minute duration part lol. But still a fun idea and chained app work. Initial App Selection Generator.yxzp

Challenge #500: New Year, New Ears

AYXAcademy

Full Width - WC banner.svg

Happy New Year, Community Members!

A big thank you to Erin Miller (@Erin) for this special submission. Erin, you've contributed so many fantastic challenges throughout 2025, and it’s only fitting that Challenge #500 comes from you. We truly appreciate your creativity and dedication. Thank you again!

A solution to last week’s challenge can be found here.

It’s 2026: time for resolutions, fresh routines, and rethinking your media diet.

Your friend has been deep into true crime podcasts, so deep, in fact, that their spouse is starting to give them some serious side-eye. It’s clearly time for a change: something lighter, brighter, or just totally different.

Luckily, you’ve come across a daily dataset of Spotify’s Top 200 Podcast Episodes, complete with detailed show and episode info from the Spotify API. What better way to kick off the new year than with a chained analytic app to help your friend discover their next podcast obsession?

Your 2026 Podcast Discovery App – Let’s Build It!

Create a chained app experience where each selection refines the next. The app should include the following filters:

App 1 – Filter by Region
App 2 – Filter by Language

(Feeling a little extra? Let the user select multiple languages!)

App 3 – Filter by Average Podcast Duration

(Really feeling extra? Group durations into 15-minute intervals for a smooth user experience!)

After all filters have been applied, calculate the average show rank and identify the top-ranked episode for each show. The final result should include a summary of the selected filters and a table displaying the top 10 shows by average rank, along with the show description, average show duration, publisher, highest-ranked episode, and episode description.

Did you know that Alteryx has a podcast within the Alteryx Community? Check out the Alter Everything Podcast here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alter-Everything-Podcast/Alter-Everything-Podcast-Episode-Guide/ba-p/450065

Once you have completed your challenge, include your solution file and a screenshot of your workflow as attachments to your comment.

Good Luck!

The Academy Team

Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/daniilmiheev/top-spotify-podcasts-daily-updated

Challenge_500_start_file.yxzp

Apps

Advanced

Difficult

Accepted answers

All comments

AkimasaKajitani

My first solution of 2026!

To tell the truth, there are many consideration.

Spoiler

Actually the input data's code page is 65001, so the result will be broken character. I used the ConverFromCodePage function to fix the codepage.

App1 :

App2 :

App3 :

Result :

Challenge 500_start_file_AK_app1.yxzp

RolandSchubert

Spoiler

challenge_500_solution_rsc_app1.yxzp

Hub119

Solution attached.

Spoiler

App1

App2

App3

Output

Challenge 500 - CH Solved.yxzp

ccanterman

Solved! I'm ready for my badge for 500 challenges!! 😁

For the data, it looked like there were some episode duplicates. To start, I sorted the data by Rank and took the highest rank (e.g., lowest number) value for each episode. I'm not sure if that's right or if I was misinterpreting the data.

I haven't built a Chained App in probably a year and a half, so it was good review. Great challenge, @Erin

Spoiler

Results:

App 1:

2026-01-04 11_26_53-Alteryx Designer x64 - Challenge 500_Carolyn.yxwz.png

App 2:

App 3:

Challenge 500_Carolyn.yxzp

alineruizcampos

Spoiler

App 1:

App 2:

App 3:

Challenge 500_Aline.yxzp

Qiu

Happy New Year everyone!

Spoiler

Challenge 500_start_file_Qiu.yxzp

Pilsner

Weekly Challenge 500 complete (it really was a challenge)! Had fun revisiting chained apps as it's been a little while.

Spoiler

I knew there was a way to make interface tools work directly from a file, instead of reading said file into the workflow, I just had to figure out how!

Here's my workflows (Apps):

App 1:

App 2:

App 3:

500 (New Year New Ears , Podcast).yxzp

lwolfie

My longest time was spent realizing my error in the first filter. I thought it was related to my chained apps.

Challenge 500_solution_LW.yxzp

alexnajm

Can't believe there are 500 challenges! Onto to the next 500 😊

Spoiler

App 3 only
challenge 500.png

Challenge 500_start_file_Alex Abi-Najm.yxzp

olga_strubbe

Thank you, @Erin - this was a great practice of building chained apps!

I first built 3 different apps and chained them, but then decided to use Control Containers, one of the latest Alteryx Citrix features, to give a sequential order to the actions to have it all in a single app.

Spoiler

Challenge 500 app_OS.yxwz

mmontgomery

c500

Spoiler

c500_P1.yxzp

Kenda

Spoiler

output:

step 3:

step 2:

step 1/start:

c500.yxzp

JBevan89

Spoiler

Happy New Year All. I still can not create a Package file- so perhaps add to the list of NY resolutions, however I think it's of our network, version and settings

Challenge 500_JB_App1.yxwz

Challenge 500_JB_App2.yxwz

Challenge 500_JB_App3.yxwz

Erin

What an honor to be the author of challenge #500! Hope it was fun for others.

challenge_500_submission_EM.yxzp

balajilolla3

Spoiler

Solution Attached

App 1

App 1.png

App2

App3

Challenge 500_start_file.yxwz

TurboToad

Fun challenge!

Spoiler

Start

App2

App3

Challenge 500_solution_file.yxzp

Nicholas_14

Happy New Year! This was my first experience building a chained app, and I enjoyed the process since it introduced me to new learning about converting the duration into a 15-minute bucket.

App 1.jpg App 2.jpg App 3.jpg first prompt.jpg prompt 3.jpg

Challenge 500_start_file.yxzp

LindonB

This was a fun one to start the new year off with.

Spoiler

I added a couple features and some clean-up for the report header. I also assumed that we wanted only one top rated episode if there were multiple of equivalent rank. Thank you!

App1

App1

App2

App3

Output

Challenge 500_Spotify Podcasts.yxzp

DaisukeTsuchiya

Spoiler

＜Step1＞

＜Step2＞

＜Step3＞

Challenge 500_start_file_DT1.yxzp

yangjie

Wow

RebekaM8

Refreshing my chaining apps skills

Spoiler

Challenge 500_RM.yxzp

kelsey_kincaid

Spoiler

Challenge 500_kkincaid_App1.yxzp

RWvanLeeuwen

What a journey this has been! These 500 challenges (and 50 cloud quests) are superb for learning, and it inspired many analytics enthusiasts to upskill using Alteryx. Thanks Alteryx Academy, and thanks community for all you've shared.

Here's my take on these chained apps:

Spoiler

First I built a basic workflow before slicing it up into separate apps
I use a 1=1 in the filter expression before I change it into the final configuration. The debug workflow is a must-have when developing these apps
500 - initial workflow (prior to chained apps).png

500 - initial workflow (prior to chained apps).png

Next are apps 1, 2 and 3

I sorted the time bins to ensure they are presented in logical order in app 3

I built out the workflow to ensure I share the show top 10 with the highest ranked episode (not accounting for tied episode ranks)

Challenge 500 - Apps 1 to 3 - RWvL.yxzp

dman2740

Spoiler

Challenge 500_solution_file.yxwz

Reesetrain2

All,

My solution!

Spoiler

Challenge 500_Reesetrain2.yxzp

aiahwieder

Truly fabulous 500th challenge, @Erin !!! Put me through my paces, and resulted in my first (?!) chained app. Great use case for my little Constants in Apps trick (for testing, and for wireless implementation of each Interface tool), plus I was able to use what I learned from my Obscura app to make each selection list dynamic.