Challenge #500: New Year, New Ears

[AYXAcademy]

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-... 

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 

Download Start File

[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 : 

[RolandSchubert]

Spoiler

[Hub119]

Solution attached.

Spoiler

App1

App2

App3

Output

[Carolyn]

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:


App 2:


App 3:

[alineruizcampos]

Spoiler

App 1:



App 2:



App 3:

[Qiu]

Happy New Year everyone!

Spoiler

[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:

[lwolfie]

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

[alexnajm]

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

Spoiler

App 3 only