Weekly Challenges
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Here is My Periodic Table of alteryx Tools where Tool-Rank popularity is determined by the tools I used most frequently in 2017.
Not the most innovative solution I've ever submitted since I more-or-less borrowed ideas from others for most of it and then re-used parts & pieces from my challenge 97 & 98 workflows... but I at least have a slightly different end product than the (TOTALLY AWESOME AMAZING AWE-INSPIRING) solutions that have already been provided! I borrowed general concepts from @LordNeilLord and @Laurap1228, then took a detour to reach my final destination.
I have copies of my weekly challenge submissions saved on my computer in one folder, so I just pointed to that folder to get the code for each workflow... and then I created a mapping table that converted the tool name used in the yxdb from Challenge 98 to the tool name that is actually used in the code for each workflow (a manual step... not pretty, or ideal, but being as this was my first foray into interpreting XML code in an Alteryx workflow... it was good enough for now! And gives me something else to work on in 2018 haha.)
* NOTE: I know that this is not 100% accurate, since I find it incredibly hard to believe that I haven't included Input, Output, Count Records, Select Records, or Data Cleansing in one of my 98 Weekly Challenge submissions to date... :) But the rest of the tools included in this "Haven't Used Yet" List appear to be reasonable, so I'll dig into this a little further to see if I can figure out where those few exceptions might be hiding in the XML code that I missed in the first go around.
... And as a bit of a personal note on this last submission for 2017... I'd just like to add that it's awfully fun finishing up the year with my 99th challenge, considering I only completed my first one in March!! Truly incredible how much you can learn and grow in 9 short months, just by being involved in this incredible Community. I am so excited about the connections I've made with others, both virtually and in person... and I can't even begin to describe how thankful I am for the amazing career opportunity I was given this year that is 100% due to the skills I've learned from this Community and the connections I made at Inspire. It's hard to imagine how 2018 will be able to top this year... but hanging around with all of you, I just know it's going to be even better!
Thank you thank you THANK YOU to all of you for helping me grow - I love sharing this wild world of Alteryx with you!
Cheers & Happy New Year,
NJ
So - there's loads that was interesting and insightful here - some highlights for me:
- I was so tempted to steal @patrick_digan 's mapping between tool and help-text. Not sure if you did this the hard way Patrick, or if you found this config buried in a file somewhere? Either way - nice!
- @TaraM then did a custom style-sheet; and linked this up to the tool mastery - great idea (especially since this was not hard-coded but a dynamic pull so it will self-update)
- Super impressed with @LordNeilLord 's idea of scraping everyone's weekly submissions. This ties back to a discussion we had at Inspire - nice play my friend!
- The idea of a personal tool inventory for learning - @Laurap1228 and @NicoleJohnson . This is also a super useful idea.
- Few of us went for Tableau viz - @ggruccio ; @PhilipMannering ; @SophiaF (who did this in challenge 98 already)
- And some Analytical Apps to filter - @Ilías
My approach:
Learned from @SophiaF 's post in challenge 98 how to create the custom shapes in Tableau.
Then went about seeing what signal we can find in the data about the usage patterns. Built a tableau dash that allows you to filter the tools by category in 2 ways - one is in the Periodic table view; and the other is in a modified frequency plot.
Unfiltered - you can see the entire table
Taking out some of the categories, you can begin to see the pattern
This view shows the pattern most clearlyYou can see from the last image, that some tool categories are significantly over-represented in the upper rows of the table (higher ranks of usage). This may be an indicator that there's a bigger barrier to learning for some of the other tools.
Also - looking at the usage, you can clearly see evidence of what was discussed at inspire - that people first use Alteryx for data prep, and then often move up the stack.
Finally - Poppy (our cat) just wanted to mention that she was exhausted after all the Alteryx-ing that she's done this year. It's been a very busy year for Poppy - what with her first birthday; first celebrity photo appearance at Inspire EU; all the help she gave with the new computer build; and now all these weekly challenges and posing for the picture requested by @TaraM and @LeahK with the bandana! Phew - time to get a quick snooze in!
Here's wishing everyone a little well-earned rest over the new-year (with Poppy leading the way in the resting piece)!
Created my own tableau shape library and then loaded the slightly manipulated data into a tableau dashboard with a few filters.
Ready for the big 100 this upcoming week
Also it doesnt seem to like me uploading the tableau dashboard as a result/sorry
