Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!

General Discussions

Discuss any topics that are not product-specific here.

Do you have an organizational or personal way of documenting workflows?

LeahK
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

GOT THOUGHTS.png

For those of you who may have missed last weeks post, we're starting a weekly Q&A Thread, called the Thursday Thought. Every week we pose a question to the community and invite members to share their experience. Even if you don't have an answer/solution to the question, you are still welcome and encouraged to participate. Think ahead... What problems could you avoid by having these processes in place?

 

Question:

What processes, if any, have you put in place to make workflows more understandable, shareable, and traceable?

12 REPLIES 12
LeahK
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@Aguisande, that's definitely the plan :) The combination of responses we've received here, will make an excellent asset!

Philip
12 - Quasar

We've been working to create some standard practices so that workflows and documentation are similar across several developers. Some key things:

 

1. A general layout system where we group tools into three Tool Container categories: Input (with a specific color), Transformations (with a different specific color), and Output (with a specific color). This was done for ETL work. In the future, we'll probably add some additional categories, such as analysis. Within these containers, the workflow can be grouped and documented further.

 

2. Have standardized annotation text template. Why? Because it reduces the amount of thought needed to annotate a took, removing one more barrier to getting everybody to document processes. They don't always fit, but most of the time they are great jumping off points. These are just starting to be implemented and tested, so may change.

 

Annotation guidelines by tool type. Do not use the tool name in the descriptive annotation. Use short phrases in present tense, rather than complete sentences. Where possible, descriptions should simply contain a verb and field name(s).

Tool type

Annotation contents

Example(s)

Filter

“Remove” + record description OR “Retain” + record description

Remove blank records

Retain records with data
Retain records with PIN = Premises

Filter*

“If <field, condition>…” (followed by “…Then/Else…” on subsequent tools)

If Collection State has no data…

Join

"Match on" + field names used to join tables (or descriptive names for fields, if field names are not intuitive)

Match on Order ID

Summarize

Brief description of what is achieved by summary

Remove duplicates

Formula

Brief description of what is achieved by formula

Convert Test Code to uppercase
Trim whitespace

Set Test Code to blank

Input Data/Text, Connect In-DB

Filename (if applicable): Fields used from this data source (or descriptive names for fields, if field names are not intuitive), comma-separated

PIN, Submission Reason
location.csv: Location ID, Address

Output Data

Filename (if applicable), automatically populated by Alteryx

Output.xls Table=‘Sheet1$’

Message

“Record changes to log”

Record changes to log

StephaneP
Alteryx
Alteryx

Hello,

 

I am a little bit late in the show but I think it is worth mentioning those 3 articles I have just posted on the community about "How to make your workflow impactful?". There is a slight nuance in the sense that those are not rules to increase maintenance but rules to increase 1st good impression and understandability. But it is right in the target of documenting.

 

Example: Before/after

StephaneP_0-1630495033835.png

 


Part 1: Prepare yourself and your audience

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works/Make-Your-Workflow-Visually-Impactful-Part-1-Your-Prep...

 

Part 2: Prepare your workflow

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works/Make-Your-Workflow-Visually-Impactful-Part-2-Your-Work...

 

Part 3: Enrich with visual effects

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works/Make-Your-Workflow-Visually-Impactful-Part-3-Visual-Ef...

 

Hope it helps.

 

Enjoy & share

 

Stéphane Portier
Sales Engineer
Alteryx
Labels