Challenge #146: SANTALYTICS 2018 - Part 2

[T_Willins]

I had waaaaayyy too much fun with this.  To quote Monty Python, "Now for something completely different."  I started with the premises of everybody loves surprises, but they still need to get something they want (need) and Christmas should be about the kids.  I split my budget between clothing (green section) and hygiene (red section) to balance purchases (more on that later).  My first filters (other than required) filter the products that reference "child" and "kid" then randomizes the products and amounts to purchase.  This leads to the fun result of every time the workflow is run it produces a different result!  After maximizing my spend on each type, I wanted to be sure I was squeezing out every penny that could be spent on purchasing products, so I took any remaining balance and determined if any additional products could be purchased.  The gold section (final purchases) could be an iterative macro, but running it twice seemed to always work.  With a higher budget, a macro would be recommended.  Browse outputs give a shopping list and the remaining cash balance. 

Finally, being inspired by Alteryx and this weekly challenge, I matched the $20 donation Alteryx is giving to A Precious Child.  If you can, I challenge everyone who is posting a solution to do the same.  The link is:  https://donate.apreciouschild.org/

Happy Holidays and Happy Alteryxing!

[WilliamR]

Here is my solution.

I have tried to do something the more dynamic I could but I need to fix the number of webpage to scrap. Items allocation is done incrémenting by one each until to reach the maximum amount. The list is in pdf, ready to be used in the supermarket.

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[AJauniskis]

My solution. $600 total to spend, 30 solutions so far, with $2.63 left.

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[calampert]

My solution:

[EW]

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$640 was allocated assuming it was better to use up most of the money than to have exactly a 50/50 split between clothing and hygiene.  Also I spent way too much time trying to figure out what should be considered hygiene products!  I used an item price limit of $15 to get a variety of items.  

Also I love the idea of making a donation for real!  Going to do that now.  

[CharlieS]

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I decided to let a couple of iterative macros keep randomly picking items from each category until nothing else can be purchased.

[TylerNa]

I went for quantity in my solution. Left $1.90 to still be spent. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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[ultrarunner]

My solution is messy, but I am doing this for a good cause. Learning Alteryx is one of the best things in year 2018. Happy Holidays!

[chpoland]

My solution at $720  Thanks for giving back!!

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[ddiesel]

This was my favorite challenge to date!

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Here’s where my brain went with this one:

• Filtered StoreData by the criteria in @JoeM guidelines
• Filtered by keywords for items listed @ https://apreciouschild.org/take-action/donate-goods/
• Spent a little extra time removing items with keywords that were irrelevant, inappropriate, or overpriced
• Created 10 records for each item (to satisfy the no more than 10 items clause)
• Took half the budget and fed it into an iterative macro that randomly chose clothing items up to the budget
• Took the remaining donation budget and ran it through the same iterative macro for hygiene items
• Unioned and Summarized the data into tables with quantity and extended cost
• Took the opportunity to practice with reporting tools to create a printable PDF (for the very appreciated volunteers that donate their time to do the shopping!)
  
  

I had $740 dollars to work with, but this is workflow is dynamic to run with any budget. If I were responsible for the product selection, I might run the workflow a few times to get a list that “feels” the right mix of products to donate. There’s only so much we can automate before we need to get down into the weeds.

Happy Holidays everyone! See you next year!