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Dashboard Week (5/5) : Pooper the toilet uber Analytic App

This post was originally published on The Data School blog between 2018 and July 2025, before our program was renamed to MIP’s Analytics Career Accelerator. References throughout this article to “The Data School” or “DS” all refer to what is now MIP’s Analytics Career Accelerator. The program, its people, and its commitment to launching outstanding analytics careers remain the same – just under a new name.

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Our last challenge of the week was visualizing the Australian public toilets data set. The challenge did not involve much preparation, but I thought that my alteryx skills need some sharpening so I created an Analytic App in Alteryx to customize the public toilet experience. The analytic app allows the user to pin point a location, and choose a toilet type, which will filter the data set to only toilets within 2 km of the chosen location. The output is the set of near by toilets and their corresponding spatial objects.

Analytic App

Workflow

The important thing to note in the workflow is creating a dummy column to update for the List interface tool, and creating connect the Map interface tool to a Map Input tool to create a dummy special object.  A good way to test why your analytic app might not be working is to choose the debug option in the interface designer. That will create a workflow that simulates the result of the analytic app. I also use a reverse geocoder macro to retrieve the street name and postcode of the selected point. Finally, I wrap the output of the analytic app in a shape file, and the unmatched output in another file in case I am interested in the rest of the data.

Dashboard

I went for a simple dashboard that allows the user to identify the toilets in the location on a map, check the distance from their pin point, and whether or not the toilet is accessible.

Use this Link to check the dashboard out on Tableau Public.

 

 

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