After a week of cramming in Beginner and Advanced courses in Alteryx, what can you do to ensure you are well positioned to keep leveraging the tools you’ve learnt and applying them to numerous and unique data sources in the future?
Practice!
The most daunting thing when learning about such a powerful data science and analytics platform is the vast array of tools which comes with it.
During the week, we had ample opportunity to use the tools abundant times, so it is easy to forget the reason behind why you are performing a certain action. But, knowing myself to be the note taker I am, I found myself using the Comment Tool in Alteryx more than any other tool I was learning about. Using the Comment tool religiously has definitely aided my learning process as when it came to revision time, the intuition behind each step sprung in to my mind.
This process of note taking can be exploited by individuals at all levels as the appeal behind a good Alteryx workflow is its ability to be replicated and adapted to the needs of different end users.
In addition to the Comment tool, make sure you get in the habit of filling out Annotations on the majority of your tools, especially the Formula tool, as it not only summarizes the configurations you have set, but it also helps form the story behind your workflow.
Containers should also be used to group specific tasks and make sure to colour code them by process.
So, what is the main takeaway?
With effective documentation, sending workflows to others or even looking back on older workflows you’ve created won’t be a laborious deciphering activity.