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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Implement your Business Intelligence solutions without any coding - by leveraging the power of the Alteryx platform
About This Book
- Experience the power of codeless analytics using Alteryx, a leading Business Intelligence tool
- Uncover hidden trends and valuable insights from your data across different sources and make accurate predictions
- Includes real-world examples to put your understanding of the features in Alteryx to practical use
Who This Book Is For
This book is for aspiring data professionals who want to learn and implement self-service analytics from scratch, without any coding. Those who have some experience with Alteryx and want to gain more proficiency will also find this book to be useful. A basic understanding of the data science concepts is all you need to get started with this book.
What You Will Learn
- Create efficient workflows with Alteryx to answer complex business questions
- Learn how to speed up the cleansing, data preparing, and shaping process
- Blend and join data into a single dataset for self-service analysis
- Write advanced expressions in Alteryx leading to an optimal workflow for efficient processing of huge data
- Develop high-quality, data-driven reports to improve consistency in reporting and analysis
- Explore the flexibility of macros by automating analytic processes
- Apply predictive analytics from spatial, demographic, and behavioral analysis and quickly publish, schedule
- Share your workflows and insights with relevant stakeholders
In Detail
Alteryx, as a leading data blending and advanced data analytics platform, has taken self-service data analytics to the next level. Companies worldwide often find themselves struggling to prepare and blend massive datasets that are time-consuming for analysts. Alteryx solves these problems with a repeatable workflow designed to quickly clean, prepare, blend, and join your data in a seamless manner.
This book will set you on a self-service data analytics journey that will help you create efficient workflows using Alteryx, without any coding involved. It will empower you and your organization to take well-informed decisions with the help of deeper business insights from the data.Starting with the fundamentals of using Alteryx such as data preparation and blending, you will delve into the more advanced concepts such as performing predictive analytics. You will also learn how to use Alteryx's features to share the insights gained with the relevant decision makers. To ensure consistency, we will be using data from the Healthcare domain throughout this book.
The knowledge you gain from this book will guide you to solve real-life problems related to Business Intelligence confidently. Whether you are a novice with Alteryx or an experienced data analyst keen to explore Alteryx's self-service analytics features, this book will be the perfect companion for you.
Style and approach
Comprehensive, step by step guide filled with real-world examples to step through the complex business questions using one of the leading data analytics platform.
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Seitenzahl: 165
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Learning Alteryx
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: December 2017
Production reference: 1221217
ISBN 978-1-78839-265-5
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Renato Baruti
Copy Editor
Safis Editing
Reviewer
Mayur Ravindra Narkhede
Project Coordinator
Manthan Patel
Commissioning Editor
Sunith Shetty
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Tushar Gupta
Indexer
Tejal Daruwale Soni
Content Development Editor
Aaryaman Singh
Graphics
Tania Dutta
Technical EditorDinesh Chaudhary
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Renato Baruti is an Alteryx Certified Professional and the Tampa Bay Alteryx User Group leader, strengthening the self-service analytics community by bringing professionals closer together to share the endless data-driven insights that Alteryx has to offer.
Professionally, he is a senior systems analyst with over 6 years of experience in healthcare analytics and over 12 years of healthcare experience.
After graduating with an economics degree from the University of South Florida, Renato continued with that interest as a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. His experience has ranged across data structure and design using SQL, building intuitive Alteryx workflows to answer complex business problems, and finishing with expressive data visualizations by developing Interactive Tableau dashboards to revolutionize not just how individuals work, but how the entire organization works.
Renato believes in learning by understanding and loves teaching everything he learns! He has a passion for using Alteryx that grows exponentially day after day, identifying relationships in data and solving problems in minutes.
About the Reviewer
Mayur has a good blend of experience in data science. He is a researcher with educational qualifications of a BTech in computer science and an MTech in CSE with an artificial intelligence specialization. He has core experience in building automated solutions. He is proficient at applying technology, AI, ML, data mining, and design thinking for better understandings and predictions to improve business functions and desired requirements with growth profitability.
Mayur has worked on multiple advanced solutions, such as an asset health monitoring, a batch process performance analysis, a smart metering for water utility clients, and predictive model development for oil and gas customers, and a big data platform for asset intensive industries.
He has core expertise in implementing machine learning techniques in various domains of asset-intensive industries, prediction techniques for transportation, and clustered graph laying out algorithms for Life Sciences. He has also worked with transportation clients in developing traffic prediction algorithms. He has played a key role in setting up the Data Science and Big Data labs.
Mayur is a sportsman and plays cricket, badminton, carom. He is also a vivid traveler who likes to explore new places. Beside this, he is a good reader and has a hunger to learn evolving technologies and implement them in simpler ways.
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Table of Contents
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the color images of this book
Errata
Piracy
Questions
Getting Started with Alteryx
Installation and setup
The Alteryx Designer architecture
Introduction to Alteryx Designer
An overview of the workflow configurations
Exploring the Tool Palettes
The Favorites tools
Summary
Workflow Optimization
Resource optimization and speed processing
Resource optimization
Resource optimization best practices
Speed processing
Performance Profiling
Connecting to data
Input Data
Text Input
Map Input
Connect In-DB
Alteryx file types
Summary
Data Preparation and Blending
Data preparation
Data cleansing
Filtering
Join and union
Join
Join multiple
Union
Summary
Writing Fast and Accurate Expressions
Formula
Multi-Row Formula
Multi-Field Formula
Summary
Transforming Data
Transforming data
Summarizing and aggregating data
Running total
Weighted average
Summary
Data Parsing Techniques
Text to columns
Converting strings to dates and dates to strings
Regular expressions
Summary
Creating Data-Driven Custom Reports
Data Table
Charting
Reporting layout
Sharing the report
Summary
Using Macros in Workflows
Standard Macro
Batch Macro
Summary
Sharing Your Insights
Alteryx Server
Enterprise scalability
Ultimate flexibility and scalability
Scheduling and automating workflow execution to deliver data whenever and wherever you want
Sharing and collaboration
Analytic governance
Alteryx Analytics Gallery
Summary
Best Practices
The ultimate guide to workflow design
Workflow layout
Autosave workflows
Data profile information
Explorer box
Tips and tricks
Browse data
Data organization
Tool alignment
Time savers
Summary
Preface
Alteryx is a platform that allows analysts to prepare, blend, and analyze all their data using workflows. Different business groups involved in marketing, sales, and healthcare find it difficult to quickly study and analyze data. Alteryx solves this problem using the different tools it has to offer for gathering, cleaning, and joining data.
A leading data blending and analytics platform, Alteryx needs no coding and provides a very user-friendly environment, with the names of the tools that are used given names that are relevant to the function they carry out, making it easier for users to exploit the different functions Alteryx has to offer.
Apart from being user friendly, it's the efficiency of this platform that makes it one of the leading business intelligence platforms in the world at the moment. What makes Alteryx attractive as a data intelligence platform? Well, this platform will help you to derive insights from data, which means a huge volume of data and also how to share these derived insights without any coding.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Alteryx, introduces us to Alteryx as a platform and also shows how to download and install the Alteryx Designer. It looks inside the Alteryx Designer architecture and helps us understand how the Alteryx Engine drives data processing in a repeatable workflow.
Chapter 2, Workflow Optimization, focuses on workflow optimization concepts and gives us information about best practices for the application of runtime selections and to speed up execution. Workflow design is vital to ensure that the workflow runs efficiently, allowing for optimum processing.
Chapter 3, Data Preparation and Blending, explains the processes of data preparation, blending, and joining, which are the most powerful capabilities of Alteryx. Data analysts have found themselves struggling to get the best results from their data using Microsoft Excel or other tools. You'll be sent on a journey to discover self-service analytics and build a quick and reliable dataset for business decision making.
Chapter 4, Writing Fast and Accurate Expressions, introduces various tools in Alteryx that allow a broad variety of calculations. You will utilize multiple expressions to create new data columns, update existing columns, and reference data to qualifying rows. You will move through more rigorous expressions to maximize the potential of the Formula, Multi-Field Formula, and Multi-Row Formula tools. The goal is to gain a solid foundation in the different types of formulas to write with these tools.
Chapter 5, Transforming Data, helps us to arrange and transpose data in Alteryx that can be developed to ensure the dataset best fits the needs of how the output data should be analyzed. You’ll learn the pivot orientations of the Transpose and Cross tab tools, and how they help guide the pathway to a visual representation of your data. Once your data has been aligned to meet the business needs, you will dive into summarizing your data to perform various numeric, and string actions.
Chapter 6, Data Parsing Techniques, explains the Parse tool palette, which offers parsing options that will save you time by having the tools do it all for you. The Text to Columns tool allows you to split text from one field to multiple columns or rows. Not to forget, the numerous times a file comes in with a string-formatted field and it should be a date-formatted field. This issue is solved by utilizing the DateTime tool.
Chapter 7, Creating Data-Driven Custom Reports, helps us understand the suites of reporting tools used to create high quality data-driven reports and deliver them into customers. These tools have been designed with the Alteryx design paradigm in mind creating snippets in each of the tools. You will create a report from start to finish, with the best design output, which will help organizations to make informed business decisions. Whether it’s developing a data table or visual representation, the reporting tools suite will help you produce presentation-quality reports.
Chapter 8, Using Macros in Workflows, explains that a macro workflow has the flexibility to run as a single tool within another workflow. There are various macro types, which are built by using Interface Tools with the Interface Designer. Batch macros are designed to run repeatedly in the context of a workflow. The ability to run a single tool through every record, and loop the records back through the workflow until a condition is met, can be accomplished by creating an Iterative Macro.
Chapter 9, Sharing Your Insights, explains how to publish, schedule, and share workflows through Alteryx Server and Alteryx Public Gallery. Alteryx Server empowers teams to collaborate on data-driven decisions quickly and easily through a scalable platform. You’ll identify how data can be deployed through effective and secure collaboration across teams. Alteryx Public Gallery is an analytics cloud platform that delivers a consumer-based analytics experience. Organizations look to cloud business intelligence to deliver faster deployment.
Chapter 10, Best Practices, takes a look at the data necessary to make critical business decisions, which is best consumed by streamlined workflows. You will learn best practice solutions on building efficient workflows, reviewing data exploration techniques, and handling data sources. These best practice guidelines, along with tips and tricks will save you valuable time in the business decision making process.
What you need for this book
The technical specifications are key to ensuring that the system requirements are met before installation. Alteryx Analytics 11.0, which is what we will install for this book and the future versions, is only available for 64-bit machines with a Windows operating system of 7 or later.
The following chart illustrates the minimum system requirements:
Machine requirements
Operating system requirements
Chip
Processor
Ram
Disk size
64-bit
Microsoft Windows 7 or later
Quad core i7
2.5 GHz
8 GB RAM
500 GB - 1 TB
Who this book is for
This book is for aspiring data professionals who want to learn to implement self-service analytics from scratch, without any coding. Those who have some experience with Alteryx and want to gain more proficiency will also find this book to be useful. A basic understanding of data science concepts is all you need to get started with this book.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The next lines of code read the link and assign it to the open function."
A block of code is set as follows:
IF Contains([DataValueUnit],'%') && !IsNull([DataValue]) THEN [DataValue] + '%' ELSE [DataValue] ENDIF
New terms and important words are shown in bold.
Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "In order to download new modules, we will go to Files | Settings | Project Name | Project Interpreter."
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of. To send us general feedback, simply email [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message. If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/LearningAlteryx_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title. To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material. We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.
Getting Started with Alteryx
Alteryx Analytics is a tremendous platform allowing analysts to easily prep, blend, and analyze all their data using a repeatable workflow. Many business groups, such as marketing, finance, healthcare, and sales find it difficult to quickly analyze data they can act upon instantly using legacy approaches, such as Microsoft Excel and other platforms. Alteryx solves these problems with a seamless process, by using tools to gather, cleanse, and join data from different sources. This repeatable workflow for self-service data analytics delivers deeper insights in hours, not weeks.
You will be accomplishing the task of building and publishing analytic models by using tools in a drag-and-drop environment within the same intuitive user interface. You’ll learn data preparation and data cleansing from spreadsheets and other sources to determine key insights and how share those key insights.
In this chapter, we'll focus on the following foundation topics:
Downloading and installing Alteryx Designer
An introduction to Alteryx Designer and what makes it such a powerful self-service analytics platform
A look inside the Alteryx Designer architecture and understanding how the Alteryx Engine drives data processing in a repeatable workflow
An overview of the workflow configurations, ensuring indispensable selections are met to create an optimal workflow
Exploring the tool palettes filled with endless tools within various tool palettes (Getting familiar with the tool palettes will provide quick and easy access to designing your workflow)
The Favorites tools to categorize and save most utilized tools
