Why Saving Credentials is Hard 🔐 Saving credentials for use in an Alteryx workflow is a very common use case. Maybe you use an API and need to save Client keys or secrets and getting these credentials into a workflow without hard coding is tricky. It’s common to either read from a text file located …
Category archives: Analytics
Custom Alteryx Tools
So far I’ve written four Alteryx tools based on the Alteryx Python SDK. You can install by downloading the yxi file under the releases tab in GitHub and simply double click to install. The tools will be available in the Alteryx Tool menus and function just like the built-in tools that ship with Alteryx. Data …
File Hashing in Alteryx
Identifying Duplicate Files Imagine you have a folder full of files, all with different names, where you need to identify which, if any, are duplicates. You could use the file size but it’s not a guarantee the files are exactly the same just because they are the same size. Hashing files is an easy way …
You Should Probably Learn To Code
There’s been a clear trend going on for many years now known as ‘No code’ or ‘Low code’. This essentially describes tools or platforms that provide you with a GUI that abstracts away the underlying technicalities so non-technical users can use powerful software. Doing this has been a huge benefit to business since the addressable …
Web Automation Using Python and Selenium
Selenium is a software library that’s used to automate web browsers. It’s often used to run automated testing but can be used for anything involving a web browser. Since so much software is now running in the cloud and accessible via web interfaces Selenium is ideal for automating lots of manual tasks. There’s libraries available …
Why are Logistics Carriers so Bad with Data?
Just to be clear when I say Logistic Carriers I mean UPS, DHL, DSV, GLS and many other three letter companies that deliver your Christmas presents, but in a business context they are also responsible for B2B deliveries of goods to shops and warehouses. I’ve previously worked in Logistics for many years and so have …
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Loading Private Python Libraries to Alteryx at Runtime
The python tool in Alteryx is a great resource that I often use but it can easily get very cluttered with lots of reusable code that could easily be moved out and imported as a library. Unfortunately by default you can’t just use the standard import statement since the location of your workflow at runtime …
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Converting xls to xlsx files in Alteryx
There are numerous threads on the Alteryx Community where people are asking how to covert xls files to xlsx. The solutions generally suggest one of two approaches, either Read the file in with an Input Data tool then output again in the new format Use the Run Command tool to use an an Excel component …
IoT Sensors – Saving Collected Data
Now that my sensors are successfully collecting data and the data is being processed by a Node-RED flow on my Raspberry Pi the final step is to add some persistence to the data. As it stands the data is constantly streaming and being displayed on a dashboard but after that it’s discarded so there’s no …
IoT Sensors – Data Collection
In the first part I talked mostly about the sensors and the gateway so in this article I’ll show you how to collect, filter and store that data from the sensors. My setup is running locally on my LAN and uses a Raspberry Pi 3B+ to process the data. I’ll be using Node-RED to process …