Passing The Baton

The theme of this year’s Inspire conference is “Alter Everything” and Alteryx has truly changed my life, it has brought me new friends, new skills, given me the chance to live on a different continent and through all of that the opportunity to build the product that I love.

But times change, and with that said I am sad to announce that I am stepping down as the curator of the CReW macros. Which if I am honest I think already happened a couple of years ago, it has just taken me this long to realise it and make it official. There is no big reason, my life has just changed: I have a family who I want to spend my free time with and the time I don’t spend with them I want to get out of the house/office and exercise or see friends (and there is this little project at work I am working on that really eats up all of my thinking time right now). So apologies to everyone who has sent me bug fixes or new macros over the last couple of years and joined my list of “things I need to get to” I realise now I am not going to get to that list.

But in thinking of what next for the CReW macros there really was only one person who I could think I might pass the reigns to (that pun just wrote itself). A long term contributor to the macros, a good friend and all round legend of Alteryx, Mr. Mark Frisch or as some of you may know him MarqueeCrew. I will let Mark post a welcome post here soon with his ideas for the macros, but all there is left for me to do is thank Mark for taking over and for all of you for all of your suggestions and help with the macros over the last 4 years.

Hope to see many of you at one of the Inspire conferences this year.

Adam
(Former curator of the CReW macros)

Crew Macro Pack - 2016 Q2 Release

The latest release of the CReW macro pack is available for download now at

http://Downloads.ChaosReignsWithin.com/Macros.zip

NOTE: You will require Alteryx 10.0 or later to use this macro pack.

For installation instructions see this page

WHAT'S NEW?

New Macros

Wait A Second - This month I am very excited to be able to introduce another new contributor to the CReW macro pack: Daniel Brun.  Who as well as contributing this macro here has also released his own macro pack "The Inviso macro pack for Alteryx" available for download here.

The Wait A Second macro is a different spin on the throttle tool which allows a user to specify a wait time between records passing through the tool.

Blocking Test Tool - This macro came directly from a client request and is actually something which I have seen asked for many time before.  It is very useful when updating a external data source and you want to check some condition before you write *any* data out.  It checks all of the data against the given expression and only if all of the records pass that expression does it then pass its records downstream.  If any record fails the expression then an error message is thrown and no records are output.

The Test Macros

These are four new macros which were born out of a series of blog posts I wrote back in 2015 about trying test driven development for Alteryx macros.  That experiment actually hit some stumbling blocks which I am yet to write up about, but the macros that were born out of it live on and are very useful for testing in a TDD style or otherwise.

I am releasing them in this release with a BETA flag as they are still very much a work in progress and I know I still have some work to do on them.  However I believe they are in a good enough condition to get some other people looking at them and feeding back any issues and improvements they might find.

They are under their own tool category "CReW Test" which you can hide for now if you want to wait for them to evolve some more.

They are

Test Runner - This is the macro which runs all of your tests.  You generally have a workflow containing only this macro.  Running that workflow will run all of your tests.

Expect Equal - This macro takes two data streams (Expected and Actual) and throws a (hopefully useful) error message if they differ.

This is the macro where I know I have some work to do and where you as a community can help out.  I need any examples you can find where this tool isn't doing what you expect.  So data sets you think are equal, but it thinks are different and vice versa.

Expect Zero - This macro expects to receive zero records into it and if it doesn't throws an error telling you.

Expect Error - This macro is for checking that workflows correctly error.  An essential part of testing.  If it is placed within a tool container then it expects a tool in that same tool container to throw the expected error message.  If the correct error message is not thrown then the Test Runner will mark that test as failed.

I intend a follow up article on how to use the macros, but to get started quickly take a copy of the GettingStartedTemplate folder in TestMacros, rename it to something meaningful and run the contained RunTests.yxmd to run the sample tests.

You can also take a look at the CReW macro test suite which you can find in Samples\CReW Macros\Tests.  Again a work in progress, but the starting of what is to follow.

As always please let me know about any issues/feedback you have and hopefully see many of you at Inspire next week!

(If you are not registered already what are you waiting for? http://www.alteryx.com/inspire-2016)

Crew Macro Pack - 2015 Q3 Release

It it with great pleasure that I can announce the next release of the CReW macro pack.

It is available for download now at

http://Downloads.ChaosReignsWithin.com/Macros.zip

Or for anyone still on 9.5

http://Downloads.ChaosReignsWithin.com/Macros9.5.zip

It has been a long time coming I know, but I hope you enjoy the new content.  I'm pleased to say this pack has three new contributors from the community, something which I hope we can continue with future releases.

Installation Instructions

1. Download the zip file above
2. Extract it to a location on your machine where you want to keep the macros.  (Not in the Program Files/Alteryx folder or an existing Macros folder)
3. Run Install.yxwz

Community Supported

These macros are not an official Alteryx release and as such they have not been through the full testing process that tools in the product have.  Some of them are prototypes and experimental, but that is some of what makes them so fun.  

If you find an issue let me know either in the comments below or drop me personally a note and I'll take a look, or if you can see how to fix it yourself then even better!

What's New?

New Macros

Wildcard XLSX Input - This macro was contributed by Joe Mako and came from a discussion on this community post.  Ever wanted to read in multiple XLXS files and worksheets?  Then this is the macro for you!  (This is the only macro in the pack which is currently missing from the 9.5 version as it makes use of 10.0 features)

Description - "Reads in multiple sheets from multiple Excel files from a directory. Optionally can filter out sheets, can pull field names from a header row, can auto configure field types, can sample N random sheets, and if the headers do not match then raw data for the sheets that did not match will be in the 'N' output."

Chi Square Test - Our second new macro author this month, this one is from Mark Frisch or MarqueeCrew another very active member of the new community site.

Description - "Have you created a sample set and wanted to know if there was a bias in the sample?  Random doesn't always mean you get an even quantity of data across your variables.  This test will check to see if the distribution of domain values (for a specific variable) are representative of the parent population.

Best to double check your samples before you run your tests!"

Moving Summarize - This is a macro I wrote almost a year ago now and featured on this blog here.  But it really has been that long since the last macro pack release!

Description - "Calculate moving averages or any type of moving summarize"

Trim Mean - This macro was written by me and was inspired from the recent Alteryx roadshow in London, with a user requesting this functionality which is available in Excel.

Description - "Returns the mean of the interior of a data set. Trim Mean calculates the mean taken by excluding a percentage of data points from the top and bottom tails of a data set. You can use this macro when you wish to exclude outlying data from your analysis."

Bug Fixes

Missing Tool quick descriptions - A big thanks to David Zurbuchen for both spotting these were missing, but better still taking the time and effort to fix them.  A great example of how you can contribute to the macro pack with small but important fixes.

Runner Macro fixes - There were a number of issues with the runner macros in the first release of them.  Many thanks to all of the people who both reported them and spent time with me helping to work out exactly what it was that caused them.  There is one outstanding issue that I know of which involves uni-code characters in the module path.

Add Totals Macro - Now works when there are spaces in the field names.

Get Involved

I want to thank again the contributions from Joe, Mark and David.  You guys have given me the motivation to get this going again.

And on that note I want to encourage anyone else who is interested in getting involved to get in touch either in the comments here or via email.  I really want to make this a community effort and try and make the releases a bit more regular.  There is plenty to do on the existing macros, samples, help files and I also want to try and make some more progress on my Test Suite macros.

Till next time.

Moving Summarize

This is a tool I have been meaning to write for a long time.  It was requested at Inspire this year and I have had requests for it before that.

The basic premise is the ability to create a moving average (or in fact any moving summarize method).  For background on what a moving average is and why it is useful check out the excellent Wikipedia article on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average.

In simple terms a moving average creates for each row in a data-set the average of the last x number of rows.  The easiest way to do this without my new macro is to use a multi-row formula and write a formula to calculate the average.  Which works fine until you want a moving average of the last 30 rows for example, where upon writing the formula becomes a little tedious.

If you want to jump straight to the macro you can download it here.  If you are interested in how it works read on.

The basic premise of my macro is to use a summarize tool to calculate the moving summaries. Obvious huh?

So if we imagine a simple dataset with 9 records and we want to do a moving average of the previous 3 rows, we attach a RecordId and use a formula to group the records into groups of 3:

Ceil([RecordID]/3)

Then we can use a summarize tool grouping on the "Grouping formula" field and we have calculated our moving averages!

Wasn't that easy?  Well... OK... Those of you who were paying attention might be saying to yourself "wait a minute we've only calculated three of the answers!" and you would be right.  To be precise we have calculated the answer for rows 3, 6, and 9.  So how are we going to calculate the others?

Well this is when the macro gets interesting. We are going to use a batch macro to do that same process again and again until we have calculated all of our answers.  But of course we can't just run the exact same process or we'd just keep calculating the exact same results!  So each time we go round we "throw away" the first n records where n is the iteration number we are on - 1.

So second time round the loop.  Iteration 2 we throw away the first record and repeat:

Now we have calculated the answer for rows 4 and 7.  We also calculated a number that we didn't need (the 29.66667) but we will discard that at the end.

Then one last time round the loop.  Iteration 3 so discard the first 2 records an repeat:

Gives us the answer for rows 5 and 8 and we have all the answers we need.  Rows 1 and 2 don't have an answer as there are not three previous rows to summarize.

Then all we need to do is get all of the answers back together which we can do using this formula to map our new "Grouping formula" field back to our original RecordIds:

[Grouping formula]*3+[Engine.IterationNumber]

The great thing about this solution is it works as well for moving summarizes of 50 records as it does for 3 and also will work for any summarize method.  Moving Concatenate? Moving Create Centroid?

The final solution is then slightly more complex as I decided to give the user the ability to choose how many rows forwards and backwards they want to include in their moving summarize.  But that is just a case of working out how big a moving summarize we need to calculate and then appropriately offsetting the solution.

This macro will be included in the 2014 Q4 release of the CReW macro pack which should be out early next year or download it here now.

Blog Macro Pack - 2014 Q3 Release

Can you believe it has been three months since Inspire 2014 already?  Which means it is time for the next release of the Blog Macro pack!

It is available for download now at

http://Downloads.ChaosReignsWithin.com/Macros.zip

For installation and support information please read the original post from June http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/2014/06/blog-macro-pack.html

I had thought that after the first collection of macros I released at Inspire that I would be adding perhaps two or three macros per quarter, but this release sees another nine new macros!  So let me give you a brief introduction to the newcomers:

The Runner Macros

These are probably the most exciting of the new macros in that they are a complete new category of tools.  The premise behind them is that you might have a number of Alteryx modules that you want to run in sequence.  These tools allow you to write an Alteryx module which runs other Alteryx modules.

They come in two styles.  First we have the Runner and Conditional Runner:

The Runner macro has a single configuration value which is the path to the module you want it to run.  It runs the module and if the run completes without errors, outputs the log to the Success output.  If there are errors then it outputs the log to the Failure output.

The Conditional Runner works in much the same manner, except that it has an input.  The conditional runner will run its module exactly one time if it receives any input data.  If it received no data it will not run its module.

This means using the two in combination you can run a series of modules where the next module in the chain only runs on success of the previous.  Additionally you could use email tools to notify you in case of a failure:

The second style is the List Runner macro.  This one will take a list of Alteryx modules as a data input and run them one after the other.  It also has a check box to enable the process to stop if a module errors. It outputs all of the logs to a single output with a field indicating success or failure.

Useful if you have a directory of modules and you want to run all of them:

.

The last tool in this new category is the Log Parser.  The above three tools all output the Alteryx log in a single cell.  The log parser tool takes this cell and parses it into an Alteryx data table:

These four new tools are all brand new and somewhat experimental, so if you run into any issues with them or have any ideas for improvements then please let me know.  I am sure there will be a few more versions of them yet!  Feel free to add comments here or join the conversation we have going over on the Alteryx Community site:

http://community.alteryx.com/Troubleshooting/Streaming-Modules-to-run-in-sequence

Community Inspired Macros

Which leads me into the next two macros which were directly inspired by ideas posted on the community site.

The Field Sort tool will sort the fields on the data stream alphabetically as requested here http://community.alteryx.com/Common-Use-Cases/Sort-Field-Names-Tool

The Dynamic Metadata tool will take metadata from another data-stream as requested here http://community.alteryx.com/Developer/Dynamic-Rename-Additional-Functions

Inspiring Ingenuity

Alteryx's CTO Ned Harding's blog http://inspiringingenuity.net/ saw two new macros this quarter which again I have adopted into the macro pack.

The Wildcard Input macro opens multiple files which have differing data schemas using the wildcard syntax.  Check out the full details here http://inspiringingenuity.net/2014/06/27/alteryx-wildcard-inputs/

The Skip Last N records is another community inspired tool and will skip the last N records in a data-stream much like the sample tool will skip the first N.  Again check out the full story here http://inspiringingenuity.net/2014/07/15/alteryx-skip-last-n-records/

Only Unique

Which brings me to the last of our nine new macros the Only Unique macro.  I blogged about this back in August http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/2014/08/only-unique-macro.html.  It works very much like the unique tool except that if there are duplicates then ALL of the duplicate records come out of the duplicate output (rather than one of them coming out of the unique output).

That wraps up the new tools for this release.  As always it is great to hear people's feedback so any thoughts/comments/improvements just let me know in the comments below.

Field Sort Macro

The below recently appeared on the Alteryx Community Ideas Forum:

"In my environment, creating tables with fields in a particular order is a requirement.

The Select tool (and others) let me manually change sort orders. The Select tool will also allow me to sort on Field Name in Ascending or Descending order.

I can add a sort order prefix to my input data with the Dynamic Rename tool, connect a Select tool and then go into the Select tool properties to sort by Field Name. But this requires that I first run the module so that the Select tool knows what the incoming fields are called, then set up the Select tool properties, and then rerun the module. If I change the prefixes or the list of incoming variables, the Select tool has to be reconfigured.

It would be really nice if there was a Field Sort tool that only had Ascending or Descending as properties that would 'dynamically' do what the Sort on Field Name option in the Select tool does."

It turns out that with a little inventive use of existing tools it is possible to do this today as a macro!

As with last weeks post if you want to challenge your Alteryx macro building skills then have a go at building this yourself before looking how I did it.

If you just want the macro to use or learn from, then you can download it here.

Only Unique Macro

While adding "All" and "None" buttons to the unique tool a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of a macro which I have found useful on occasion but not yet shared on this blog.  The Only Unique Macro:

pictured here with the standard Unique Tool.  

The Unique Tool is great for ensuring that a set of fields is unique, however when you have a set of fields you expected to be unique but aren't, working out why is a little tricky.  

The reason for this is say you have five identical duplicate records (on the selected fields) and you want to look at all of those records together (perhaps to see what is in the other fields), one of the five records is in the unique output stream and the other four are in the duplicates output stream.  If you have a million other records in the unique output stream, finding that one can be hard.

Enter the "Only Unique" macro.  The working of which is as follows:

• If there is exactly one record with a combination of the selected field values it comes out of the unique stream. So the unique output only contains the completely unique records.
• If there are records with duplicates of the selected field values, then ALL of those records come out of the duplicate stream.

You can download the macro and above sample module here, and look out for this macro in the next release of the Chaos Reigns Within (CReW) macro pack.

If you want to challenge yourself, then try to build the described macro without looking how I did it.  I suspect there are probably a lot of different approaches you could take.

I hope you find it useful.

Alteryx 9.0 is released!

April 24th saw the release of Alteryx 9.0.  Which is absolutely jam packed with fantastic new features and tools!  So many features in fact, that I'm not going to be able to cover all of them in a single article, but I will give you a brief tour of some of the highlights:

New Tools

This release sees a massive 38 new tools!  Helped in no small part by the new Analytic App authoring process.

Here they all are:

App and Macro Authoring Redesign

The App and Macro Authoring process has seen a complete overhaul this release and is one of my favorite new features.  The process is no longer hidden away on multiple properties tabs, but built up on the canvas using the new "Interface" tools.  Look out for more on this topic in a future blog post.

New Data Formats

As ever there are even more data formats supported this release including:

• SAS data files (.sas7bdat)
• SPSS data files (.sav)
• Output to QlikView data files (.qvx)
• Read and write to Marketo
• Read Google Analytics data

There are also four new social media connectors:

• Twitter
• Foursquare
• Gnip
• DataSift

Improved Download Tool

The download tool has had a lot of new features added this release and now should let you interface with any web API out there.

This is how the four new social media tools (which are in fact macros) work.  So if you want to see an example of the new download functionality in action, open up one of the social media macros and take a look.

Private Cloud Server

The private cloud version of Alteryx has seen a huge update this release.  Now you can get the functionality of the Alteryx public gallery on your own private server inside your firewall.  A fantastic way to deliver Analytic Applications and insights to your wider business.



That is a very quick round up of just some of the new features.  Look out for some more detailed blog posts on specific features over the coming weeks.

Gauge Macro

Gauge.yxmc



Download
Help

This is actually another old macro, but one which I never actually published on this blog.  It did however make a guest appearance in the Presidential Election App over on the Alteryx Public Gallery.

What Does it Do?

Well in that App it produces this part of the final report:

Showing the percentage of Republican or Democrat support for a given geographical area.  In general it produces a gauge giving a visual representation of a percentage field.  To use it you just add the macro to your canvas and give it some input data which contains a percentage field between 0 and 100.  For each row of your data it will generate a gauge visually showing the percentage.

You can also choose how big you want the gauge to be and customize the colors.

How Does it Work?

Now how it works it a little more interesting.  Does it use the work Ned has been doing on HTML visualizations? No.  Does it use the Run Command tool to call some external application to draw the gauge?  No.  It doesn't need to; we already have a tool in Alteryx which will let you draw things: The Report Map tool.  That's right the gauge and the arrow are actually a map!  Obviously not a map of anywhere physically, but made up of spatial objects created and manipulated by Alteryx and rendered by the Report Map tool.

Creating the spatial objects is the fun part and called upon some long ago learned trigonometry from my school days.  I'm not going to go into the exact details here, the macro is commented so download it and take a look at the details.

But I think you'll agree this opens up a whole world of creating custom reporting controls.  We are only limited by our spatial skills in Alteryx.

Improvements

One thing which could be better in the macro is the way you can choose colors.  At the moment you have to enter a hex format like #ff00ff.  Wouldn't it be great if there was a color picker question type that we could use in macros and apps?  How could I tell Alteryx what a great idea I think that would be I hear you ask?

Well that and any other great ideas that you have for product improvements to Alteryx can be submitted to the Alteryx Idea Center over at the Alteryx Community Site. (I would submit the idea myself, but feature requests carry more weight if they come from real customers ;-) )  But there are already some great ideas over there, so go join in the conversation!

Dynamic Formula Macro

DynamicFormula.yxmc

The Dynamic Formula Tool allows you to dynamically create formulas using a data feed. Effectively allowing you to write formulas by using other formulas, the summarize tool or other techniques. Great for when you need to write a long or complex formula or create a lot of formulas and don't want to do it manually.

Download
Help

What Does it Do?

Ever wanted to generate formulas using formulas?  Then the Dynamic Formula macro might be just what you are looking for.

How Does it Work?

First released on this blog back in May 2010 http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/2010/05/dynamic-formula.html; that blog post provides some more background to the tool.  This release sees the module upgraded to horizontal layout and makes use of some of the new Alteryx features that have been added since it was first written:

EscapeXMLMetacharacters()

This new method is ideal for when you are building your own XML as it correctly escapes the XML meta characters.Which are " ' < > &.

So now the tool can dynamically build formulas with greater than or less than comparisons.

Output fields change based on the data input into the macro

This is a new check-box on the macro properties window and the dynamic formula macro is a perfect example of what it is for.  So at configuration time we don't know what fields will come out of the macro because the field names of the new fields are determined by the data that is input into the bottom input.  Without this check-box checked the macro forgets what fields it is outputting whenever the module config is refreshed.  With it checked then after the first run it remembers its output fields, which is exactly what you want.

Dynamic Replace Tool

It is also worth mentioning that since I originally wrote this macro the dynamic replace tool has appeared in the Tool Palette, which with a bit of manipulation I believe can be made to perform the same functionality as this macro.  However I still like the Dynamic Formula for its simplicity.

Macros - Version

Before starting this post on the Version macro I would like to share with you a new page which I have added to the blog which will contain a consolidated list of the macros which I have built and published here. It is easily accessed from the Macros link on the menu bar above.

And the first macro to be released to that page is the Version macro:

Version.yxmc

This macro can be embedded into other macros to allow checking of the version against an XML file stored on the web.

Download
Help

What Does it Do?

I had the idea for this macro several years ago and actually presented it at the developer part of the Inspire conference in 2012.  But it never actually made it to this blog until now.

The idea behind the macro is that it allows other macros to be versioned and to check against a web page to see if there is a newer version available.  Now my initial plan was that this check would be done every time the macro that used it was run.  Unfortunately downloading the web page that contains the versioning information, while not terribly slow (a few seconds), is slow enough that I don't want to do it every time one of my macros is used.  I think this limitation is some of what stopped me posting this macro until now.

So in the released version of the macro I have come up with a compromise.  The macro is embedded in other macros as intended, but by default it does nothing. (All of its tools are disabled by a tool container).

Usage by End User

Here it is being used in the Dynamic Formula macro:

Then when a user wants to check that their macro is up to date they:

1. Open the macro they want to check
2. Click on the version macro
3. Check the Check Box to enable checking (see screenshot right)
4. Run the module.

They then get messages in the log which tells them if the macro is the latest version available:

or a message telling them I have released a new version:

Usage by Macro Developer

If you would like to use this in your own macros then feel free.  To set it up you just drop it into your macro, point it to an XML file you have hosted somewhere on the web and enter the version number to match the version number in your XML file.  The XML file needs to look like this:

You can copy the example here: versions.ChaosReignsWithin.com\Example.xml

Then when you update your macro in the future, you just need to bump up the number in the version macro and in the XML file and include whatever message you would like to tell your users in your XML file.  Then anyone who has an old version of your macro and checks for updates will get your message.

How does it work?

The module is fairly simple

The two text inputs on the left get updated from each of the two questions in the macro and the tool container which contains the whole module gets enabled/disabled by an action which is fed by the check box.

From there:

• A download tool grabs the XML from the web
• We use an XML parse tool to digest the XML
• A join tool brings in the version number from the parent macro
• We then compare the versions and use a series of message tools to display the various messages to the end user.

New Blog on the Block

Well…  It has been a rather long time since I last posted on here…  Hopefully that is going to change.  But in the meantime if you are eager for some more Alteryx related blogging content, there is a new blog in town by Alteryx’s very own CTO Ned Harding.  (http://alteryxned.wordpress.com).  There has already been a number of great Alteryx related posts and also some more personal posts on teaching kids to program.

Alteryx highlight’s include:

• Reading XLSX Directly
• Ensuring fields are in a data stream (great for macro authoring)
• Dot Density Maps
• Weighted Median

And the August monthly round up is a great place to start too.

There is also a blog post about creating this rather beautiful satellite night style map (above right) showing UK demographic data.

Which brings me very nicely to a more personal announcement.  As long time followers of this blog will recall, I moved from the UK to Boulder, Colorado to work for Alteryx as a software developer.  Well I have now relocated back to the UK mainly because of this next picture.

No not "Big Data Analytics For Dummies".  (Although it is a great little publication and well worth a read.  If you haven’t already downloaded it already you can get a copy here).  But rather the model in the shot: my daughter Ida.  My wife and I thought with it being our first child it might be helpful to have free baby sitting, in the form of Grandparents, a little closer than a nine hour flight away!  So I am back in the UK, but very thankfully still working for Alteryx (I mean where else would I want to work?) and currently living in Cambridge:  Silicon valley of the UK as I like to tell my American friends.  (For anyone who has visited Silicon Valley and Cambridge, I think you will agree that there really is no need for further comment on the subject).

So if anyone feels like talking Alteryx or data (Or just joining some data minded people for a beer) you will find me a regular at the Data Insight’s meet ups in Cambridge http://www.meetup.com/Data-Insights-Cambridge/ (I say regular.  I’ve been to one and it was interesting enough that I’m going to the next one).

Look out for a post soon on the new layout features of Alteryx 8.5, which was rather current six months ago when I first wrote it and not so much now…  But hey it’s almost finished already and it gets me off to a rolling start…

Till then

Adam

Happy New Year

So 2012 is finally here and what a great year for Alteryx it is going to be.  We are now less than two months away from the annual conference: Inspire 2012 and the launch of Alteryx 7.0.

Inspire as always promises to be a great learning event, with the chance to see first hand the new Alteryx 7.0 features and learn how you can leverage them in your business.  If you are looking for some reasons to justify to management why you should go, check out the excellent template letter on the Alteryx website here. Remember that Alteryx 7.0 is going to be a huge release packed full of new tools and features so there will be plenty to learn and take back to your company.

If you are already planning on attending, then application is still open for the annual Alteryx Grand Prix.  For more information take a look at the recent post on the Alteryx Engine Works blog here.


Also if you haven't checked it out recently: Ron House's All About Alteryx Blog has some really interesting posts on using Alteryx 7.0 to leverage some online Location-Based APIs.  So head over there and take a look.

(First day back in the office after Christmas break, found this awesome mug waiting for me.  Great way to drink my morning coffee!)

Chaos Reigns Within

Well it has been a rather long time since I have last posted here.  What can I say?  I've been busy.

But I am back; and with a few changes.

First one is we have a name change.  "UK Alteryx User" just wasn't quite right: I'm not in the UK anymore and I'm not really a user anymore.  So I am proud to announce the new name "Chaos Reigns Within" and the new URL www.chaosreignswithin.com (don't worry all the old links should redirect just fine).  If you know what the new name means, then congratulations you can call yourself an advanced Alteryx user.

Other changes you will notice are a restyle of the site and a legal disclaimer, which I can't say I really like, but that's the world we live in.

Other than that I'm planning to post more regularly here and am looking forward to the release of Alteryx 7.0 next year which I think is going to the most exciting and feature packed release since I have been using the tool.