Alteryx 7.0 - New Features Announced To Date

As I mentioned in my last post I think Alteryx 7.0 is going to be the most exciting release that I have seen (and that's not just because I have been working on it!)

I thought it would be worth a brief re-cap of the new features announced so far (complete with links to the Alteryx Engine Works blog):


Guzzler Improvements (link)
Some improvements to the core drive time engine in Alteryx's functionality offering: "which allows for more accurate drive time and drive radius calculations"

XML Parsing (link)
A feature that I know users have been asking for, for a long time.  Alteryx 7.0 sees XML support in the input tool along with a new XML parsing tool.

Alteryx web and the Private Cloud (link)
Alteryx 6.2 saw the release of Alteryx web On-Premise solution, another hugely exciting development for Alteryx. "It is an installable web application that allows end users to upload Alteryx wizards, manage users and run wizards all via a web browser." And being On-Premise clients can keep all of their data and modules secure on their on servers within their company.  Alteryx 7.0 promises more exciting features around "Permissions, Scheduling, Active Directory and viewing yxdbs and PCXML files."

Alteryx Map Changes (link)
This one is close to my heart as it is the main feature I have been working on since I joined Alteryx last February.  It is actually the second major re-write the mapping tool has seen and hopefully fulfills many of the requests we have received for mapping.

Input/Output Enhancements (link)
A new split button and latest used files gives you faster access to your files and database connections.  Plus the new Alias feature to manage your data connections and passwords.

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.

Solving Sudokus with Alteryx?

For today's post there has been a slight change of author, Adam suggested I blog about this as it fits in fairly well with some of his unusual applications of Alteryx.

So I guess I should introduce myself to start with, some of you will know me but I guess some of you won’t. Having the same surname as Adam isn’t a coincidence, we’re married and have been for about 4 years now. We both use Alteryx in our working lives and although I don’t quite think about things in the same way as Adam (not sure too many people do!) I also like to see and test what Alteryx is capable of.

A while ago Adam and I tried to solve a puzzle from the New Scientist magazine using Alteryx. The puzzle revolved around being able to solve a Sudoku puzzle. There was obviously slightly more to it than just a Sudoku puzzle but being able to solve the Sudoku was a necessary part of it. We started thinking surely we can do that in Alteryx, Adam in his ever confident fashion, Alteryx can do anything! We soon realised it wasn’t really going to work out, a major problem being that we needed to be able to loop through our methodology. This was several months ago, and recently it come up again. Would we now be able to solve sudoku’s using Alteryx; with the latest version that includes iterative macros it seems like it might be possible!

So below is my attempt to make Alteryx solve sudokus, it does work; but only on ‘simple’ puzzles.



As it turns out there is a lot of methodology behind solving sudokus and although I think it would be possible to write a module which would solve any puzzle (that is solvable) I haven’t actually implemented all the different techniques (yet!). During my investigations on this topic I have come across this website which appears to detail all the different methods needed for solving a Sudoku, there are quite a few and I haven’t read them all but the ones I have seem to be explained quite thoroughly. www.sudokuwiki.org/sudoku.htm

My module uses an iterative macro so that it can loop round and solve cells and then run through again and hopefully solve more, until it either has managed to solve the Sudoku or gets to a point where it is never going to be able to solve it. (If it can't solve at least one cell per run through then it is not making progress and will never be able to solve it, hence the iterative macro is limited to 80 runs through.) Although it would have been nice to be able to produce something which can solve any puzzle, at the moment this is the best I’ve got, I may add to it over time but in the mean time it has been a good learning experience for getting to know iterative macros. (And it’s given my brain a work out trying to
logically think how to go about solving a Sudoku in Alteryx!)

Hope you’ve enjoyed this somewhat pointless blog post and if anyone else wants to have a guest spot on Adam’s UK Alteryx blog then just get in touch with him.

Easter Eggs

Not the chocolate type, but the hidden game type.  Did you know that Alteryx has two?

If you want to find them then the About screen should be your starting point.

Happy Hunting!

A Spatial Challenge - Part 2

So here is my module:



It works by creating 5 internal buffer polygons of decreasing size and then setting decreasing opacity to provide the fade effect.

It has been pointed out since I wrote this that it is also possible to use negative buffers, which would be another way to create the internal polygons.

How I set the colors so that no adjacent counties have the same color is a post for another day...

A Spatial Challenge

There is a shop on Pearl street in Boulder which sells antique maps. While I was browsing through their stock on Saturday and reminding myself I really don't need to buy an antique map for $100, I spotted a rather neat way of coloring polygons. Which it turns out is a reasonably interesting challenge to reproduce in Alteryx. The below is my reproduction from Alteryx, complete with aerial photographs to bring it a bit more up to date than the antique version I've copied (it shows the counties of Colorado if you were wondering). 

If you feel like giving your Alteryx spatial skills a workout then have a go at creating the effect yourself.  I'll post my module later this week once I have had time to annotate it.

Inspiring Fractals

I wanted to start this post by saying how great it was to see everyone at Inspire 2011. I thought it was an amazing conference and really enjoyed seeing what everyone has been doing with Alteryx over the last year.

This module was inspired by a particularly interesting conversation I had with a client at the closing reception, where we were talking about the new location optimizer macro type and then got on to talking about Fractals.  Which in turn was the inspiration for this module.

A forewarning to those of you who thought this years Grand Prix questions didn't have a direct business application, you might not appreciate this one.  For those of you who like to see the edges of what Alteryx can do then I present the Mandelbrot set produced by Alteryx.

It is actually a great example of how the iterative macro works and though lacking a "direct" business application a good learning example of this new feature.  The other point of interest is I have used the map tool with 1,000,000 size 1 points effectively as a "screen" to plot my results on (I'm sure there's a business use for this idea somewhere...).

If you want to read more about the Mandelbrot set.  Wikipedia has a good article, including the algorithm I have reproduced in Atleryx.