Alteryx Challenge 336 Tutorial

Each week, Alteryx posts a challenge for members of the community to solve. They provide a file containing the input data as well as the desired output. The task is to create a workflow that gets you from point A to point B. I'll be walking you through Challenge 336, which can be found here. Feel free to open up Alteryx and follow along with me or use this as a resource if you're stuck and need help.

The Challenge

The input dataset has information about various kinds of software and the people that use them in a business setting. There are two desired outputs resulting from two different tasks:

  1. Find the top 3 most used technical skills and their count
  2. Create a list by title of the users, example(s) of software, and technical skills for the top 3 technical skills found in the previous question

It's always best to look at the output while solving an Alteryx challenge to make sure you fully understand what's expected of you. In this case, the only mention of the Hot Technology column is in a vague hint at the bottom of the instructions but it's actually imperative for completing the challenge.

Having examined the output while working on the challenge, I've come to realize that we have to filter out the technologies that aren't considered hot so I'll start with a Filter tool and stipulate that Hot Technology must equal Y (meaning yes).

Since we're looking for the top 3 most used technical skills and their counts, I'll need to use a Summarize tool. I'll drag one onto the canvas and attach it to the T output anchor of the Filter tool. Then I'll group by Name and rename the resulting field to Technical Skill (to match the desired output). Then I'll take the count of Name to count how many times that software appeared in the dataset.

Then I'll use a Sort tool to sort by Count descending, followed by a Sample tool to select the first 3 rows of the resulting data, the ones with the highest counts.

Looking at the Results window at the bottom of the screen, you can see that this matches one of the desired outputs given at the beginning of the challenge. Now there are only a few more steps left to get the second output.

I'll use a Join tool here to bring together the data from the T output anchor of the Filter tool I used earlier and the data from the Sample tool I just finished using. I'll join on Name and Technical Skill and then I'll select Title, Example, and Technical Skill to bring through to the output.

Finally, I'll connect a Sort tool to the J output anchor of the Join tool to sort by Title ascending.

As you can see, this output matches the second of the target outputs so my work here is done! There are often different ways to approach Alteryx challenges so feel free to experiment and find your own solution. If you like, you can post your solution on the challenge page linked above or check out the other solutions there to see how people approached the challenge differently.

Author:
Daniel Bostrom
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