Lately, we, in DSDE2 had our first projects where we had to work as a whole group of eight to analyze data. Thereby a major task is coordinating how to work with each other, to distribute the work most effectively and achieve the best results.
When Data preparation is needed, this can be quite complicated because everyone builds Alteryx Workflows differently, and then combining the Workflow can be extremely difficult. One workaround to this problem is to define how you want to change the data and break it down to a task, which you can solve within one single standard macro. This way one person can build the main workflow and many others can build macros that just focus on one specific problem. Once all macros are generated, they can be put into the main workflow quite easily, without causing any issues.
For this week’s project, I was working with Nhung Le, and she was building the main data preparation workflow. We broke the specific tasks to complete down and created a few standard macros, that could be included in the main workflow. One of the macros I wrote for example just focused on renaming city parts in the way we needed them. Renaming the city parts could not be done by using just a few tools within our workflow. In the end, the macro consisted of about 20 tools. Then we included my macro into her workflow and ended up with not only a functioning workflow but also one that had a clear structure. We did not need to include 20 additional tools, but just one for the macro. Additionally, if any problem with the names of the city parts should come up, we just have to check the macro and do the necessary changes there.
This procedure is very simple, but extremely powerful when you work in a team. And it helps to keep the work structured and clean, which is incredibly important, as projects get bigger.