Having just wrapped up our first session on Alteryx Fundamentals, it's been pretty fascinating to see how much we can manipulate and transform data to suit our needs - and we've only just begun!
One nifty little trick that Robbin gave us today is using the wildcard function to bring in multiple data sources that follow similar naming conventions, which is likely to come up when facing clients storing data in a sensible way. So how do we do this?
Well, as you can see here, we have 5 .csv files, each containing sales data.
There's nothing wrong with adding each of these to our workflow individually but, let's be honest, we'd much rather save the time it takes to do this and head to the coffee machine... so, here is where we meet our trusty companion - the wildcard!
First of all, we can import one of the .csv files using 'Input Data' > 'Connect a File or Database'. Once this has been added to the workflow, we then head to the file path in the 'Configuration' tab and change the the beginning of the file name to a '*'. In this case, the part we are changing is the '06', which in turn will bring in any file ending with '_Sales_Area 1'. Don't forget to hit run once you've done this! As you can see below, the number of records increases from 5,448 when using the single file, to 27,064 once the wildcard has been implemented.
I personally found this feature really cool and can imagine it'll come in super handy in future, particularly when dealing with a significant number of data sources and input files! Hopefully this can help to save you a bit of time and get a cappuccino (other hot beverages are available) in your hand that little bit sooner!