Our final client project, and a server heavy week - join me for my weekly reflection on life at the Data School!
Monday - Project Kickoff
Monday began with our final client project kickoff meeting, where we got to grips with the project brief, asked as many questions as we could and tried to figure out what we needed to do over the coming week. I actually can't believe this is our last client project, the time has literally flown by, which although everyone said it would, I didn't believe just how quickly I'd get to this point! We spent all of Monday working on our project which certainly is proving to be our toughest yet!
Tuesday - Tableau Server
Over the past 15 weeks we have all slowly got better acquainted with Tableau Server in terms of using it, uploading data and workbooks to it, and scheduling things to run. Tuesday was by far our biggest Server day yet, where we built a server from scratch. For those of you who don't know what a server is, it is basically a computer that is running constantly, but instead of it looking like a normal computer with a screen, it's just the physical part of a computer with memory, storage and computing power. Tableau Server sits in a virtual computer, and is a space where you can store and share data, workbooks, prep flows etc. that doesn't reside on your computer, and that anyone with credentials/permission can access. This makes it a better option than storing a file on your computer say, because a colleague working on the other side of the country can quickly access that file from the server, rather than having to contact the person who had the file saved on their computer, and wait for them to send it on. It also means that if your computer got damaged, all your important data etc. would be safe.
We spent Tuesday setting up a virtual computer, installing and configuring server, and then uploading some workbooks to our new server and accessing them via our mobile phones. I have to say I felt like quite the tech-head by the end of the day!
Wednesday - More Server and Project Time
We spent Wednesday morning configuring a few more things on our Servers, before our coach Robbin had the joy of destroying them. We then spent the rest of the afternoon working on our project. I have had a bit of a cold this week so was working from home, which definitely made things a little more complicated but we made some good progress nonetheless.
Thursday - Alteryx Server
After two days focusing on Tableau server, today we turned our attention to Alteryx server. I actually had already had a bit of experience with Alteryx server as I had needed to set up a connection for a previous project, but it was good to finally learn what all the things I had blindly done before, actually meant.
Surprisingly, Alteryx server is somewhat easier to navigate than Tableau server, and has a much cleaner look than Alteryx designer. We went over the general configuration of Alteryx server, how to upload stuff to it and where to find and schedule workflows that had been uploaded. Then we got to building an app that would allow us to input a file from our computers, and publish it to Tableau server, scheduling this in Alteryx server. It all sounds extremely technical but our Coach Robbin made it feel very easy!
We then spent the rest of the day trying to get through as much project work as possible. I had a few breakthroughs in things I had been trying to do the day before, however we still have a long way to go, so fingers crossed for tomorrow morning!
Friday - Presentations
Tomorrow will be our final client presentation! Hopefully we get everything finished in time, and go out with a bang!