Book Image

Learning Alteryx

Book Image

Learning Alteryx

Overview of this book

Alteryx, as a leading data blending and advanced data analytics platform, has taken self-service data analytics to the next level. Companies worldwide often find themselves struggling to prepare and blend massive datasets that are time-consuming for analysts. Alteryx solves these problems with a repeatable workflow designed to quickly clean, prepare, blend, and join your data in a seamless manner. This book will set you on a self-service data analytics journey that will help you create efficient workflows using Alteryx, without any coding involved. It will empower you and your organization to take well-informed decisions with the help of deeper business insights from the data.Starting with the fundamentals of using Alteryx such as data preparation and blending, you will delve into the more advanced concepts such as performing predictive analytics. You will also learn how to use Alteryx’s features to share the insights gained with the relevant decision makers. To ensure consistency, we will be using data from the Healthcare domain throughout this book. The knowledge you gain from this book will guide you to solve real-life problems related to Business Intelligence confidently. Whether you are a novice with Alteryx or an experienced data analyst keen to explore Alteryx’s self-service analytics features, this book will be the perfect companion for you.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Installation and setup


In this section, we will learn how to install Alteryx Designer to begin using the ultimate platform for self-service analytics. There are a few key items to note before Alteryx Designer is installed.

No licensing action is required when upgrading the Alteryx software. The existing Alteryx license will continue to function when a new version is installed. Due to compatibility concerns, workflows developed in a newer version will not launch in the previous versions and workflows in the older versions will continue to work when a newer version is installed. Lastly, the technical specifications are key to ensure system requirements are met before installing. Alteryx Analytics 11.0, which is what we will install for this book and future versions, is only available for 64-bit machines with operating system Microsoft Windows 7 or later. Following is a chart that illustrates the minimum system requirements:

Machine Requirements

Operating System Requirements

Chip

Processor

Ram

Disk Size

64-bit

Microsoft Windows 7 or later

Quad core i7

2.5 GHz

8 GB RAM

500GB - 1TB

 

We'll now walk through the steps of downloading and installing Alteryx Designer. Before we get started, make sure to close all instances of Alteryx that you may have open:

  1. Navigate to the AlteryxDownloads site http://downloads.alteryx.com/ to download the software and select the Alteryx Designer option. 
  1. Once the Alteryx Designer option is selected, the option for application download will appear at the bottom of your browser. Select this download.
  2. The open file dialog will appear. Select Run.

 

  1. Two options will appear for the Download Manager. The first is the typical option that includes non-predictive tools. We will cover Predictive Analytics in this book, so we will select the second option, advanced. 
  1. The User Account Control will prompt. Select Yes to begin the installation.

 

  1. The Install dialog will appear where the Setup begins. The previous versions will be uninstalled. Select Next to install the pre-requisites.

 

  1. The installation process begins by selecting Next when necessary. Read and accept the license agreement and select Next to continue. 
  1. Select Finish to complete the installation.