Chapter 1, Getting Started with Alteryx, introduces us to Alteryx as a platform and also shows how to download and install the Alteryx Designer. It looks inside the Alteryx Designer architecture and helps us understand how the Alteryx Engine drives data processing in a repeatable workflow.

Chapter 2, Workflow Optimization, focuses on workflow optimization concepts and gives us information about best practices for the application of runtime selections and to speed up execution. Workflow design is vital to ensure that the workflow runs efficiently, allowing for optimum processing. 

Chapter 3, Data Preparation and Blending, explains the processes of data preparation, blending, and joining, which are the most powerful capabilities of Alteryx. Data analysts have found themselves struggling to get the best results from their data using Microsoft Excel or other tools. You'll be sent on a journey to discover self-service analytics and build a quick and reliable dataset for business decision making. 

Chapter 4, Writing Fast and Accurate Expressions, introduces various tools in Alteryx that allow a broad variety of calculations. You will utilize multiple expressions to create new data columns, update existing columns, and reference data to qualifying rows. You will move through more rigorous expressions to maximize the potential of the Formula, Multi-Field Formula, and Multi-Row Formula tools. The goal is to gain a solid foundation in the different types of formulas to write with these tools.

Chapter 5, Transforming Data, helps us to arrange and transpose data in Alteryx that can be developed to ensure the dataset best fits the needs of how the output data should be analyzed. You’ll learn the pivot orientations of the Transpose and Cross tab tools, and how they help guide the pathway to a visual representation of your data. Once your data has been aligned to meet the business needs, you will dive into summarizing your data to perform various numeric, and string actions.

Chapter 6, Data Parsing Techniques, explains the Parse tool palette, which offers parsing options that will save you time by having the tools do it all for you. The Text to Columns tool allows you to split text from one field to multiple columns or rows. Not to forget, the numerous times a file comes in with a string-formatted field and it should be a date-formatted field. This issue is solved by utilizing the DateTime tool. 

Chapter 7, Creating Data-Driven Custom Reports, helps us understand the suites of reporting tools used to create high quality data-driven reports and deliver them into customers. These tools have been designed with the Alteryx design paradigm in mind creating snippets in each of the tools. You will create a report from start to finish, with the best design output, which will help organizations to make informed business decisions. Whether it’s developing a data table or visual representation, the reporting tools suite will help you produce presentation-quality reports.

Chapter 8, Using Macros in Workflows, explains that a macro workflow has the flexibility to run as a single tool within another workflow. There are various macro types, which are built by using Interface Tools with the Interface Designer. Batch macros are designed to run repeatedly in the context of a workflow. The ability to run a single tool through every record, and loop the records back through the workflow until a condition is met, can be accomplished by creating an Iterative Macro. 

Chapter 9, Sharing Your Insights, explains how to publish, schedule, and share workflows through Alteryx Server and Alteryx Public Gallery. Alteryx Server empowers teams to collaborate on data-driven decisions quickly and easily through a scalable platform. You’ll identify how data can be deployed through effective and secure collaboration across teams. Alteryx Public Gallery is an analytics cloud platform that delivers a consumer-based analytics experience. Organizations look to cloud business intelligence to deliver faster deployment.

Chapter 10, Best Practices, takes a look at the data necessary to make critical business decisions, which is best consumed by streamlined workflows. You will learn best practice solutions on building efficient workflows, reviewing data exploration techniques, and handling data sources. These best practice guidelines, along with tips and tricks will save you valuable time in the business decision making process.

The technical specifications are key to ensuring that the system requirements are met before installation. Alteryx Analytics 11.0, which is what we will install for this book and the future versions, is only available for 64-bit machines with a Windows operating system of 7 or later.

The following chart illustrates the minimum system requirements:

This book is for aspiring data professionals who want to learn to implement self-service analytics from scratch, without any coding. Those who have some experience with Alteryx and want to gain more proficiency will also find this book to be useful. A basic understanding of data science concepts is all you need to get started with this book.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The next lines of code read the link and assign it to the open function."

A block of code is set as follows:

IF Contains([DataValueUnit],'%') &&
 !IsNull([DataValue]) THEN [DataValue] + '%'
 ELSE [DataValue]
 ENDIF

New terms and important words are shown in bold.

Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "In order to download new modules, we will go to Files | Settings | Project Name | Project Interpreter."

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