Alteryx Designer: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 3. Getting Data into Alteryx Designer

In this chapter, we are going to start getting deeper into the tools and functionalities of Alteryx Designer. You are going to learn how to connect Alteryx Designer to all sorts of data, from simple files to database connections and more. Although Alteryx Designer is flexible and powerful, it needs data, so the better you are at getting connected to data the more Alteryx can help!

We are going to cover the In/Out tool palette that will give you tools to not only bring data into Alteryx but also view results and output data to any file type you need. This will be a fundamental step to learn as we go deeper into Alteryx Designer and start to manipulate the data you bring in.

Note

Once we start to revisit specific items that have already been introduced, I am going to assume you understand the steps involved. You are going to get more knowledgeable and I will get less verbose as we move through each item. For example, I will go from “Drag and drop this tool, configure option A, option B, option C…” to just saying “Connect to this Excel sheet,” as I expect you have caught on to what those steps are. This allows you to dig deeper into Alteryx as you get further into this book.

In/Out Tool Palette

The In/Out tool palette is a core set of tools that you will use every time you are building your workflows (see Figure 3-1). As a reminder, a tool palette is a collection of similar tools that you will use to build your workflows.

Figure 3-1. ...