Alteryx Designer: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 15. Spatial Tools

Alteryx Designer has long offered tools for spatial data and analysis. In 1997, SRC (the initial name of Alteryx) developed the first online data engine for delivering demographic-based mapping and reporting. From there, Alteryx went on to expand into many other areas of analytics but kept in place the foundations it created with spatial analytics.

In this chapter, you are going to learn how to work with spatial data in Designer and understand how you can build workflows that manipulate this type of data in order to get insights from geographical information. You will learn how to work with spatial objects like points, lines, and polygons that represent the forms of a physical location.

When I built my first spatial workflow, I couldn’t believe that this type of analysis even existed. I thought it was so cool to be able to calculate things like the distance from a grocery store to 10,000 customers, all in seconds. I loved that I could build drive-time models for how customers might go from one place to another. There is such a wealth of information that spatial analysis can give us. Let’s get to it!

Introduction to Spatial Data

At the end of the day, the easiest way to think of spatial data is essentially longitude and latitude values on a map. As you get further into the subject, you’ll see it’s much more than that but for those just getting started it’s easiest to think of it in this way. Many “lat/long” values can then be built up to what are referred ...