A couple of weeks ago, we learned the Alteryx reporting tools and applied them to our client project. We built up a reporting app using Alteryx and presented it in inform of our client. The client liked it very much and said it is practical for the salesperson to access the report and quickly get the information they need. Although people may build a better report using Tableau, the Alteryx reporting tool has its strengths, especially for the company that has the Alteryx license.
What are the Alteryx reporting tools?
We can get a clear definition from Alteryx: The Reporting tool category includes tools that create text, chart, image, map, and table elements, a tool that arranges the elements, and a tool that produces a report.
In Alteryx, they are showing like below:
How to build an Alteryx report?
Firstly, some rules should be understood before we get hands dirty:
- 3 tools should be treated separately in different streams. They are Interactive Chart, Report Map, Table.
- Layout tools should be after the join tool, which joined the two tables together.
- 2 tools can go with the other tools. They don’t need inputs unless you need a dynamic title: Image, Report text.
Below is my workflow for reporting:
Firstly, I used the Summarize tool to group Region and City, Sum by Sales and Profit. Then I applied the Interactive Chart tool to create a scatter plot. I did the same thing before I add the Report Table tool.
For the Reporting Map, we have to have the spatial object in the data set, then drag the tool into the workflow. Set the region as the grouping field. It will automatically generate a map for you. Looks like this:
After that, I applied the Join tool to the workflow and jointed the map and table using ‘region,’ together into a vertical orientation using the Layout tool. Join the chart using ‘region’ as well and put them into a horizontal orientation.
For the report, there is always a title and a logo of the company. In most of the cases, we need the company information and data source information as a footer. That is what Report Header and Report footer do. I add them at the end of the workflow before the Render tool.
The Render tool can allow you out up into 6 types of files. I output the file as a pdf. Run the flow, and I will have this result:
Click the hyperlink, and the final report looks like that:
Do you think the Alteryx reporting tool is useful? I would like to hear your opinion. Feel free to put comments under the blog, and we candiscuss that.
