How to debug your Alteryx Workflow
If you are getting errors, or answers that don’t look right here are some strategies for digging
into your workflow to find out what is going on.
Add a Select Tool
- Place it before the tool with the errors to see if the data is in the proper formats.
- The Alteryx website has resources that allow you to see what type of data each tool
expects: http://www.alteryx.com/alteryx-designer-tools
- If you renamed a field use a “_” instead of a space between words
- Watch out for certain tools that might change the title of a field like the summarize tool or
score tool
Add a Field Summary Tool
- See if there is field that looks potentially strange in its distribution then use a browse tool
to investigate that field more closely
Add a Data Cleansing Tool
- Small things like trailing or leading whitespace can cause errors in many tools
- Null values cause errors in many tools, use a data cleansing tool to replace nulls with 0s,
you could also use a Formula tool or Imputation tool to help replace nulls with other
values depending on the scenario.
Look at the Original Data
- In your cleanup process you might have accidentally deleted some of your data. Check
out what the data looked like when you inputted it to see if the if there is data that does
not make it all the way through the workflow.
Add Browse Tools
- Put them everywhere, see where your data changes. Many times there will be a small
mistake somewhere in the flow and browse tools are your way of taking a peek at all
steps of the workflow.
Review the project details, supporting material, and rubric
- One of the most typical issues we see is that students have not read where the project
details specified how to configure certain tools in the analysis. We do not always specify
it but sometimes we do so double check.
Check out Knowledge and Study Hall
- If after trying all of those methods you are unable to find what is going wrong, check out
the forums or slack to see if someone has asked your question before. If no one has
please post it and we will respond to it as quickly as we can.
- Knowledge: https://knowledge.udacity.com/
- Study Hall: https://study-hall.udacity.com/
Finally Submit
- At some point you have to have confidence in your analysis and submit it for review.
Failing a project submission is not a big deal. It is a great opportunity to get specific
feedback on your project. You can submit as many times as needed to pass the project.