When working with Alteryx and Tableau it can useful to plan out workflows and dashboards on paper and to force yourself to think outside the box, or in this case, the Alteryx canvas. This week we took this idea to the next level when our coach Robbin created an Excalidraw canvas for us with individual images of all of the tools available in Alteryx. We were then also given inputs and expected outputs and we them aimed to plan out workflows entirely within Excalidraw, although we could not refer back to Alteryx. This definitely was more challenging than it sounds, especially when a lot of the tool icons look incredibly similar to each other (at least to me!) and you are used to almost doing some aspects essentially on autopilot.
At the start it took me a minute to get used to and to see the process in my head, as before I was so used to the Alteryx interface and being able to see what was happening to the data at any point and also being able to investigate the implications of any added tools immediately. It also removes the aspect of being able to trial and error various approaches. With the Excalidraw flows I definitely had to think more in depth about exactly how I wanted to get to the expected output and the tools that would get me there. Additionally, whenever we eventually went to try out our planned workflows in Alteryx, we oftentimes discovered that we were missing certain steps that we hadn't considered or that things in Alteryx didn't work the way we had envisioned in our head.
It was also interesting to see the different approaches my cohort took towards planning out these flows, varying in detail and complexity. I found for myself, that using colour and having everything organised as though it would be in the Alteryx canvas really helped me visualise what I wanted to do.
Although slightly challenging at first, I do think this task really helped us to better visualise in our head how Alteryx works instead of just relying on running our flow every time we add a new step to check we're on the right track! This is super helpful as we won't always be able to run the flow every time, especially with larger datasets. It also helped me realise further the value of planning things out first with pen and paper instead of just diving into Alteryx.