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Allocate Report Tool Icon Allocate Report Tool

Use Allocate Report to retrieve and run any pre-formatted or custom report associated with Allocate. Reports can be exported to Reporting Snippets, HTML, PDF, RTF, XLS, and Alteryx Composer's PCXML format.

The Allocate Report tool is only available if the machine running Alteryx has a licensed installation of Allocate.

Configure the Tool

  1. Select the Allocate dataset from which to retrieve data. You can specify the default dataset from User Settings. Go to Options > User Settings > Edit User Settings and open the Dataset Defaults tab.

  2. Select the polygon type to be retrieved by selecting an option under Records Are: If the specified field contains point objects, values of 0 are returned in the report.

    • Standard geographies are geographies whose polygons are delivered with Allocate and for which Allocate stores a corresponding Demo Key, like States, Counties, and so on. Standard Geographies can also be specified dynamically by choosing which field contains the Geography Short Name Field. This means you can have geographies of different types within the same data stream, like States and ZIP Codes. The Geography Short Name Field can be accessed from the Allocate Input tool from the Special Fields tab.

    • Custom polygons are areas that the user has created and for which Allocate will calculate the variables selected by utilizing its block centroid retrieval technique. Choosing Custom Polygons when the spatial objects are standard geographies may result in slower data retrieval. Also, in some cases, the polygons associated with the geography may have been altered for appearance or better efficiencies in mapping. Using the block centroid retrieval could result in discrepancies between the data stored by demo keys and the calculated data.

  3. Select the field containing the Spatial Field or Key Field box.

    • If you are appending information for standard geographies, choose the field that contains the Key values.

    • If you are specifying a geography type with a 'by State' or 'by County' classification, make sure to select the RawKey as the Key Field.

    • If you are appending information for custom polygons, choose the field that contains the appropriate spatial object.

  4. Select Name Field that will serve as a row header for the geographies being reported on.

  5. Select the reports for Output. Pre-formatted reports, as well as Custom reports (saved to the Allocate Reports Directory), appear in this box. The custom Rank Report, titled "Rank Report" will not work from Designer. This report must be run in Allocate.

  6. Index (Optional): Select the Index button if it is warranted to compare the geographies against an index.

    • When you select the index button, a geography tree appears. Expand the appropriate levels to reveal the geography level to be used as an index.

    • Include Index Base in Report: An Index Base is a database for a market area to compare other markets against. For example, you may elect to compare a radius around a site to the top ten performing stores, or a ZIP Code to the DMA it is located inside.

  7. Choose the output format. Choices include Report Snippet, HTML, Alteryx Composer File (PCXML), PDF Document, RTF Document, Word 2007 Document, or Excel 2007 Spreadsheet. Report snippets require additional configuration.

    • Report Snippet: Select this option if using other Reporting Tools to generate Report Snippets for a compiled report. When choosing this output type, other configuration properties include:

    • Report Mode:

      • Each Individual Record: A separate Allocate Report is created for each individual record of data in the input connection.

      • All Records Combined: A single Allocate Report is created that summarizes all the incoming records.

      • Each Group of Records: A separate Allocate Report is created for each group of records.

      • Group By (Optional): If choosing Each Group of Records, the user must then select which data field to group by using the Group By data field boxes.

  8. Browse to an output directory to where the report will save to.

  9. Optional: Specify a file name prefix. Make sure to do this if there are multiple Allocate reports in the workflow. Otherwise, they will overwrite each other as each report is created downstream.

  10. Take File Name From Field: When this box is checked, a separate file will be written out for each value of a particular field. Additionally, you can choose to...

    • Append Suffix to File/Table Name: Appends the value of the selected Field name to the end of the specified Table name.

    • Prepend Prefix to File/Table Name: Prepends the value of the selected Field name to the beginning of the specified Table Name.

    • Change File Name: Changes the file name to the value of the selected Field name.

    • Change Entire File Path: Changes the file name to what is in the field name. The field name MUST contain a full path, otherwise, you will receive an error. For example, Output (8): Open() failed for : invalid filename extension.

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