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Allocate Append Tool Icon Allocate Append Tool

Use Allocate Append Data to append demographic fields from an existing Allocate installation. Use of this tool requires a licensed installation of Allocate.

All of the datasets and variables that you have licensed for Allocate are available for Alteryx workflows through the Allocate Append Data tool. This includes any customer data that you have imported (demox files), and any virtual variables you have created (.vvf files, as long as these data and variables are currently registered and valid within Allocate).

You cannot create custom variables, nor import customer data through the Allocate Append Data tool. However, any of the custom variables (or the imported customer data that you have previously defined and saved in Allocate) will be available for retrieval.

For more detail on selecting Allocate variables, or creating new variables, visit Allocate Help. Allocate can be accessed from the Windows Start menu. To access it, enter 'Allocate' in the search and select Allocate to launch the program. From the Allocate interface, select Help.

Configure the Tool

  1. Choose a 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 Records Are: option to be retrieved: Standard Geographies or Custom Polygons. If the specified field contains point objects, Null values are returned.

    • Standard Geographies are geographies whose polygons are delivered with Allocate and for which Allocate stores a corresponding Demo Key, such as States, Counties, etc. Standard Geographies can also be specified dynamically by choosing which field contains the Standard Geography name. This means you can have geographies of different types within the same data stream, like States and ZIP Codes. You must choose a Field that contains the Geography Type (or "Short Name" specific to the dataset). In other words, County or State.

    • Custom Geographies are areas that the user has created and for which Allocate will calculate values for by utilizing its block centroid retrieval technique.

    • Choosing Custom Geographies 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 Object or Key box.

    • If you are appending information for Standard Geographies, choose the field that contains the Key values. If a key has a partial key value, like ZIP=='803", the behavior of the allocate append tool is to aggregate ALL ZIP codes starting with 803 into a single result. When the key value is partial, no spatial object is returned.

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

    • 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.

  4. Specify fields for retrieval in the Pick Variables box. To view variable names alongside their descriptions, right-click on the description, and field names will appear to the right of the description.

    1. Expand the variable trees to reveal the data to append.

    2. Check the box to select the desired variables.

  5. Return Spatial Object checkbox, when checked, returns the spatial object for the geography Allocate is returning data for.

Visit Demographic Retrieval Methodology and Geographic Identifiers for more information on the output specifics of this tool.

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