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Detour Tool Icon Detour Tool

One Tool Example

Detour has a One Tool Example. Visit Sample Workflows to learn how to access this and many other examples directly in Alteryx Designer.

Use Detour to prompt a user to bypass a process in a workflow. The Detour tool is useful in constructing Analytic Apps or Macros. It is typical in an analytic app or macro to turn a whole section of the workflow on or off based on user input. Detours make it easy to effectively remove any number of tools with a single analytic app or macro action.

Important

Both outputs of a Detour tool must end in either a Detour End tool (to bring the 2 data streams back into 1) or an Output Data tool (to output each data stream).

Configure the Tool

  1. When you add a Detour tool to a workflow, first determine the process to bypass, whether you would like to configure to the left or to the right, and check the box appropriately. Make sure your analytic app or macro sets the direction either way and you don't rely on the state in the workflow. Select Detour to the Right to make sure the bypass is through the right side of the Detour tool. By default, the bypass occurs from the left side of the tool.

  2. Connect the tool leading into the process you wish to bypass to the input connection of a Detour tool.

  3. Connect the outputs to both the continue process and bypass process. The unselected side does not get evaluated or run at all. That means in the GUI, the metainfo (fields, etc.) is not getting updated for downstream tools. It makes it very hard to configure the disabled side.

  4. Once the detour is rerouted, connect to a Detour End tool to unify the data processes into a single stream for further analysis or connect to an output tool.

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