Do You Even Cache, Bro?

I love the data caching feature in Alteryx. However, I learned this week I wasn’t using it as efficiently as possible. I showed my team members this discovery and none of them were aware of it. Are you missing it as well? Check out this post to learn more about caching data in Alteryx.

Blog or Video

https://youtu.be/cSaoGT7M9aU

How I Cached Data When I First Learned Alteryx

It’s always a bit rough learning a new application. When I first picked up Alteryx, I was just happy that I could cache data at all. As a result, I was totally okay with using this incredibly inefficient way of caching. Ctrl, right-click, repeat.

A More Organized Way of Caching

When my workflows got bigger (i.e. had more inputs), I had to become more organized. So, I used right-click menu options to line up my inputs and cache them all in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, I couldn’t organize all workflows this way. And, it’s annoying when I modify one input to have to select all of them. I have some really big workflows. Or, sometimes, I would just forget to right-click and cache before running. So, my process was frought with inefficiency.

Caching Data in Alteryx Efficiently

This week, I suddenly noticed this little checkbox. It’s been there the whole time (in the Input tool), but I never noticed it. If you check this box, anytime you make a change and run the workflow the new data will be cached. You don’t have to worry about using the caching option in the right-click menu ever again. This is a huge time saver.

Caveat

For some reason, the cache checkbox doesn’t work on Dynamic Input tools. I have the box checked, but the data doesn’t cache, even in very simple workflows where the data is not going thru a Join or Append tool afterward. If I right-click on it and select ‘Cache and Run Workflow’ from the right-click menu, it will cache the workflow. I show this in the YouTube video.

That wraps up this week’s post on caching data in Alteryx.

Alteryx Version

Content created with Alteryx 2020.3.