At the start of training I set myself some goals to complete before the end of training and now that training is winding down I thought I would reflect on my performance.

Goal 1: 30 Blog Posts

Current status: 25 blogs completed (26 including this one).

Result: On track for completion, after Dashboard Week that requires a blog a day about the daily dashboard project I will be at 30.

Reflections: I am quite happy with my performance in this area. I aimed quite high as originally it was something I was uncomfortable with but I have enjoyed creating a range of content including chart building, workflow construction and documentation and broader project planning and execution.

Goal 2: 30 Alteryx Challenges

Current Status: 113 Challenges completed.

Result: Pretty convincing success.

Reflections: I have really enjoyed the challenge of solving what amounts to a data prep puzzle and it has absolutely broadened my knowledge of Alteryx using uncommon aspects of the tool like the Charfromint() function that uses an integer and turns it into its corresponding unicode character. Alternatively, learning that within the DateTimeTrim() function there is a parameter for the first day of the month if you follow the target field in the syntax with "firstofmonth".

E.g. DateTimeTrim([Transaction Date],"firstofmonth").

Goal 3: Answer a Convo Query

Current Status: Debatable

Result: Answered a question on Convo in person but not directly over Convo.

Reflections: Throughout training I have appreciated the idea behind TIL's use of Convo as a company-wide forum for asking questions that also doubles as an archive for answered questions. Ultimately the goal served its intended prupose - I have followed Convo fairly closely and will continue to do so on Placement so it has reinforced a good habit. I think I personally could have been better at asking for help over Convo, but I think even so it is a timely reflection to have now that training is ending.

Goal 4: Utilize R integration in Tableau

Current Status: Incomplete

Result: I played around with R integration in Tableau Prep but could not get the desired outcome.

Reflections: During training we learn a fair bit about the concept of being a data consultant and a recurring theme is the idea of project handover. Ultimately, a consultant does not want to handover to a stakeholder an overly-technical piece of work that is susceptible to breaking and is then redundent. Consequently, I never really found a use case for building in this functionality beyond perhaps using it with regards to fitting a regression model and returning key values that might be usable in a KPI. I have not given up on this task but I think it was reasonable for me to push it back for the future.

Goal 5: Develop a webscraping worflow that runs on a weekly schedule

Current Status: Parts completed

Result: I have created a webscraping flow that deals with nested webpages. I also attempted to set up a seperate workflow on a daily schedule on the TIL Alteryx Server.

Reflections: Webscraping was as interesting as I thought it would be, but having learnt more on the topic API connections and parsing JSON is a more appealing means of accessing data. Setting up a workflow that runs on a schedule on Alteryx Server was slightly more challenging than I expected but primarly revolves around ensuring you do not get any authentication issues.

Overall

Overally I would say that I did a good job completing my high priority objectives and gave some of the more advanced goals a good effort.