pbPassingBI
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alteryx/lessons/ax-interface
Environment & data beginner 5 min

The Designer interface

Canvas, tool palette, configuration window and results — how a workflow runs.

What you'll be able to do
  • Navigate the four main areas
  • Build and run a simple workflow
  • Read the results window

The four areas

Inputread sourceCleantypes, nullsBlendjoin, unionAggregategroup byOutputwrite result
Every ETL tool arranges the same five stages — only the interface changes.

How a workflow runs

You drag tools onto the canvas and connect them with anchors — the small shapes on each side of a tool. Data flows left to right along those connections.

Each tool takes rows in, does one thing, and passes rows out. That constraint is what makes workflows readable: you can point at any connection and say exactly what the data looks like there.

Running and inspecting

Run the workflow with the Run button or Ctrl+R. Then click any connection to see the data at that point in the Results window, along with the record count.

The habit that matters most

Check the record count after every tool that could change it — Join, Filter, Union, Summarize. A workflow that produces wrong numbers almost always does so because a record count changed somewhere unnoticed.

Messages

The Results window has tabs for messages, warnings and errors. Warnings are worth reading rather than dismissing — field truncated, conversion error, and record limit reached all mean data changed silently.

Key points
  • Data flows left to right along connections between tools
  • Click any connection to inspect the data at that point
  • Check record counts after every tool that can change them
Check yourself