Hello Alteryx Community,
I believe there is a quicker and easier way to complete a task than my current method but I am unsure as what it may be.
My task involves two data sets, data set A and data set B. Data set A contains a single unique list of items (these could be Part Numbers/Material Descriptions/Codes) and data set B will contain all the fields/columns (1 or more) in which I want to locate the items from data set A. This is a completeness checking task and allows data transfer from B to A.
The issue I am having is that not all items from both data sets are going to be exact matches. For example I could have an item "ABC123" in A, but in B it could be located as "XXX-ABC123" or "ABC123_XXX" etc, and in one or more fields/columns. Note that there is no consistency in how the items are entered in data set B so not one cleanse or formula tool will allow for clean matching.
My current method has been a somewhat manual approach. I will take only one field initially in data set B and use an "IF Contains(field,"ABC123")" to pick out if "ABC123" is contained at all within that field, and then manually eyeball it to the left join of data set A. If I cannot visually see it then there is no match and "ABC123" is removed from the unique list of items from data set A that needs to be checked. The process is then repeated until the list is exhausted. Please see the workflow below for an example.
I will then rinse and repeat this whole process for another field/column in data set B, changing the name of the field in data set B using a Select tool to apply to the workflow.
I have played about with various tools to attempt to find a more efficient method, but so far doing this manually has proven easiest.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
MK