Discover Aimpoint Digital’s AWS Tools for Alteryx, now available for free download on the Alteryx Marketplace.
As more Alteryx users migrate their analytics to the cloud, the need for seamless integration with platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) becomes crucial. To meet this growing need, the Aimpoint Digital team has built a set of connectors designed to enhance your Alteryx experience. With these free tools, you can easily connect to AWS from within the Alteryx platform.
Existing Alteryx Tooling vs. AWS Tools
While Alteryx already offers connectors for AWS, our customers have identified limitations within the existing offerings, including:
- Amazon S3 Download
- Amazon S3 Upload
These two existing tools are useful, but our clients have identified that they are not flexible enough to work in all situations, with key issues including:
- No capability to download or upload multiple objects.
- The connectors only support downloading or uploading 4 file types: .yxdb, .avro, .csv and .json.
To address these issues, the Aimpoint Digital team has an initial release of AWS Tools compatible with Alteryx version 2023.1 and newer. The initial release of the AWS Tools Palette includes three essential tools: the Amazon S3 List tool, the Amazon S3 Download tool and the Amazon S3 Upload tool.
Amazon S3 List Tool
Empower yourself with the Amazon S3 List tool, allowing users to dynamically create lists of S3 objects. Set credentials, specify the bucket name, and apply filtering through regular expressions to refine results based on object path or names.
Users can also apply filtering, through regular expression statements, against the object path (file path) or the object names (file names).
In the above example, the filtering will return any files within the ‘aws-s3-demo’ S3 bucket and that have a filename starting with ‘Quarterly GDP’ and that are ‘.csv’ files.
The purpose of the tool is to provide the user with the capability to dynamically create a list of Amazon S3 objects which they may wish to download (via the Amazon S3 Download tool).
Users can apply further filtering against this stream to further reduce the list, for example in our list of files there should be a single file per state that we wish to download, however in our ‘GDP’ folder there are regional files. As a result, we could parse the area from the object name, and then join this with a list of valid areas (states).
Amazon S3 Download Tool
Effortlessly download multiple objects from an Amazon S3 bucket using the Amazon S3 Download tool.
Objects can be downloaded to either a temporary location, in cases where the files will be consumed within the same workflow, or into a designated folder in cases where the users may want to consume these files outside of this workflow.
The tool has the capability to download objects using filters applied within the interface, or through an optional input containing a list of object paths.
The output for this tool contains a list of objects and their respective download locations. In addition, the tool outlines if the download was successful or not.
Users can then utilize the power of Alteryx’s new control containers released in Alteryx version 2023.1 to subsequently read these downloaded files into their workflow. This feature enables us to create a process allowing users to download any file type, rather than a designated list of pre-defined options.
Amazon S3 Upload Tool
Upload files of any type to an Amazon S3 bucket with the Amazon S3 Upload tool. Users can designate a fixed file to upload or alternatively pass in a list of file paths into the tool via an optional input.
This tool was developed with the control container feature in mind. Users can create the files they want to upload within a control container before triggering a second control container to run the upload process.
In our worked example, we created a set of PDF reports for each individual state using Alteryx’s reporting tool palette. These files are saved to a temporary location before being uploaded using the Amazon S3 Upload tool.
Aimpoint Digital’s AWS Tools for Alteryx, is now available for free download on the Alteryx Marketplace.
Connect to your Cloud Products
At Aimpoint Digital, we are committed to enhancing Alteryx’s connectivity with AWS. Share your specific use cases and let us show you how Aimpoint Digital can support your organization in seamlessly connecting Alteryx to your cloud products. Use the form below to get started.
