Getting Started with Data360 Analyze: Third Party Demographic data

When working with data to produce reporting and analyses, it is often valuable to incorporate third party data to provide a view of your data that would otherwise be unavailable. For example, what if you could enhance your customer data with rich demographic data, say, estimated household income and the number of adults in the household?

This article provides an example of this to show how easily you can bring in rich third party data into your data flow, ready for analysis in your Tableau dashboard. 

Download & Import the Example Files

The example data flows and data are already installed with Data360 Analyze. You can find these assets in the folder "gettingstartedwithdemographicdata" under

<Data360 Analyze install location>\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata

For example:

 C:\Program Files\Data360Analyze\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata

Alternatively, you can download the examples referenced at the bottom of this article. Download the file and extract to the location of your choosing.  Once the files have been extracted, continue with the instructions below.

Import the example data flows in the "dataflows" folder and the example node in the "nodes" folder (*.lna) by following the instructions in the section titled "Importing and exporting data flows and library nodes" topic of the Data360 Analyze Help.

Once you have imported the examples files, you should see two additional items under “My Documents”:

and one additional custom library node item:

Using Third Party Demographic Data  

Now that you have imported the example files, if you open up a new data flow you will see a new node category "Data" containing a node "Kansas Demographic Data". This is available for drag-and-drop onto your canvas and ready to be used. Note, the new node is not visible in the node library by default. You will need to either go to the Settings page and update the default Library Paths to include your 'My Documents' folder, or include the folder in the search paths of the new data flow (see the Library Paths topic in the Help).

This node is configured to read a file ‘sample_demographic.csv’ that is installed with the product under:

<Data360 Analyze install directory>\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata\data

Example Data Flows

(1) Example Data Flow 1

The first example data flow shows how you can use the Kansas Demographic Data and easily join to CRM data on street address and zip code. 

The CRM data fields are prefixed with "CRM_" to provide clear data lineage in the subsequent joined data. 

The enriched CRM data is then output to a *.tde file, ready for Tableau. 

Give it try with your own CRM data!

Note: The sample CRM data ‘sample_crm.brd’ is installed with the product under:

<Data360 Analyze install directory>\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata\data 

The output file is, by default, written to a directory within your user AppData folder as ‘combineddata_1.tde’ but you can change the directory in the OutputFilename property the Output Tableau node if you want to write to a different location:

The AppData folder can normally be found  here:

C:/Users/<username>/AppData/Local/Data360Analyze/site 

(2) Example Data Flow 2

This follows from Example Data Flow (1) above. 

We saw in the above example that joining the CRM data to the third party data on street address and zip code actually left us with one CRM record that did not match. This example shows how we can resolve our data and identify where corrections may need to be made in our source systems. 

With the single CRM record that did not match in the first join scenario, we try a slightly different join criteria, this time on street address and state.

This gives us a successful match! Looking at the data record, we conclude that this is a correct match and it looks like there is an error in the CRM system, which has a 6 digit zip code. 

We can output the CRM data with corrected values to an Excel file, ready to send to the team who can make the correction.

In the meantime, I can bring the orphaned record back together with my main data set and output the result, the enriched CRM data, to a *.tde file and ready for my Tableau dashboard or a a *.qvx file and ready for my Qlik Sense dashboard. You can explore the “Output Connectors” node category to find more output types. 

Note: The output files default to write to your user AppData folder as ‘combineddata_2.tde’ and CRM_data_to_correct.xlsx but you can change the directory in the OutputFilename property the Output Tableau node if you want to write to a different location: 

Example Data Visualizations

(1) Tableau Dashboard

To start exploring the value of bringing this data together, open the Tableau dashboard ‘demodata_tableaudashboard.twb’ that is saved in the “output” folder of the assets, which will be

<Data360 Analyze install directory>\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata\outputs

Note: You will need to have Tableau installed and with a valid license. 

(2) QlikSense Dashboard

If you prefer to use QlikSense, you can explore this enriched data using the QlikSense dashboard 'demodata_qliksensedashboard.qvf', which is saved in the "output" folder of the assets

<Data360 Analyze install directory>\docs\samples\unsupported\gettingstartedwithdemographicdata\outputs