Whenever we create data integration/processing routines, we like to be able to audit the processes and identify the source rows running through the process. The Alteryx RecordID tool is perfect for this when reading in a single input and I’d recommend always adding this as the next step once you have read in your data, in addition to always adding the filename as an output field. However, if you use this when dynamically reading in multiple files using a wildcard, you will find that your Record ID numbers do not reset for each new file, so it’s hard to track individual rows in each file.
The example below reads in two files, based on a wildcard search of the file name:
As you can see from the output, the RecordID increments reagardless of the differing file sources.
A very simple solution to this is to use the Tile tool to tile by Unique Values and use the FileName as the value.
This results in the following output and you can simply use the Tile_SequenceNum field, renaming to something like RowID for clarity.
Now you have correct row numbering for each file and auditing of your process.
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