In this lesson, we dive into one of the most foundational and frequently used steps in Parabola: the Edit columns step. This step is crucial for cleaning and organizing your data right at the start of your Flow, and is often the first transformation step you’ll use when building. 

Building challenge

Let’s put this step in action using the sample data downloaded in the “Pulling data | Key concepts” lesson: 

From our inventory file

• Remove the columns called Variant Color, Variant Size, Allocated, Damaged, and In Transit.
• Rename In-Stock to Available.

From our sales file

• Keep the columns Order Number, Order Date, SKU, Line Item Price, Units, and Status (Pro tip: try searching for the columns instead of scrolling down the list).
• Rename SKU# to SKU.
• Move the Status column to be second in order.

To check your work, take a look at this quick video.

How to use the step

1. Drag an Edit columns step onto the canvas.
2. Use the step to
   • Specify which columns you’d like to keep or remove
   • Reorder columns 
   • Rename columns

Pro tip

• Using descriptive column names will make the entire Flow building experience significantly easier.
  • Let’s imagine you’re working with multiple data sources (e.g., Shopify and Amazon), and both data sets have an Order ID column: Building your Flow will be much easier if you rename those columns up front to Shopify Order ID and Amazon Order ID to eliminate confusion later in the Flow.

Visit our support docs to learn more about the step.