Equal Space between tools

Dear community, I am a new Alteryx user and I was wondering if somebody here has some ideas or best practices when it comes to keep your flow readable.

Additionally, I would also like to know how do I keep my tools at an equal distance from each other?

Tips and Tricks

Accepted answers

neilgallen

regarding spacing: There is an right click option if you select multiple tools to align or distribute both horizontally and vertically. Every year at inspire this seems to get a big reaction in the 'tips and tricks' sessions, as if it's somehow a new feature. I guess people never look.

As far as documentation goes, within our department we do two main things:

Annotate each tool (when applicable). This helps explain the rationale, and is no different than comment lines in any set of SQL/python/R code. I've used my own commentary when looking at workflows I've developed months prior to remind me why i did something.

Use the Workflow Meta Info. Provide a description of what the intent of the workflow is intended to do, and any other relevant notes.

The reason we chose this option over containers is that moving things around seemed to be easier this way, and the comment boxes just seemed to make things cluttered.

All comments

LordNeilLord

Hey @jmperafan

I personally use a standard size comment box which helps with commentary (see this post: https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2019/02/14/documentation-best-practices-with-alteryx/)

There is a function to distribute and align tools (select some tools and right click), personally I don't like it and prefer to do my own alignment

ChrisTX

@jmperafan I attached a file to this post, with some notes for general best practices: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Best-Practices-for-Alteryx-Use/m-p/409817

@LordNeilLord do you prefer comment boxes over Containers? Comment boxes are easier to manually resize, but Containers help me turn off parts of the workflow when testing.

Chris

neilgallen

As far as documentation goes, within our department we do two main things:

Use the Workflow Meta Info. Provide a description of what the intent of the workflow is intended to do, and any other relevant notes.

The reason we chose this option over containers is that moving things around seemed to be easier this way, and the comment boxes just seemed to make things cluttered.

LordNeilLord

@ChrisTX

Yeah i do, i rarely use containers actually....sometimes I will add them in to disable elements but I usually remove them when I'm done.

I think i would use them more if there wasn't a bug with having comments in containers

mst3k

Can we please just fix the bug that offsets tools a fraction of an inch, rather than relying on alignment shortcuts? I don't want to have to go back and realign a bunch of tools every time I add another tool that causes the tool it's connected to to move a smidgen to where it doesn't flatly align with any other tools anymore. The kinked connectors drive me crazy and I know I'm not the only one. It seems to be caused by using containers and connecting things between the inside and outside of the containers.

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