AI-Powered Idea Grouping by Tools for Better Navigation

[vlad_kutateladze]

Searching for ideas on the Alteryx Community isn’t very convenient, as has been mentioned many times. But what if AI could be used to organize ideas more effectively? 

Specifically for Designer Desktop Ideas, AI could assign each idea to the right tool, making it easier to browse and see what the community is discussing about each one.It could also help users compare their new idea with existing ones, which is an important requirement in the Community Guidelines.

• Some ideas are not tied to a specific tool, but to menu options or configuration settings — AI could classify those accordingly.
• Since a single tool can have many related ideas it might be worth going a step further:
  • Ideas could be grouped not only by tools, but also by specific settings within each tool.
  • Ideas more general  than a specific setting of a tool could be grouped separately.
• While browsing, users could see similar ideas highlighted.
• And additionally, after browsing through grouped ideas, when a user decides to post a new idea, AI could automatically check the text against all existing ideas and show similar ones.

And while the last step could be enough to prevent duplicate ideas, the ability to browse them conveniently is still important for exploring discussions around ideas for interesting tools and topics.

(Similar ideas don’t always mean they’re identical; sometimes they just offer different approaches or broader or narrower views of the same problem.)

Of course, this is just a broad concept that would need to take many different factors into account.

I have created a small prototype in Figma just to play around with the concept and visualize how this might roughly look. When ideas are grouped by tools and their settings, I believe the easiest and most intuitive menu would be one similar to the Alteryx interface.

You can try figma prototype using this link: https://tinyurl.com/275tr3kn

• In this example, you can explore ideas for the Find Replace tool, organized by tool settings:
  • “General Ideas” (ideas that are more general and not about a specific setting)
  • Find
  • Replace Found Text with Value
  • Append Field(s) to Records
    
    
• Options / Export Workflows menu shows an example of an idea linked not to a specific tool, but to a particular menu category.
• By clicking “Suggest an Idea” you can go to the idea posting section and “check” a sample idea for similarity.

Proposal to organize ideas by tools was posted some years ago. The idea was recognized as valuable but challenging to implement, so it was declined. However, the possibilities of AI might allow us to approach this idea differently. 
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Community-Ideas/Categorize-Product-Ideas-by-Tool/idi-p/7837...