Alteryx 11 Formula Tool

[sbedwell]

Hi everyone,

Overall I have been enjoying many of the new/updated features in Alteryx 11 including the enhancements to the formula tool.  However, I have noticed the following pain points in the new formula tool:

1) The default data type for new columns used to be Double, and now it is V_WString.  Is this user-configurable?  I find that, at least in my work, needing a formula to output a Double is way more common than a V_WString.  I'm curious of other community members' thoughts here.  If there isn't a consensus, it would be great to have this be a user-configurable default.

2) Once you select a data type, making any change to the name of the new field auto-reverts the data type back to V_WString!   This one is a little frustrating.  I'm very picky about names of fields, so I oftentimes make a change as I think through what that field should be called, and then discover later in the workflow that I cannot do calculations on it (since it's been changed to V_WString).

3) The old formula configuration window had two very small advantages.  First, it always had an extra 'line' for another output field (no pressing '+' required).  Second, it defaulted to letting you immediately begin typing the name of the next column (no need to press 'Select Column' then 'Add New Column').   I know these are very minor, but every little thing counts when you're doing heavy development!

Thanks,

Scott

[RachelW]

@elyin You can find the text wrapping issue resolved in the newest version of Alteryx, released yesterday. Check it out on our Downloads page.