Open Macro option being killed ?

[Ashish]

Hello Masters of Alteryx,

I have a concern about Predictive and other analytics tools that I want to discuss on this forum.

Up to version 10.0 I could open pretty much all analytics tools as a macro, to tweak things in R or in the macro workflow to get the results in a way most useful to us.

But apparently with Alteryx 11.0 the newer tools does not have that option, Although we can still access the older tools and still open them as macro but I don't understand (may be interactive report option) why that is being killed in the newer versions? 

Most of the newer versions have new features, like Linear Regression now support elastic net and cross validation etc.. but I still want to be able to go in to them to tweak them.

In fact last year @BridgetT helped me in doing elastic net in Alteryx and I could do it because I could see how Alteryx is doing linear regression.

I have also made several other changes in other tools to suit me but now I feel confined in options to me with new tools.

Another example is Correlation tool, the newer version does not support Grouping and I can not make change in that (although @JordanB I understand that it can still done by putting it inside a batch macro but its much harder & I could not do it because I don't know how variable selection using "Interactive List box" and "Update Value"/"Update Raw XML" in an "action tool" properly works.)

In the end what I want to say is, Alteryx much more useful to me when I can open and customize the awesome tools it has.

And if I have to choose between interactive report and option of opening a macro with html report, I would go with the latter.

Thanks,

Ashish

[dataMack]

This also surprised me in v11 when I was doing a demo for someone and right clicked on a predictive tool and the option to open macro was no longer there.  In my demos, I always liked to tout the fact that the predictive tools in Alteryx were not 'black boxes' and anyone that wanted to understand exactly what it was doing could open the macro and see the R code.

Would be nice to hear from Alteryx why that changed.

[patrick_digan · Accepted solution]

@Ashish My quick 2 cents is that this is due to them changing them to be html based tools. They are trying to upgrade tools to HTML5. For the non-macro tools, this is a great update; however, for the macro tools, this means that the ability to right click and open the macro is lost. I quickly looked and it seems to me that the macros are still in the alteryx folders and should be editable. I found the Linear regression macro here:

C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\HtmlPlugins\Linear_Regression\Supporting_Macros

EDIT: Here is the post announcing the changes to the linear regression tool: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Linear-Regression-Alteryx-11-0/ta-p/43664

[Ashish]

Thanks Patrick,

This is helpful and a relief that I can still access the macros. Now it's much easier for an ace to find/figure it out but not for someone like me.

I wish there is a guide on where to find them, or may be Alteryx can give the path to macro and their support macros in the help page of each macro.

[patrick_digan]

@Ashish Unfortunately it's only getting more confusing as time goes on :) On the other hand, Alteryx is pushing out cool new tools/features etc.

Alteryx saves items to 3 main folders:

C:\Program Files\Alteryx
C:\ProgramData\Alteryx
C:\Users\YOURID\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx

I usually just rely on navigating to the top folder, and using windows explorer to search. For example, I didn't know where the logistic regression stuff would be saved, but I tried the program files and searched for linear to find it. I like your idea of having the path to the macro in the help page!

[patrick_digan]

@dataMack @Ashish In a related post on another question, @DrDan mentioned that you can use the earlier version of the tool by right clicking and then selecting version 1.0. This then gives you the ability to modify the macro like you could in the pre v11 days.

[NeilR]

Currently, any tools that come with Designer or the Predictive Install that have an HTML interface live in:

C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\HtmlPlugins

Some of these tools have a macro back-end. To find the macro back-end, you can navigate to the xml config file and look for the EngineDLLEntryPoint attribute of the EngineSettings xml tag. So within the Linear_RegressionConfig.xml file, for instance, we see the macro is housed within the Supporting_Macros sub-folder.

FYI tools installed as YXIs get installed into:

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx\Tools

If they have a macro back-end, you can find them in a similar manner to the above.

I will look into getting the right-click open macro functionality back in for these types of tools. It might help if you suggest as much in the Product Ideas forum.

[Ashish]

Thanks @NeilR for the additional information, its very helpful.

I have also created a new idea for this, hope will get enough attention to get it implemented.

Any one reading this tread can go to this post in product ideas to star it.

Ashish

[RachelW]

With 11.7 you are now able to right click on any tool with a macro back end to "Open macro". Check our our Downloads page to learn more about 11.7 features.