Ability to change column output order for Cross Tab and Transpose

[gautiergodard]

When using the transpose and cross tab tools, I find that I frequently need to reorder the columns selected in the "Key Columns" and "Group data by these values" sections of the tools respectively by using a select tool. It would be helpful to provide users with the ability reorder fields displayed in these tools similar to the functionality provided in the select, join, append, summarize tools etc. Currently the tools default to outputting these columns in the order they come in through the incoming data stream. 

[cgoodman3]

Column order is not maintained when cross tabbing as I guess you don’t know the order you will want so it will default to alphabetical order. The work around for this is to use something like the ensure fields crew macro to pass in a template and get the order sorted downstream, but adding the feature into the tool would be a great addition.

In addition, you’ve sparked a thought around the group by fields, where do don’t have control over ordering, but like in Excel when creating a pivot table you can have hierarchy then being able to have hierarchy by changing the order in the group by would also be a feature enhancement I’d like to see.

[gautiergodard]

Thank you @cgoodman3 ! Thats exactly what I was thinking - there are definitely several work arounds to ordering fields, however given this functionality is omnipresent across most  preparation, join and some transform tools already, I think it would make sense to extend to cross tab and transpose.