Comment Tool to have Report Text Features + More

[caltang]

We all know and love the Comment tool. It's a staple of every workflow to give users an idea of the workflow in finer details. It's a powerful tool - it helps adds context to tools and containers, and it also serves as an image placeholder for us to style our workflows as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Now, the gensis of this idea is inspired by this post and subsequent research question here.

The Comment Tool today allows you to:

• Write your text and provide context / documentation to your workflow
• Style its shape
• Style its font, colour, and background colour
• Align the text
• Put an image to your workflow

But it would provide way more functionality if it had the capabilities of another awesome Alteryx tool that is not so frequently mentioned... the Report Text Tool!

What's missing in the Comment tool that the Report Text tool has?

1. The ability to add active data records from the workflow to its text
2. Its wider range of styles which allows for more functionality such as with its Special Tags functions
3. Its ability to hyperlink
4. Text mode options!

Now, whilst I understand that the Report Text tool is just that, a tool that needs to be connected to the data to work, so too does the Comment tool (to a lesser extent).

It would be awesome to have the ability to connect the data to the Comment tool as it was a Control Container-like connector. It can also be just like the Report Text tool with an optional input, thereby making it like a normal Comment tool.

To visualize my point:

The benefits of doing so:

• Greater flexibility to the user
• Styles are endgame
• Users can use the comment box as a checksum or even a total count / checker to ensure everything is working as intended
• Makes the comment tool more powerful as a dynamic workflow documentation tool

I think it'll be a killer feature enhancement to the comment tool. Hoping to hear comments on this! 

Kindly like, share, and subscribe I mean comment your support. Thanks all! 😁

-caltang

[caltang]

I think one more thing I forgot to add is to integrate the justify text options for both comment and also report text tools. Having three options only is limiting, having justify text helps especially with formal documents.

[Qiu]

I would love that feature for the better documentation.

@caltang 
Thank you for raising it up.

[cgoodman3]

This is good, and some similar posts with other good suggestions.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Comment-Tool-Improvements-Text-forma...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Support-for-Markdown-in-Comment-Tool...

[caltang]

Coming from two ACEs means a lot! Thanks @Qiu & @cgoodman3 

RE: @cgoodman3 agreed! It'll be nice to lump them all in one enhancement.