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.

[cgoodman]

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 & @cgoodman 

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

[DavidKennedy]

I have numerous workflows in which I have built in "fail safes" to prevent passing bad data out to downstream databases/reports.  I have Message tools that provide a specific message on whether the fail safe was triggered or the new/refreshed data was passed through.  The problem with the Message tool is that it is very easy for the message to get lost in the myriad log results so you don't automatically see it.  The same is true for using the Browse tool to view a dynamic and more easy-to-read message/result, you still have to make the cognitive decision to click the Browse tool to review the result/message.  

Admittingly, on their own, these "issues" seem minor.  However, when running multiple workflows as part of a group or on a regular basis, some of which can be very large and complex, its easy for these "minor issues" to become major inconveniences to utilize as they are intended.

Having something similar to a Report Text tool that can render an image and formula-driven text/conditions (font and background color controls) directly on the canvas would be AWESOME and go a long way to providing immediate/easy-to-see information regarding the results of the workflow.

I ask/encourage the Alteryx team to explore providing this capability.