Programmatic Detour

[MarqueeCrew]

I've seen this question before and have run into it myself.  I'd like to see a new tool that would allow a developer (of a workflow) to choose a path of logic based upon criteria known only during the execution of a module.

If LEFT INPUT Count of records < 10,000 THEN Path1 (e.g. use a calgary join)

ELSE Path 2 (e.g. use a standard join)

endif

Thanks,

Mark

[joejoe317]

You would have to build it out.

This is how I do it... This is ran every minute in scheduler and checks the timestamp of a query to see when the last refresh was... 

I have a saved file on a shared drive that will save the last time stamp. If the time stamps are different it runs the flow, else it doesn't do anything. If you need to pass data to the open close container macro just add a macro input and pass the data to it.

I would obviously rather have a built in function. This is along the lines of being able to use 2 streams of data to interact with eachother. Example, query pulls in current quarter, then you have other data that has quarters and want to find the min year-qtr of those. Then have the ability to have a filter taking in these single parameters to filter out a bigger dataset. I think its quite odd this isn't already in alteryx. This type of logic that is being asked for is pretty similar to the above suggestion and shouldn't have to be done globally with chaining macros.

It would also be nice if I could just use open and close and have an input that allows me to choose what I'm trying to open and close so I don't have to make a custom open and close container for every scenario (kind of like a parameter in programming and telling it a method or function to call if t or f.)

[KylieF]

Thank you for posting to the Alteryx Community! Our product team is interested in this idea, however we're unable to fit this idea on the current road map. However, we'd like to keep it in mind for future features and we'll update the status once we know if or when we can include this feature.

[jdrummey]

Yes, please! I love Alteryx...and having to use complex workarounds for what in Python would be a couple of lines of branching code is regularly frustrating.

Here are a couple of use cases:

1) For various reasons the data stream might have 0 records, and downstream tools will fail (throw errors, generate invalid values, etc.) if there are 0 records, so I want to branch around that. The example that brought me here today is a workflow that is downloading files from an FTP site and there might not be any new files for a given run.

2) We'll do data validation checks and based on those data-driven results want to branch processing in ways where if the condition is not met then "do nothing", i.e. don't run that branch (and run queries, write out files, send emails, etc.)

Jonathan

[KylieF]

Hi All! I wanted to give an update on this idea since it's been a little over a year since my last update on it. Our product team recently reviewed this idea again in comparison to our current road map and determined were unable to include it in the near term future due to the number of enhancements actively being completed. While we work through those enhancements this idea will continue to remain in the revisit status. Once our product road map has the availability to consider this idea fully we'll insure it gets reviewed again.

[MarqueeCrew]

@KylieF ,

 thank you for the update. 

cheers,

 mark

[gabrielvilella]

Any updates on this?

@KylieF 

[NicoleJ]

Control Containers (coming soon!) should allow for a variety of programmatic detour options! Stay tuned!!

[PCAM]

So glad to see this is now coming soon! Will be a great help in a number of our workflows!

[NicoleJ]

It brings us incredible joy to announce that Control Containers are finally here - and they are awesome. Check out more details about this amazing new tool in this blog article!

Cheers!!!