Review/Markup Mode and Record Tracker

[Jon_Gamboa]

Hi there!~

I work as an accountant for one of the nation's largest firms. In my day-to-day work, I utilize alteryx to cleanse and format data provided by our clients in preparation for use in another program that is very specific with its imports.

I was recently reviewing an Alteryx workflow prepared by a colleague. Upon attempting to run it again (with new input data) I noted some data fall out and am now reviewing the workflow tool by tool (first to develop understanding of the developer's mind, and second to make changes where needed).

During this review, I thought it would be very cool to have a Review/Markup view, where each tool could have a checkbox that could be checked/unchecked if that specific tool was reviewed/unreviewed. There could also be a circle function that could bring attention to specific places that are of concern in a workflow. This might work similar to how when one drags an Interface tool on the canvas, appropriate connections above non-Interface tools appear, only it would be a view that could be turned on/off.

In addition, I have a tendency to annotate the heck out of my workflows I create -- however there isn't really a way for reviewers to do this without modifying the workflow annotations nor adding a Comment tool with comments. It's especially difficult to do the later since space might be tight. Having a comment function that only shows up in the Review/Markup view would be amazing and very appreciated as I don't want to visually alter the workflow to accommodate such comments if it can be helped.

It would be even more helpful if a review/markup report (maybe a temporary PDF or .yxdb) that would summarized what was summarized as "reviewed, with no comments", "reviewed, with comments', "unreviewed, with comments", "needs attention", etc.

Lastly, with regards to fallout data, I would like to tag/trace a record and, after running the workflow, have the last location of that record be circled in red (or some other visual cue) on the canvas. Currently, I just create a "Flag" column (or, if it works, track a specific RecordID in Alteryx and follow my best guess of where the data may have fallen off -- something that can be very time consuming when I'm not familiar with the workflow.

The organization I work for has experienced some of the best time savings from Alteryx and currently supplies licenses to our staff members. In particular our Audit function may need to review some client processes, which may be entirely in some part Alteryx. As our managers attain Alteryx familiarity, they may also want to review our workflows for completeness and data integrity purposes. Having these functions above would definitely be something to look into and would further drive the review function further away from other more archaic programs and increase our usage of Alteryx throughout, and I'd be happy to be part of a testing for this if possible!

Thanks!~

Jon

[SeanAdams]

Hey @Jon_Gamboa

I fully agree that there's a need to provide better enablement of the peer-review process - we have a similar process internally where we require every canvas to be peer reviewed (in our more mature teams this is standard), but this is not supported by the tool.

Additionally - on the fallout data - I agree with you.    Data that has errors should not just break the workflow, we need an error output so that this data can be streamed into an error management process.

Have a look at this suggestion, and possibly add comments if applicable?

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Error-outputs-on-tools/idi-p/167885