Tab from 'Select Column' to 'Enter Expression Here' and not to 'Functions' List

[Joe_Lipski]

I personally think it would work better to tab from 'Select Column' to 'Enter Expression Here' and not the 'Functions' List as probably people who are tabbing would immediately like to start typing the formula rather than going through functions, fields, etc.

[jarrod]

Yes, this would be very helpful... I always go to hit tab then end up using my cursor anyway to select the formula box.

[Kenda]

Same here! I learned early on that hitting tab was too much of a hassle because I would have to do it so many times to get to the expression box so now I just click. It would be very convenient to have this added as the default.

[Hollingsworth]

100% ditto.

Attention UX designers at Alteryx:  Reorganizing the tab order, default cursor focus, and adding shortcuts across the entire Designer product would result in the gratitude and enhanced performance of many, many customers.

[jarrod]

@Hollingsworth that's a great point and is probably a great overall objective for this request. I also see benefit for the default functionality being changed for:

Text input tool - using "F2" to enter the cell for editing (like excel). hitting F2 currently takes you to the annotation settings for the tool.

Select tool - when adding prefix/suffix to fields, i have to manually click the box to start typing. This used to be the default cursor space back in 11.7 or thereabouts, but an update broke it. always a little frustrating when i click to add a prefix and start typing and realize that the cursor isn't where i thought it was.

Formula tool - stated above & would be nice if the data type would auto-change to the type that the formula creates (if i start typing a numeric calc, make it double by default... if i start using quotes, make is the V_WString with that large size (length)

i feel like there are a few more defaults i'd like to see, but can't remember them right now. 

[Joe_Lipski]

We should submit these ideas for the AYX Dev day idea requests...

[Kenda]

@jarrod RE: Select tool - https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Add-Prefix-to-Field-Names-Focus/idi-p/565603

#ShamelessPlug

[carlmcgowan]

this is a great idea, many times I hit tab and still expect start typing my formula 

[seven]

@Joe_Lipski 

I posted an idea to make the data type selection more prominent. It is much more common for someone to neglect to set the data type versus neglect to type an expression. What do you think about tabbing to the data type and then to the expression editor? Would you endorse that?

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Formula-tool-data-type-should-be-prominent/i...

[KylieF]

Thank you for your feedback!

At this time we're unable to include this idea in our near future roadmap due to competing priorities, as such we're updating it to Not Planned. However should this change or we become able to return to this idea in the future we'll be sure to update the status again to Under Review.