Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

It would be nice if when Alteryx crashes there is an autosave capability that when you re-open Alteryx it shows you the list of workflows that were autosaved and give you the immediate option to select which ones you want to save. SImilar to what Excel does.

I know about the current autosave feature, but I would still like to have it pop up or the option to have it pop up for me to select which to keep and which to discard.

I setup a generic template because the excel files do not have a consistent schema.   This is the template

which is interpreted as text

When I feed files into the dynamic input tool the output configuration is

This is the schema of the first file read by the DI tool.  Why didn't it use the template?

The requirement to have all the schemas match is difficult - especially with excel.

I would like to suggest the input tool have a checkbox to override the data driver and interpret all columns as text.

Read excel as text

https://www.connectionstrings.com/ace-oledb-12-0/treating-data-as-text/

I was trying to check the correctness of multiple URLs with the help of download tool connected to parsing tool that way I check the download status and filter the records to good and bad based on the HTTP status codes. To my suprise it allows 2 errors at the maximum ans stops checking next records which is not at all useful for me. I wondered if someone can help me. As @JordanB say it is the default behavior of the tool and can't be handled as of now. Hope you guys have the error handling feature in your next release. 

Saketh 

I'm converting some old macros that were built in 8.6 for use in 10.6 and found something that could potentially be changed about the Alteryx .xlsx drivers. Specifically this refers to the field types passed from a Dynamic Input tool when the data fields are blank when using an .xlsx file as the data source template. 

When the new .xlsx file has fields populated, it works fine. If data is not populated in the new file, the field types are converted to Double[8]. This doesn’t cause a problem for the Dynamic Input, but it can cause problems for downstream tools. In the second case below, the field names are retained but the downstream Join tool errors when trying to join this now double field to a string (rather than returning no results from the join output as desired). This also occurs when a single field is empty, only that field will be converted to a Double[8] field. When the legacy .xlsx drivers are used, the field types are retained from the data source template.

File Source Template vs. file that is returned upon running

There are other solutions for this scenario such as using a Select tool with a loaded .yxft file of the correct field types, or selecting the Legacy .xlsx drivers from the File Format dropdown when configuring the Dynamic Input. However I thought this is something that could be improved about the Alteryx .xlsx drivers. 

It would be great if it were possible in future to adjustment Analytic App buttons.

For example Run instead of Finish or so... and so on!?!

Best regards

Mathias

It would be a handy feature if it were possible to choose a data type for an input tool to read the data in as. For example, if a dataset has multiple fields with different data types, it would be handy to be able to make the Input Tool read and output them all as a string, if needed. This would also make a handy tool, a sort of blanket data conversion to convert all fields to the specified type.

It would be great if we could set the default size of the window presented to the user upon running an Analytic App. Better yet, the option to also have it be dynamically sized (auto-size to the number of input fields required).

Please ignore this post! I just discovered the amazing dynamic input tool can accomplish exactly this 🙂

This is no longer a "good future idea" but simply a solution already provided by AlterYX!  Thanks AlterYX!

Hello everyone. I think it would be incredibly helpful if all input tools (database / csv files / etc..)  had an input stream for data processing.  

This input stream would cause the tool to fire if and only if at least 1 row of "data" was passed into it.  This would work similar to the Email tool, as the input would simply not fire if no records in the workflow were passed into it.

By making this change, AlterYX could then control the flow of execution when reading / writing to database tables and files without having to bring in Macros or chained applications.

The problem with having to use batch macros and block until done to solve this problem is that it obfuscates your workflow logic, making it much harder for another developer to look at the workflow and understand what is happening.   Below is an extremely simply example of where this is necessary.

Example: any time you are doing a standard dimentional warehouse ETL.

Step #1: Write data to a table with an auto-incremented Key

Step #2: Read back from that table to get the Key that you just generated

Step #3:  use that key as a foreign key in your primary Fact table.

Without this enhancment you need at least 2 different workflows (chained apps or marco's) to accomplish the task above, however with this simple enhancement the above task could be accomplished in 3 tools.

This task is the basic building block of almost all ETL's so this enhancement would be very useful in my opinion.

As a security enhancement, the default passwords setting should be encrypt for user. Although this is critical for security my users have overlooked this even with training. They truly aren't culpable if they forgot. If it is the default then they must consciously change the it to an insecure setting.

From a security perspective the current default setting is backwards.

Grant Hansen

With SSIS, you can invoke user precedence contraint(s) to where you will not run any downstream flows until one or more flows complete.  A simple connector should allow you to do this.  Right now, I have my workflow(s) in containers, and have to disable / enable different workflows, which can be time consuming.  Below is a better definition:

Precedence constraints link executables, containers, and tasks in packages in a control flow, and specify conditions that determine whether executables run. An executable can be a For Loop, Foreach Loop, or Sequence container; a task; or an event handler. Event handlers also use precedence constraints to link their executables into a control flow.

DELETE from Source_Data Where ID in

SELECT ID from My_Temp_Table where FLAG = 'Y'

.... 

Essentially, I want to update a DB table with either an update or with the deletion of rows.  I can't delete all of the data.  My work around will be to create/insert into a table the keys that i want to delete and try to use a input/output tool with SQL that performs the delete.  Any other suggestions are welcome, but a tool is best.

Thanks,

Mark

When moving external data into the database, the underlying SQL looks like:

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY  TABLE "AYX16020836880b41e08246b59ee8c"

...

My client would like to add a prefix to the table as:

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY  TABLE MMMM999_DM_USER."AYX16020836880b41e08246b59ee8c"

where MMMM999_DM_USER is supplied in the configuration.

A service account  automatically sets the current session to something like MMMM999 (alter session set curent schema=MMMM999;)

If you have a complex SQL query with a number of dynamic substitutions (e.g. Update WHERE Clause, Replace a Specific String), it would be nice to be able to optionally ouput the SQL that is being executed. This would be particuarly useful for debugging.

When a custom (bespoke for @Chrislove) macro is created, I would like the option to create an annotation that goes along with the tool.  This is entirely cosmetic, but might help users to recognize the macro.

Thanks,

Mark

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

it would  particularly interesting to develop a WMS support in Alteryx.
To include other Maps like bing, google, HERE instead of CloudMade to display geo informations.

Mathias

I've been using Events a fair bit recently to run batches through cmd.exe and to call Alteryx modules.

Unfortunately, the default is that the events are named by when the action occurs and what is entered in the Command line.

When you've got multiple events, this can become a problem -- see below:

Events tab with all events called the same thing

It would be great if there was the ability to assign custom names to each event.

It looks like I should be able do this by directly editing the YXMD -- there's a <Description> tag for each event -- but it doesn't seem to work.

I would like to suggest to contemplate the option to add a new SDK based on lua language.

Why Lua?

o is open source / MIT license

o is portable

o is fast

o is powerful and simple

o Lua has been used to extend programs written in C, C++, Java, C#, Smalltalk, Fortran, Ada, Erlang

I am trying to use the Dynamic Replace to selectively update records in a set of variables from survey data. That is, I do not have all potential values in the “R” input of Dynamic Replace. Instead, I have a list of values that I would like altered from their current values by respondent (RespondentID) and question # (Q#).  Currently, when I run the workflow, any Q#/ResponseID combos that are not in my “R” input are replaced with blanks. However, I would like an option that maintains the original data if there is nothing to replace the data with. Without this option, there are few (I'm still working on some ways) workarounds to ensure the integrity of the data.

Matt