Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I still see that companies are expecting BI professionals to write SQL queries manually despite Alteryx giving complete solution. Idea is to spread value add of Alteryx in Indian market and global companies

If we have similar workflows within the gallery saved and we need to make slight changes in the process to all of them, it would be helpful if we could open all workflows from the gallery by either mutliselect or using a checkbox next to those workflows that we wish to open all at once.  

Why don't Alteryx build an "Designer extended edition"?

An Alteryx designer download that contains every available 

• R package and
• Python package available in the universe to date of release...

in a scenario where i pass multiple files to the download tool (to upload to an FTP server), the data in the workflow gets cut off with the message "ended by a downstream tool". This leads to me only uploading one file (out of the two I am trying to upload).

based on community posts, this seems to be because i am not outputting anything in the workflow or do not have any browses (browses are automatically turned off because I am using Crew Macro's List Runner)

BUG: the download tool should count as an output tool because it is indeed outputting. 

BUG 2: if browses are disabled but they exist in the workflow, it should still create all the records.

Yeah, so when you have 15 workflows for some folks and you've actually decided to publish to a test database first, and now you have to publish to a production database it is a *total hassle*, especially if you are using custom field mappings.  Basically you have to go remap N times where N == your number of new outputs.  

Maybe there is a safety / sanity check reason for this, but man, it would be so nice to be able to copy an output, change the alias to a new destination, and just have things sing along.  BRB - gotta go change 15 workflow destination mappings. 

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/

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

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.

The idea is the ability to skip tools in a workflow. Check the attached example:

Input (TRX_TABLE): Contains transactional raw data (unstructured & uncleaned data)
Filter (TRX_DATE <= 90 days from TODAY): It only filters the data 90 days old from today. Works as an incremental data loader
If the filter tool is NOT SKIPPED the workflow loads the filtered data (incremental behavior)
If the filter tool is SKIPPED the workflow loads all the data (full behavior)
This way I can quickly switch between both modes for testing & production environments

Create a standardized Mailbox application that could bolt onto Alteryx Server, to handle incoming attachments from sources like a Service Desk (Service Now for example) and other applications.

Essentially anything that regularly exports data in the form of an emailed attachments to which Alteryx could, using a series of predefined user rules and a designated email address, put those attachments into various directories ready for processing by automated Alteryx workflows.

This would save a huge amount of time as people currently have to manually drag and drop files. At least the on board Alteryx designers here haven't been able to come with a solution. Would also save any messy programming around systems like Outlook and bending any security issues within those systems. Many, many other applications have this simple feature built in to their products, especially service desks. I believe there would be a huge benefit to this very simple bolt on.

While JSON Parse tool is useful for processing data, it is possible that a name corresponding to a JSON value may contain a period (.) symbol and this can be problematic when you are dealing with a nested JSON value, as Alteryx automatically uses the period character as a delimiter for the JSON_Name column.

I would like to propose an enhancement where the user can select the delimiter the JSON_Name column would be created with, allowing the user to select a character not used in the names for the JSON values, therefore eliminating the need to take extra steps (like finding each name with a period and/or writing specialized RegEx patterns) for dealing with the names that contain a period.

Block-Until-Done could be improved through adding time delay option settings between steps 1,2 and 3. An Excel workbook, for example, must be opened and closed before it can be reread or multiple tabs appended which takes time for a computer to process. Often a workaround or custom macro must be used to account for this time delay. A time delay feature directly in the tool would enable a user to customize the delay period between steps and allow for functions external to Alteryx to complete before next step is taken without macros or workarounds. If no option(s) is selected, default parameters would apply.

dynamic select have field information like [field number] and etc.
i appreciate it available in dynamic rename. 

since both also manipulate with header.

I've run into an issue where I'm using an Input (or dynamic input) tool inside a macro (attached) which is being updated via a File Browse tool. Being that I work at a large company with several data sources; so we use a lot of Shared (Gallery) Connections. The issue is that whenever I try to enter any sort of aliased connection (Gallery or otherwise), it reverts to the default connection I have in the Input or Dynamic Input tool. It does not act this way if I use a manually typed connection string.

Initially, I thought this was a bug; so I brought it to Support's attention. They told me that this was the default action of the tool. So I'm suggesting that the default action of Input and Dynamic Input tools be changed to allow being overridden by Aliased connections with File Browse and Action tools. The simplest way to implement this would probably be to translate the alias before pushing it to the macro.

It will be very useful if there will be tool that will be actually a template of a batch macro and one for iterative macro.

In this way the person can drop the tool to the canvas and connect it to his flow, so there is no need each time to build one.

Obviously if there is 1 macro input, a control parameter and macro output as default, then the person can adjust as needed, but at least there will be a ready template to go.

Hello,

For those unfamiliar, static type checking in Python is a process that analyses your code without executing it, highlighting any potential errors such as type mismatches. An example of this is MyPy (https://github.com/python/mypy), this tool allows developers to easily address issues before runtime - which is a personal gripe of Python (and why I love Alteryx so much).

I believe that integrating static type checking, such as MyPy, into Alteryx Designer could vastly improve the users experience. A user of Alteryx Designer expects intuitive feedback - generally through the error red exclamation marks or messages, and this change should align the Python tool to the expected functionality.

Data Connections and Workflow Credentials are key part of migration process for workflows to Gallery.

They are provisioned for each user upon request.

When a developer leaves the organization, there is no easy way to identify all the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials assigned to that user.

Current options in the Gallery is for the Admin to browse through each Data Connection and Workflow Credential, navigate the Users tab and identify the list users. 

For a large organization with many Data Connections and Workflow Credentials it will hard to manage this since.

1. If the workflows change ownership, the new owner has to be given access to the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials.

2. Remove user access to the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials.

A Gallery page in Admin should include all Assets a user owns/has access to which includes the following. By selecting a user, the list should populate.

1. Workflows
2. Schedules
3. Collections
4. Data Connections
5. Workflow Credentials

We have implemented a solution to capture this information by getting the details from MongoDB. Also an automated process where the list goes to the manager when a developer leaves the organization so that he can manage the assets by identifying a new owner for the assets.

In the new version, we have an easy way to change ownership of a workflow in Gallery. In the same manner other Assets also should be taken care.

Hello,

We would like to have further options in the test tool. As of today you can only test if records matches (equality test) , we would like to be able to test also when it is greater (>) and smaller (<).

Thanks !

I have been creating tools that access API data that needs a valid token that does expire.  I use iterative macros because I sometimes need to do offsets and loop around but I also need to confirm that the token is still valid and there is a limit of how many time you can generate a token on a run so I don't want to regenerate the token on each loop.  I sometimes can use the filter tool to accomplish this goal but I have to do some weird place holder stuff so it does not error if no data is coming through.  A nice to have would be if you could have it configure like you do the radio button input to say if value is YES then keep this part of the workflow on if value is "NO" then turn off this sections.