Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Would be nice if Alteryx had the ability to run a Teradata stored procedure and/or macro with a the ability to accept input parameters.  Appears this ability exists for MS SQL Server.  Seems odd that I can issue a SQL statement to the database via a pre or post processing command on an input or output, but can't call a stored procedure or execute a macro.  Only way we can seem to call a stored procedure is by creating a Teradata BTEQ script and using the Run Command tool to execute that script.  Works, but a bit messy and doesn't quite fit the no-coding them of Alteryx.

Currently - in workflows which make active use of dynamic queries - if the record set is empty then we end up with errors such as "a record was created with no fields".   This creates issues  when a dynamic query pumps rows out to a macro output, or where dynamic queries go into a join.

 

Could we change the result of the dynamic query so that if it returns an empty record set it still has columns but no rows and therefore doesn't cause errors in workflows?

 

Let me know if we need to provide a worked example?

 

Thank you

Sean

We need some way (unless one exists that I am unaware of - beyond disabling all but the Container I want to run) to fire off containers in particular order.  Run Container "Step1" then Run Container "Step2" and so on.

Please upgrade the "curl.exe" that are packaged with Designer from 7.15 to 7.55 or greater to allow for -k flags. Also please allow the -k functionality for the Atleryx Download tool.  

 

-k, --insecure

(TLS) By default, every SSL connection curl makes is verified to be secure. This option allows curl to proceed and operate even for server connections otherwise considered insecure.

The server connection is verified by making sure the server's certificate contains the right name and verifies successfully using the cert store.

 

Regards,

John Colgan

 

Idea:  I need a function that given two dates, will return the number of business days between them. I need to know the # of business days between when a sales order is placed and when it ships to the customer. I'm in the US, so I would want to not count Saturdays, Sundays, and US Holidays, but I can foresee others wanting the option to change to other calendars or ignore holidays.

 

There are a couple of posts on this in the community, but everything I've found so far is too laborious to implement or not robust.

 

We aren't getting a huge amount of help from support on this, so I'm posting this idea to raise awareness for the product teams responsible for the Salesforce connectors and the embedded Python environment.

 

This post from user Dubya describes the issue in detail:

 

I have a workflow with several salesforce tools in it, which works fine on my machine. But we need another alteryx user in our office to be able to access, run and maintain the workflow too, via their machine and copy of alteryx designer.

However we're finding that the salesforce inputs and outputs can only be authenticated on one machine at a time.

When the other new user opens the original workflow from the shared network location, the salesforce tools display an error "Salesforce Input (1): {'error': 'invalid_grant', 'error_description': 'authentication failure'}" and the tools fail to load any data. But we can see the full query in the tool and we can even set the custom query option and validate the query successfully, which suggests the source is being correctly connected to and queried, but we just cant run the tool.

The only way to run the tool successfully is to change the credentials and re-authenticate the tool. However this then de-authenticates the original machine, and when we open up the workflow on there and try to run ying the workflow brings back the same error.

We've both tried this authentication back and forth on our own machines and each time one of us re-authenticates, it de-authenticates the other, leading to it triggering the error.

Can someone help explain what's going on and how to fix it, as this doesn't bode well for our collaboration.

We're both running:
The latest build of version of designer 2021.2 (original machine also running desktop automation)
Salesforce Input Tool v4.1.0
Salesforce Output Tool v1.3.0

My response here identifies that this is a problem for our organization as well:

 

We're experiencing the same issue. It appears to be related to how the tool handles password and security token decryption. I've found that when you modify the related registry entry from "true" to "false", you can see in the tool's xml that the encrypted password and security token are still in there. I'm not sure what else is going on behind the scenes beyond that, but that ought to be addressable by the product teams handling the Salesforce connectors and the Python installation embedded in Designer.

The only differences in our environment compared to u/Dubya's are that we're running on 2020.4 and attempting to use Salesforce Input Tool v4.2.4.

 

This is a must have for anyone who needs the ability to share workflows among multiple users. This is part of a series of problems that these updated connectors have been plagued with since introducing them years ago, and no one at Alteryx seems to care enough to truly fix the problems. Salesforce is a core system for our organization, so having tools that utilize the latest version of Salesforce's APIs is very important to us. The additional features that the Input tool provides are welcome, but these bugs have to be sorted out in order for us to extract any kind of value out of them. If the "deprecated" Salesforce tools were ever to be removed from Designer while there are issues with the "new" connectors, we would have no choice other than to never upgrade Designer/Server again and be forced to look for another product to serve as our ETL platform.

 

Please, please, please address this.

When building API calls within Alteryx there are a few common steps required

1) Build out the URI for the API call (base URL plus any query parameters)

2) Deal with authentication, such as basic authentication requires taking a key and secret, base 64 encoding and passing this into the tool

3) parsing the results out and processing these downstream

 

For this idea I am specifically focusing on step 3 (but it would be great to have common authentication methods in-built within the download tool (step 2)!).

 

There are common steps required to parse out the results, such as using Filter (to check for a 200 response), JSON parse, text to columns and then cross tab to get the results into a readable format. These will all be common steps anyone who has worked with APIs will be familiar with:

 

This is all fine for a regular user to quickly add in and configure these tools. However there is no validation here for the JSON result being as expected, which when embedding an API into a batch macro or analytic app means it can easily fail.

One example of a failure which I've recently come across is where the output JSON doesn't have all fields (name:value pairs) depending the json response. For example using the UK Companies House API, when looking at the ceased to act field at this endpoint - https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources... the ceased to act field only appears in the results if a person has actually ceased to act. This is important if you have downstream tools such as a formula to create a field [Active] where you have:

IF ISNull([ceased_to_act]) THEN "Active" ELSE "Ceased to Act" ENDIF

However without modification the macro / app will error if any results are returned where there is not this field.

 

A workaround is to add in the Crew Ensure Fields or union on a list of fields, to ensure that the Cease to Act field is present in the output for all API calls. But looking at some other tools it would be good if an expected Schema could be built in to the download tool to do this automatically.

 

For example in Power Automate this is achieved as follows:

 

 

I am a big advocate of not making things unnecessarily complicated. Therefore I would categorise this as an ease of use feature to improve the experience of working with APIs within Alteryx and make APIs (as load of integrations are API based) accessible to as many users as possible.

 

 

 

 

Please enhance the dynamic select to allow for dynamic change data type too.  The use case can be by formula or update in an action for a macro.  If you've ever wanted to mass change or take precision action in a macro, you're forced to use a multi-field formula.  It would be rather helpful and appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Python pandas dataframes and data types (numpy arrays, lists, dictionaries, etc.) are much more robust in general than their counterparts in R, and they play together much easier as well. Moreover, there are only a handful of packages that do everything a data scientist would need, including graphing, such as SciKit Learn, Pandas, Numpy, and Seaborn. After utliizing R, Python, and Alteryx, I'm still a big proponent of integrating with the Python language much like Alteryx has integrated with R. At the very least, I propose to create the ability to create custom code such as a Python tool. 

Hi there,

 

The download tool currently does not work if the user is behind a corporate proxy setup - and the only way to download web-content is using CURL.

This is a significant impediment because this prevents almost all corporate alteryx users from being able to access this capaibilty

 

Could you please look into using the proxy settings that the workstation uses to access the internet in a corp env?

 

thank you

Sean

The R tool has AlteryxProgress() and AlteryxMessage() functions for generating notifications in the Results window https://help.alteryx.com/current/designer/r-tool, however the Python tool does not. Since I'm writing more Python code than R code I'd like to have similar functionality available in the Python tool, e.g. an Alteryx.Progress() function and an Alteryx.Message() function.

 

Jonathan

 

I got to know that in version 9.1 Alteryx will have Unique Tool with "Unknow"check box to make it dynamic. I want to suggest same logic for Summarize tool for making it Dynamic.
Please add Unknow like functionallity in Summarize Tool

Thanks,
Pratik Gujarathi 

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

Add a tool to the right-click menu that would place all currently selected tools into a container.

Hi all,

Just to give you some context, we have a customer that requires that for every Tableau workbook we deliver, we must add extra documentation, as for instance, for every calculated field, in which views it's used, and the formula of that field (yes, I know exactly what you're thinking right now :P)

So I decided to take a shortcut and do a workflow that extracts the basic (I mean VERY basic) data from the .twb file, so I can save a lot of time. 

 

Then I came with this idea...

 

Having a lot of Tableau's under the hood experts in this Community, It would be great to gather some of them and create a Tableau Documenter Macro.

 

I'd love tho hear what you think, and who's being able to help.

 

Can we get a more robust read.Alteryx function for mode="data.frame"?   If it is reading the stream as a data frame, can we have the option  stringsAsFactors = FALSE?

 

I am getting tripped up a lot because the code will execute in R Studio, but will get mysterious behaviours when it runs within the R Tool.   I am manually converting variables to character strings in my R Tool code which I don't have to do in R Studio.   However, I'm not a highly detail oriented R developer, so I will miss variable data type conversions and have spent a lot of time going down the wrong path.  Also, It makes it difficult to maintain two different scripts for the same routine.

 

I have started using the glimpse() function in R Tool code, to help catch some data conversions since it writes the output in the message log.  

 

Rob Campanell

When commenting an expression (with // or /* <> */), the popup box shouldn't appear as it's essentially free text.

 

Quite irritating when writing a block explanation of logic or something similar.

 

Luke

In environments with a large number of designers - we are now starting to bump into the issue of many people re-inventing the wheel - or editing a canvas in ways that overwrite each other.

 

Can we make an addition to the flow of work so that I can check an item out of the server, work on it, and check it back in?   that way, people can see that I'm working on it in the designer, my changes are being sent back, and when I commit my changes then people can work accordingly.

 

The other alternative would be code branches & trunks which would be more effective and more useful, but I'd guess this would be a tougher ask (unless Alteryx just embedded GIT under the covers)

I think that it would be useful to add two new Rename Modes to the Dynamic Rename tool -- here are the existing ones:


I would add:
Take Field Metadata from Right Input Metadata
Take Field Metadata from Right Input Rows

These would allow mass changes in data type, size and scale based on either an existing data table's metadata or an external metadata table.