Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

It would be great to have the below functionality in Alteryx.

A workflow is built in Alteryx and button click in Alteryx can be used to generate SQL code that can be ran on a specific database platform, such as SQL Server to run external editors such as SQL Server Management Studio. Thanks. 

Hi team,

There are some things that we would like to do with the download tool that currently are not possible:

1. use client side certificates to sign requests. This is a requirement for us in a project where we are interacting with the API of our customer's financial system. They provide us with a certificate and it is used to sign our requests, along with other authentication.Currently we have to use the external command tool to execute a powershell script using invoke-restmethod to do this interaction. I would much prefer to not have more tools in the chain.

Client certificates are described in the TLS 1.0 specification: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2246 (page 43), and I believe them to be supported by cURL.

2. Multipart form-data. We have a number of workflows where we need to send multipart form data as part of a POST request. As this is not supported by the Download Tool, we have again used the external command tool to execute invoke-restmethod or invoke-webrequest in powershell. I don't know if modification of the Download Tool would be the best thing here, vs having either a dedicated tool for multipart form data, or having an HTTP POST specific tool that was able to handle multipart form data. What I envisage is something like the formula tool, with the ability to add an arbitrary number of cells, where we could use formula to either directly output a value from a column, synthesise a new value, or directly enter a static value). The tool would then compose this with boundaries between the parts, and calculate the content-size to add to the http request.

Problem:

Dynamic Input tool depends on a template file to co-relate the input data before processing it. Mismatch in the schema throws an error, causing a delay in troubleshooting.  

Solution:

It would be great if the users got an enhancement in this Tool, wherein they could Input Text or Edit Text without any template file. (Similar to a Text Editor in Macro Input Tool)

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

Right now, if the dynamic input tool skips a file (which it often does!) it just appears as a warning and continues processing. Whilst this is still useful to continue processing, could it be built as an option in the tool to select a 'error if files are skipped'? 

Right now it is either easy to miss this is happening, or in production / on server you may want this process to be stopped.

Thanks,

Andy 

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

The dynamic input tool is useful for bringing in multiple files / tabs, but quickly stops being fit for purpose if schemas / fields differ even slightly. The common solution is to then use a dynamic input tool inside a batch macro and set this macro to 'Auto Configure by Name', so that it waits for all files to be run and then can output knowing what it has received. 

It's a pain to create these batch macros for relatively straightforward and regular processes - would it be possible to have this 'Auto Configure by Name' as an option directly in the dynamic input tool, relieving the need for a batch macro? 

Thanks,

Andy 

With the new intelligence suite there is a much higher use of blob files and we would like to be able to input them as a regular input instead of having to use non- standard tools like Image, report text or a combination of directory/blob or input/download to pull in images, etc. I would like to see the standard input tool capable of bringing in blob files as well.

Blob InputImage InputText Input

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

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

Figuring out who is using custom macros and/or governing the macroverse is not an easy task currently.  

I have started shipping Alteryx logs to Splunk to see what could be learned.  One thing that I would love to be able to do is understand which workflows are using a particular macro, or any custom macros for that matter.  As it stands right now, I do not believe there is a simple way to do this by parsing the log entries.  If, instead of just saying 'Tool Id 420', it said 'Tool Id 420 [Macro Name]' that would be very helpful.  And it would be even *better* if the logging could flag out of the box macros vs custom macros.  You could have a system level setting to include/exclude macro names.  

Thanks for listening.

brian 

When we try to call external web site from Alteryx Designer Download tool, our company proxy server failed the authentication because Alteryx uses the basic login/password authentication.  This has happened to multiple applications that need to interact with external partners.  Will like to request an enhancement to enable Alteryx to authenticate using Kerberos or NTLM.

Because Alteryx  Designer is using basic authentication (not our standards like Kereberos and NTLM), Alteryx Designer failed to pass our proxy authentication.  Our network security support decide we will use user agent to identify the request is coming from Alteryx Designer and let the authentication thru.  Then we realize Alteryx Designer also does not set the user agent for the HTTPS request.  We are requesting Alteryx set the user agent value for the download tool https request,

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

While Alteryx allows for a proxy username and password in the settings, these are not passed properly to an NTLM proxy. Support for NTLM authentication would be incredibly useful for a number of corporations who utilize this firewall setup.

We currently have to either download via Python or cURL through batch commands called by Alteryx. Since Alteryx uses a cURL back-end, this should be a fairly simple addition to the existing download tool by allowing a selection of proxy server, port, and authentication method in addition to the proxy username and password. This could be done either in the tool itself or in User Settings.

Using the download tool is great and easy to use. However, if there was a connection problem with a request the workflow errors out. Having an option to not error out, ability to skip failed records, and retrying records that failed would be A LIFE CHANGER. Currently I have been using a Python tool to create multi-threaded requests and is proven to be time consuming.

Passing Access and Secret Keys to connect to AWS S3 poses a security risk. It would be great if the Amazon Redshift Bulk Connection tool was enhanced to include an authentication option to use a Native IM group instead of keys.

The Alteryx.Flexnetoperations.com  license management site needs major work.

On the View Licenses page it shows all licenses going back several years. A basic need is to show only licenses which haven't expired, but that is not an option.You cannot even sort on the expiration column while you can sort on most others columns.

The most simple need is to see a list of my current active license users - but I do't see a way to do that.

I tried an "Advanced Search" and chose  expiration date after 2019-10-29 and none of my licenses which expire in 2020 appear - I get a blank list.

Similarly on the administer machines page you cannot filter to hide expired licenses or even on the licenses column (which doesn't sort either).

The help link on the page doesn't bring you to help specific to that page but the general activation help front page. After several clicks I found this page:

https://help.alteryx.com/licensing/current/Administer/AdministerMachines.htm?tocpath=Administer%7C__...

But  the help is incomplete (doesn't list Machine types or the difference between Active and Inactive)

Also, there is no export capability - copy and pasting into Excel is a formatting headache as it brings in check-boxes.

Lots of room for improvement here.

Cheers,

Bob

P.S. I understand that work is being done on this, but an ETA would be greatly appreciated.

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

Can we have some support monitoring information added to the summary of each tool during/after a workflows run so we can determine how much memory is being used per component and per workflow run.  Not just what is the default minimum.  This will help to identify where in our workflow we can improve and/or help us by adjusting the default memory usage for sort/join tools on a workflow basis.

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.