Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi there,

 

When creating a database connection - Alteryx's default behaviour is to create an ODBC DSN-linked connection.

 

However DSN-linked connections do not work on a large server env - because this would require administrators to create these DSNs on every worker node and on every disaster recovery node, and update them all every time a canvas changes.

they are also not fully safe becuase part of the configuration of your canvas is held in the DSN - and so you cannot just rely on the code that's under version control.

 

So:

Could we add a feature to Alteryx Designer that allows a user to expand a DSN into a fully-declared conneciton string?

In other words - if the connection string is listed as 

- odbc:DSN=DSNSnowFlakeTest;UID=Username;PWD=__EncPwd1__|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Then offer the user the ability to expand this out by interrogating the ODBC Connection manager to instead have the fully described connection string like this:
odbc:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=Username;pwd=__EncPwd1__;authenticator=Snowflake;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=xnb27844.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user

 

NOTE: This is exactly what users need to do manually today anyway to get to a DSN-less conneciton string - they have to craete a file DSN to figure out all the attributes (by opening it up in Notepad) and then paste these into the connection string manually.

 

Thanks all 

Sean

 

 

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).

I use a mouse which has a horizontal scroll wheel. This allows me to quickly traverse the columns of excel documents, webpages, etc.

 

This interaction is not available in Alteryx Designer and when working with wide data previews it would improve my UX drastically. 

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

Every time I add a tool container I default the Margin to "none." Could you make a default selection part of user settings? Thank you.

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

I would really love to have a tool "Dynamic change type" or "Dynamic re-type" which is used just as "Dynamic Rename".

 

• "Take Type from First Row of Data": By definition, all columns are of a string type initially. Sets the type of the column according to the string in the first row of data.
  

  Col 1	Col 2	Col 3	Col 4
  Double	Int32	V_String	Date
  123.456	17	Hello	2023-10-30
  3.4e17	123	Bye	2024-01-01

• "Take Type from Right Input Metadata": Changes the types of the left input table to the ones by right input.
• "Take Type from Right Input Rows": Changes the types based on a table with columns "Name" and "New Type".
  

  Name	New Type
  Col 1	Double
  Col 2	Int32
  Col 3	V_String
  Col 4	Date

The Dynamic Input will not accept inputs with different record layouts.  The "brute force" solution is to use a standard Input tool for each file separately and then combine them with a Union Tool.  The Union Tool accepts files with different record layouts and issues warnings.  Please enhance the Dynamic Input tool (or, perhaps, add a new tool) that combines the Dynamic Input functionality with a more laid-back, inclusive Union tool approach.  Thank you.

Please add support for windows authentication to the download tool.  I know there's a workaround but that involves using curl and the run command tool.  The run command tool is awful and should be avoided at all costs, so please improve the download tool so I can use internal APIs.

A cahce tool would allow a user to temporarily store a snapshot of inline data from previous run of the module.

Imagine a browse tool that was inline as opposed to a terminus tool (input and output). Now allow that browse tool to persist its data after a run of the module. When an option on that tool was activated, it would block all of the dependent tools upstream from it and instead send its cached data downstream.

The reason I think this would be a useful tool is that I often come to the end of creating a module when I'm working on the Reporting tools. I run multiple times to see the changes I've made. When the module has a lot of incoming data and complex data transformations, it can take a long time just to get to the point where the data gets to the reporting tools. This cache tool would eliminate that wait.

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

How about a quick method of disabling a container.

 

Current state - Click on the container, pan the mouse all the way over to the tiny checkbox target in the configuration pane and click disable.

Future state - little icon by the rollup icon that can be clicked to disable/enable, differentiated by perhaps a color change of the minimized pane perhaps?

 

I know what you're thinking, "talk about lazy, he's whining about moving the mouse (which his hand was already on) 2 cm along his desktop and clicking"... but still what an easy usability win and one less click to do a task I find myself repeating frequently.

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

 

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.

When I proceed with this command in a python tool:

 

from ayx import Package

Package.installPackages(package='pandas',install_type='install --upgrade')

 

in Alteryx it only updates to 0.25, but the Latest version is 1.1.2.

 

When I would like to upgrade from the Python side i get the following:

ERROR: ayx 1.0.54 has requirement pandas<0.25.0,>=0.24.2, but you'll have pandas 1.1.2 which is incompatible.

 

Can you please make sure we can upgrade to the latest version of pandas without any compatibility issue?

 

This is important because of json_normalize. Really useful tool, available from pandas 1.0.3!

I would to suggest to add a configuration in the Block Until Done tool, which allow the user to prioritize the release of a data stream through multiple Block Until Done tools in the same module. 

 

In the example below, the objective is to update multiple sheets in a single Excel workbook. Each sheet is a different data stream, that cannot be unioned together, therefore making the filtering of a single stream feeding into multiple Block Until Done from that filter solution impossible.

 

What I would like to be able to do is have a configuration, where Block Until Done #2 will not allow the data stream to pass through until Block Until Done #1 is complete, Then Block Until Done #3 will not pass through the data stream until Block Until Done #2 is complete, and so forth through the all the Block Until Done instances. 

 

 

Hello Dev Gurus - 

 

The message tool is nice, but anything you want to learn about what is happening is problematic because the messages you are writing to try to understand your workflow are lost in a sea of other messages.  This is especially problematic when you are trying to understand what is happening within a macro and you enable 'show all macro messages' in the runtime options.  

 

That being said, what would really help is for messages created with the message tool to have a tag as a user created message.  Then, at message evaluation time, you get all errors / all conversion warnings / all warnings / all user defined messages.  In this way, when you write an iterative macro and are giving yourself the state of the data on a run by run basis, you can just goto a panel that shows you just your messages, and not the entire syslog which is like drinking out of a fire hose. 

 

Thank you for attending my ted talk regarding Message Tool Improvements.

 

 

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

I love the dynamic rename tool because quite often my headers are in the first row of data in a text file (or sometimes, Excel!).

 

However, whenever I open a workflow, I have to run the workflow first in order to make the rest of the workflow aware of the field names that I've mapped in the dynamic rename tool, and to clear out missing fields from downstream tools. When a workflow takes a while to run, this is a cumbersome step.

 

Alteryx Designer should be aware of the field names downstream from the dynamic rename tool, and make them available in the workflow for use downstream as soon as they are added (or when the workflow is initially opened without having been run first).