Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The Python tool has been a tremendous boon in being able to add capability that is not yet available in the Alteryx platform.

It would make the Python Tool much more usable and useful if you can define the inputs explicitly rather than just relying on the good behaviour of both the user; and also the python code that reads the inbound data (Alteryx.Read('#1'))

This is not something that the Jupyter notebook code-interface may handle directly (because the Jupyter notebook has no priveledged knowledge of the workflow outside it); so this may be best handled by the container itself.

The key here is that if my python app requires 2 inputs - it should be possible to define these explicitly so that we can test; and also so that we can prevent errors and make this more bullet-proof.

The same would apply on the outbound nodes for the Python tool.

In the Test tool, the default is for the "don't report errors if there are other errors in the workflow" box to be checked. I think the default should be for it to be unchecked - it is very aggravating to think that you have found the problem with the workflow only for another to pop up.

In the dynamic input tool,

Where you “Read a List of Data Sources”, there should be a radio button below the “Action” field, to   

“INCLUDE FIELD OF DATA SOURCES”,

Then you’d have an output field with the isolated name from which the data was sourced. You wouldn't be required to "include full file path" then parse out the sheet the data came from. 

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

Hi Team,

Download tool is not updated their encryption policy. This stool still support SHA-1 but as per the organization requirements they want higher encryption mechanism. As in my case we are using SFTP connection and we want to download the data but my SFTP server using SHA-2 encryption due to which we not able to configure the workflow. 

Please upgrade the Download tool for better experience in alteryx.

Regards,

Kaustubh 

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

Hi!

So Dynamic Select is a wonderful tool - but in Formula mode it effectively acts as a filter. It drops all of the other fields which don't match the filter and they disappear - floating in the workflow ether, dreaming of the Join tool or other way they can be given XML life anew.  It would be super cool if in stead of just having those Fields which are true exit and continue into the workflow if the False fields could be launched back into the workflow space via a False anchor like on a filter tool....

Hypothetical situation - I'm looking to isolate some fields and convert them to a different format based upon name or other characteristic. I'm doing this not to jettison my data set, but to improve it. I run dynamic select and multi-field tool, and suddenly I'm scratching my head. How do I rejoin my workflow with my new and improved data easily? The most direct, albeit stylistically immature way is apparently to a a new_ to my newly created new type fields, join the old fields versus the datastream and drop both of the old fields in place of the New_ versions (soon to shed their prefixes in a dynamic rename)... It works, but it could be much easier.

Thanks!

Hi all,

As per the post here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Dynamic-input-not-respecting-data-sort/td... - there are situations where you need to use something like a dynamic input to query data, but need it to be brought back in the order that you specified on the input stream.

The Dynamic Input too sorts the input stream deliberately, to check for duplicate queries so that it doesn't waste time bringing back duplicate data.

It would be great if we can extend the dynamic input tool to allow users to specify that they wish the data unsorted, and that they are OK with the consequences of possibly running the same query twice.    Even if this is a setting that can only be set through XML, it would still be helpful.

Many thanks

Sean

The dynamic input tool allows some fairly complex transformations to the underlying query - but it's not always easy to debug this when it doesn't behave as expected.

Could we add the ability to inspect the resulting query (just like you can on the InDB queries using the dynamic output component?)

It is currently possible to see this in the results / messages pane, but I can't find a way to get this into a data-stream to persist it or manipulate it.

It would be incredible helpful if Alteryx canvases auto-populated some metadata about each canvas to track its origination and updates.

The metadata fields I'm specifically thinking about are:

-Author

-Date Created

-Date Last Updated

Similar to how there is a functionality to use pip through the ayxinstallPackages, there needs to be a way to upgrade python itself. There are important packages such as keras that have errors in Python 3.6 that are not present when used with 3.7 so it should really be up to the user as to which python package to use. Another solution could also be to allow the user to point to their own local installation of Python so that the user can maintain consistency between their own local site-packages and the one that Alteryx has.

 The Download tool is so much more than Downloads. Think about the situation where you are using the Download tool to upload invoices and try explaining that to co-workers. "Oh yes - I'm going to implement the API to upload the invoices using the Alteryx download tool..." Could we call it the Curl tool or something?

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.

When dealing with very large tables (100M rows plus), it's not always practical to bring the entire table back to the designer to profile and understand the data.

It would be very useful if the power of the field summary tool (frequency analysis; evaluating % nulls; min & max values; length of strings; evaluating if the type is appropriate or could be compressed; whether there is whitespace before or after) could be brought to large DB tables without having to bring the whole table back to the client.

Given that each of these profiling tasks can be done as a discrete SQL query; I would think that this would be MASSIVELY faster than doing this client-side; but it would be a bit of a pain to write this tool.

If there is interest in this - I'm more than happy to work with the Alteryx team to look at putting together an initial mockup.

Cheers

Sean

It would be really great to have Dynamic Detour tool where you could specify the detour direction as an input to the tool rather than an imbedded control.

This would allow workflow branching.

Using a filter for this passes a dataset with no rows in it which causes dynamic in-db or dynamic input tools to error.

A lot of popular machine learning systems use a computer's GPU to speed up some of the math to a huge degree. The header on this article on Medium shows a 15x difference from a high-end CPU vs a high-end GPU. It could also create an improvement in the spatial tools. Perhaps Alteryx should add this functionality in order to speed up these tools, which I can imagine are currently some of the slowest.

It would be nice to have a visual cue for a detour tool's configuration. This is especially the case when testing with several detour tools in a workflow - see the cleanse.yxmc screenshot below. I added an annotation to one of the detour tools as a possible solution.

Any of these options that would save the additional click would be appreciated.

• Default annotation shows "Detour left" or "Detour right"
• Detour outgoing wire highlighted (mentioned in Detour dashing)
• Detour direction outgoing anchor that is NOT used is grayed out
• Detour direction outgoing wire that in NOT used is grayed out
• Detour tool has a left/right toggle
• Detour tool changes color when set to detour right

Personally, I prefer that the outgoing anchor and outgoing wire not in use be grayed out. But even the default annotation stating the direction would be helpful.

Does anyone else have a preference or other ideas on the visual cues?

My company does installs through a machine with admin rights, but the end user does not actually have admin rights to the laptop. Therefore, when attempting to add modules into the Developer tool for python - pip install fails. The failure is due to the install being in program files where a non-admin is unable to write, the normal workaround is also not possible since the version used is admin and not non-admi designer.

Can the tool be more flexible from the get go. As the only way out of this is to go through articles regarding SDK and creating custom requirements txt files. My goal was just to be able to use Python with Alteryx and add on modules as I need. Very cool updates in 3.5 I'm using but thought this conundrum might happen to others in same situation. Admin install with non-admin rights. Thanks.