Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi there,

the Snowflake documentation only refers to connection strings which use a DSN such as this page Snowflake | Alteryx Help which refers to the connection string as odbc:DSN=Simba_Snowflake_JWT;UID=user;PRIV_KEY_FILE=G:\AlteryxDataConnectorsTeam\OAuth project\PEMkey\rsa_key.p8;PRIV_KEY_FILE_PWD=__EncPwd1__;JWT_TIMEOUT=120

However - for canvasses which need to be productionized on Alteryx Server - it is critical to use dsn-less connection strings so that the canvasses can be deployed and run on any worker node without having to set up DSNs on every worker node.

A DSN-less connection string looks like this: 

ODBC:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=UserName;pwd=Password;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=server.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Please could you consider making an update to the help texts to provide and describe a DSN-free connection string as well as the DSN driven connections?

Many thanks

Sean

I usually use the comment tool by:

- dragging it on to the canvas and then

- Repositioning and expanding it to cover the tools I'd like to comment on.

What if I could select the tools I wanted to comment on and then use a key combination or double click so that the comment tool surrounds these tools for me. 

Note: Additional enhancement would be to anchor the comment to the tools selected but I see that this was dropped for consideration: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Anchoring-comment-boxes-to-tools/idi...

When documentin alteryx screen I sometimes hit printscreen and need to paste important matters to Comment tool...

But there is no paste from clipboard 😞

I suggest adding a minor icon that enables not only reading from png but pasting a screen or other image copied directly from memory...

For I need the following setting so I printscreen and capture as is;

Then put that into a PNG or JPG file using paint. And then prepare a comment box with that image in the background...

When we have too many steps in a workflow, it is mandatory to use container to represent better business flow. It can collapse many steps to represent one business flow.

But, when we open collapsed tool container, workflow canvas not resizing to give space for tool container, it overlap on existing tools.

It is better to resize workflow canvas when we collapse or resize tool containers. 

When building a workflow with testing tools, you tend to want to be able to put these in container and then minimise this to improve readability of the workflow.

For example instead of this:

You might want to minimise the error checks like this:

However when running apart from reading through the results window, there is no immediate indicator that there is a tool inside the container that has errored:

So the feature enhancement request is to add in an exclamation marker to show the user that a tool inside has an error and you can then easily open it up and investigate further.

Add the option to flip comment boxes, so they can be read down-up, instead of left-right... (see below in red, how it looks and how it could be). 

Support for Markdown in Comment Tool

Allows for better formatting of comment and possibly include images and hyperlinks.

This will be great for workflow documentation.

Currently, the comment box can only be formatted as a whole and not on individual text.

So while working through a workflow that takes up a bunch of canvas space, I find myself jumping between two points, one at the beginning and one at the end. Every time I need to jump to the other point, I have to zoom out and scroll over and down and then zoom back in. 

What if there was a tool that you could drop on the canvas as a "point of Interest" that if you select it (perhaps) on some other part of the interface, takes you right to that spot in the workflow. I know that currently you can look up tools and it will take you to the location of the tool, but it can be difficult when you are jumping around 4 or 5 different spots to remember which tool number is which.

I would use this all the time!

Just a thought

We are working on building out training content in a story mode and would like to have short snippets playing in a loop for people to see embedded in the workflow. Currently you can add a .gif to a comment background and it will provide a still image on the worklfow itself but functions as a gif in the configuration display. The interesting part is when you are running the workflow the .gif works and then it pauses it when the workflow has completed!

Example GifGif upload in comment and playing in the configuration windowGif in workflow when uploadedGif after workflow run

This should be a simple addition:

In the same way that many default tools automatically generate annotations when they are dropped into the workflow, or their configurations are modified, there should be a way to add custom annotations for custom made macros. 

Thanks!

Hi - Please delete this if it perhaps exists already in a newer version.  (I am on 2022.1 and don't see this functionality.) 

I would love to see the ability to right click a tool that isn't in a container and be able to add it to an existing container.  Currently I drag it over and drop it into the container then move it back to where it was.  Inevitably I misalign the tools and spend time getting it linear again. It would be cool if based upon the choice made in the right click, it would bring the assigned container around the tool in its existing location.

OR

Perhaps within the config of the container you could choose tool #s to add to the container?

Anyways this isn't a huge need but it would be nice to see that additional functionality for people that spend a disproportionate amount of time aligning and distributing their tools HORIZONTALLY.  (Nobody cares about the people that do vertical workflows.)

I would like to see a "tool" that you can use as an off-screen connection (pair) between data anchors.  Currently, you can create "wireless" connections between anchors.  This essentially helps, but isn't friendly if you add/modify contents between points A & B.  It also doesn't aid in documentation of the workflow.

If by comparison, I put a connection tool on at point A it would be great to see it annotate itself with the incoming Tool ID and when I connect it to the paired point B, it would similarly explain the incoming tool id onto that point too.

I currently use a SELECT tool to explain visually that this data is being used elsewhere.  I create a wireless connection to the receiving data (could be multiple) and document the source.  The performance of the workflow may be slowed by these select tools.

I'm very open to other ideas or reformats of this proposal.  I don't think that it is going to change the world, but it would help me with my OCD.

Cheers,

Mark

Speed up canvas edits - The Create/Remove Space Tool

Usually day two of working with a canvas I realize that I have been a fool, and I come up with a significantly more elegant or simple solution.  Moving all of the containers or tools to fit my slick new container is cumbersome and slow.  I've created a GIF of a feature several tools have which allows the user to easily move and arrange items on the canvas.

Open source tool used in demo: bpmnJs

When looking at a complex canvas - my first instinct is to group this into sub-modules (e.g. "/load Data"; "clean data") to make this simpler to understand.

We mostly do this through the use of Containers.

However - it would be more useful if you could then take an entire container and convert this to a macro.    This would be very similar to the way that Visual Studio allows you to take a block of code and convert it to a sub-procedure.

This would be a super-quick way to allow people to make canvasses more maintainable and easier to understand and test!

Thank you 

Sean

Often times when I'm building a workflow I categorize and bucket my tools into different containers.

It would be awesome if I could copy and paste the format of one container tool to another - that is the color, the size (e.g. none, small, large, etc.). I don't think the title needs to be copied, but if that was included in the feature, well that would be great!

Thanks for the awesomeness you provide!

J

Maybe they get bigger when you hover, so its easier to grab? Thanks 🙂

*This is an idea from @sayuri from the Portuguese Community*

• Create a tool to document the workflow process, including exporting a file/table that shows the connections from all tools and their main configurations in the order the workflow is run

I really like the Tool Container. I also really like to have neat and tidy modules. Sometimes though, the two are in conflict because the Tool Container automatically sizes itself so I end up playing around with tool placement to get my containers the same.

Could you please add the option to make the Tool Container a sizeable object (like the Explorer Box) or give width and height value boxes in the tool properties?

Today I have some workflows which have certain steps that occur after files are output.  I have these set up inside of Tool Containers so that I can easily enable/disable them as I am working if I do not want to produce output for this particular run.  However, sometimes if I need to troubleshoot on a workflow that I haven't worked on for awhile, I can neglect to disable these, which can cause errors.  This is usually harmless, but annoying.

Having two more options on Tool Containers could really help to improve this!

Disable When Browse Tools Disabled would be useful for any analysis/debugging steps that I only want to run when I am browsing to find data, but should not run otherwise.

Disable When Output Disabled would be really useful to ensure that these tools are turned off alongside the "Disable all tools that write output" option in Workflow-Configuration-Runtime.

This would save me a lot of unnecessary error messages and moments of panic, and would make these types of workflows easier for other users to debug without extensive notes.