Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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.

I love using containers, but depending on how I am moving around the workflows or trackpad (when traveling) I find it hard to navigate quickly getting a container on the canvas between either add a container from the tool palette or having to highlight the tools and right-click for menu navigation to add the container. This ranks up there with the hotkeys for aligning the tools which make for quick work of making the workflow look organized and presentable. 

I often search for a tool on the canvas using control find and the tool number. If the tool is already in the visible pane, Alteryx highlights the tool with a faint dotted box. The problem is that I often have hundreds of tools that are visible and I have to constantly hunt around the canvas to locate the highlighted tool. Please update the control find settings so that when you use control find, Alteryx centers the current view on that exact tool. That way your eye can scan the middle of the canvas and locate the tool every time without this wasted effort searching for the tool outline. 

Can we set our own Comment tool default preferences? - For me I want to set the text alignment to be "Center" by default, currently it's always "TopCenter" when I open it.

Having the open / close ( expand / collapse ) button for the tool container in lhe top right corner implies that everytime a big container is expanded, to close it the user has to move the pointer to its new position, which sometimes mean scrolling / zooming out and then zooming in to locate it.

I suggest to locate that button in the top left corner by the side of the enable/disable switch or even a double click mechanism for open/close, which would enable to user to open, see what is inside the container, and close it without moving the mouse to locate the new location of the button.

Using the Comment tool: When I paste in text that includes a Tab, the Comment Configuration on the left correctly recognizes the Tab character and displays the text correctly.  Inside the Comment box on the canvas, the Tab character is not recognized and text is displayed without any spacing.

I don't think the Comment tool allows us to "type" a Tab character.

Comment configuration box:

Field1     Field2

Comment box on the canvas:

Field1Field2

Request:

1) Please fix the text display inside the Comment on the canvas to correctly display Tab characters, when text is pasted in

2) Please allow us to "type" a Tab character in the Comment tool.  CTRL+Tab switches the canvas display to another Alteryx tab, ALT+TAB switches to another running Windows program.  Count you use Shift+Tab to allow us to type a Tab character?

Issue

Im troubleshooting a workflow with around 4,400 tools, breaking into separate workflows, and leveraging the crew macros to run the workflow sequence.  Well- I changed a few file names and have an interesting disaster where I need to go tool by tool to verify everything is properly configured.  

Solution

I used tool containers to group and label sections of tools to be organized, but it was becoming difficult to navigate the ocean of tool clusters.  So- I used blank comment boxes in the tool containers.  If everything works in the container, I made the comment box green.  If something is broken, I made it red.  From there, I made all of the red comment boxes green to make sure everything was diligently reviewed.  

New Cool Idea

Troubleshooting mode- make it easy to flip a lighthouse switch on the tool containers.  Colors are great for categories, but this makes it easy to focus or highlight containers with maybe a cool retro looking switch. 

Peace, Love, and 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

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 🙂

Hi,

Here is an idea I think it would help with documenting any process using the container tool. Currently, with each of the tool, user can use the default annotation or add his or her own annotation to help explaining each step in a process. The annotation on each tool can be set to be hidden (never show) when there are high number of tools are present.  This is when the container tool can be used to organized tools. This idea is similar in scope with the two ideas below but I want to push it a little further beyond the current available features described in https://help.alteryx.com/2019.3/ToolContainer.htm

The idea is to have the container tool summarize all the annotations from tools within a container as its own.  This way, you will have the full documentation of the combined process within the container, and container of containers.  This feature can either be the option to view or to export from the pop up window. 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/A-profile-function-for-Tool-Containers/idi-p...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Combine-the-Container-and-Comment-Tools/idi-...

*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

It would be great if it were easier to add a comment tool to the canvas. As I think about what my workflows are lacking, it's good documentation. My biggest hurdle...is myself. I am simply too lazy to stop what I'm doing and add comment tools. What if you could either 1) double click on the canvas and it brings in a comment tool where I can start writing comments or 2) add a Keyboard short cut in order to add a comment tool (control + shift + C perhaps)? Either of these would help me build better documented workflows.

The add to / remove from container behavior needs to be modified.  I have frequently had the application completely rearrange my workflow because of it. I was just deleting a handful of closed containers when the application removed all my tools from their individual containers and wrapped everything in one big container completely screwing up my entire workflow.  This happens a lot.  Now I have to reorganize the workflow.  This is one of my biggest frustrations with the application.

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...

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.

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. 

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

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).