Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi everyone,

Add two additional features to a directory tool. Something like this:

Use cases:

1. Since it is not possible to use a folder browse on the Gallery, this could help a basic user create a list of possible folders to select from with the help of a drop-down

2. Directory analysis for cleaning purposes - currently, if you want to get a list of the folders with Alteryx, it takes forever for big file servers since Alteryx is mapping all the files

Both are achievable today through regex or a bat script.

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

Using File Browse on Excel files first of all is inconsistent between running the Analytical App in the Designer and in the Gallery:

• In the Designer, the user is not being asked which Excel workflow shall be selected.
• In the Gallery, the user is always asked which Excel workflow shall be selected.

Depending on the use case, both behaviours can be the right one:

• To load a specific Excel file worksheet, the dialog for workflow selection is appropriate.
• When working with the entire Excel file (copying, getting the list of worksheets, etc.), the dialog is not helpful.

Thus, my idea is as follows:

• Add a checkbox to the File Browse tool which determines whether the worksheet selection dialog shall be opened (and the output will be <filename>.<ext>|<worksheet>) or not (and the output will be <filename>.<ext>) in case of Excel file selected.
• Make behaviour consistent in Alteryx Designer and Gallery.

Enhancement request for the option to Encrypt ODBC credentials instead of just hashing them

For companies that have migrated to OneDrive/Teams for data storage, employees need to be able to dynamically input and output data within their workflows in order to schedule a workflow on Alteryx Server and avoid building batch MACROs.

With many organizations migrating to OneDrive, a Dynamic Input/Output tool for OneDrive and SharePoint is needed.

• The existing Directory and Dynamic Input tools only work with UNC path and cannot be leveraged for OneDrive or SharePoint.
• The existing OneDrive and SharePoint tools do not have a dynamic input or output component to them.
• Users have to build work arounds and custom MACROS for a common problem/challenge.
  • Some users have identified a work around for the dynamic input (See Community Post)
• Users have to map the OneDrive folders to their machine (and server if published to the Gallery)
  • This option generates a lot of maintenance, especially on Server, to free up space consumed by the local version when outputting the data.

The enhancement should have the following components:

OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool

• Ability to read either one folder with the option to include/exclude subfolders within OneDrive
• Ability to retrieve Creation Date
• Ability to retrieve Last Modified Date
• Ability to identify file type (e.g. .xlsx) 
• Ability to read Author
• Ability to read last modified by
• Ability to generate the specific web path for the files

OneDrive/SharePoint Dynamic Input Tool

• Receive the input from the OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool and retrieve the data.

Dynamic OneDrive/SharePoint Output Tool

• Dynamically write the output from the workflow to a specific directory individual files in the same location
• Dynamically write the output to multiple tabs on the same file within the directory.
• Dynamically write the output to a new folder within the directory

Alteryx is not able to read generated Excel sheets which have the prefix "x:" within it's XML tags.  Often this occurs when an xlsx file is created from a bot or rpa process.  Example file attached.

My team always run into the issue that two people running two workflow at the same but those workflow using the same excel flat file, then it clash into each other. 

I want Alteryx to develop a feature to allow read only capability to a input excel, that way two workflow use the same input file will not clash into each other, it's very good for running workflow in parallel, this way really increase our efficiency. 

I know this feature is not easy to achieve, we have had chat with Alteryx team before. 

I am opening to alternative solution to this problem. 

Thanks! 

My Team Heavily rely on Dremio. 

It would be great for Alteryx team to add Dremio as a dedicated data source Input for Alteryx, it would be so much easier for us to configure and run things in the future. 

Thanks! 

A new type of Browse tool which can dynamically be renamed through a field could be helpful for the cases where Analytic Apps display output results in Browse tabs. It could both help create the name of the Browse tab dynamically and create multiple Browse tabs automatically.

Being able to specify a name for the FileName field in the Input Tool configuration would be helpful for cases where a field named FileName is already present in the input data and has a different purpose than the newly added FileName field. Instead of having to use Field Info and other tools to rename the last field into something else (i.e. AYX_FileName), this would be an easier approach.

Hello all,

As of now, you have two very distinct kinds of connection :

-in memory alias

-in database alias

It happens than every single time I use a in-database alias I have to create the same for in memory since some operations cannot be realized in in-database (such as pre-sql or interface tools)

What does that mean for us :

-more complex settings operations/training/tests

-unefficient worflows that have to deal with two kinds of alias.

What I propose :
-a single "connection alias", that can be used either for in-db either for in-memory,

-one place to configure

-the in-db or in-memory being dependant on the tools you use

Best regards,

Simon

User should get an Alert that file is open when using Input Tool.  Currently Alteryx just clocks when attempting to use an open file in an Input Tool.  

From what I can tell using ProcMon, presently when using the Directory tool to list files (including subdirectories) the Alteryx Engine runs a single threaded process.

When you're trying to find files by checking recursively in large network paths, this can take hours to run.

It would be great if the tools would split up lists of directories (maybe by getting two or three levels down first) and then run each of those recursive paths in parallel. 

While it is possible to do this using a custom Python or cmd->PS command, it would be great if this could just be a native part of the application.

In the Input tool, I rely heavily on the recent connection history list. As soon as a file falls off of this list, it takes me a while to recall where it's saved and navigate to the file I'm wanting to use. It would be great to have a feature that would allow users to set their favorite connections/files so that they remain at the top of the connection history list for easy access.

I was working on the file and there are multiple sheets need to be pulled from one excel file. I was not sure how we can give one source of information and pull multiple sheet from one source as per the requirement. So wanted to submit this idea to create a toll which can pull any sheet(s) from one input tool as per requirement.

Hello everybody,

I'm seeing an increased usage of geojson and kmz files across many popolar open data.

Would it be possible to add them to the supported Alteryx input formats?

Thanks!

Very beneficial will be adding extra row in Input tool (while we importing CSV) where we can define escape character. This functionality will help to avoid errors that currently occur when importing such files.

Right now, you can highlight 1 output tool, right click, convert to input tool.  Im doing that to each of 30 outputs in 1 workflow as part of splitting a workflow that has too much spatial processing. Would be cool to highlight all of the outputs and convert all at once to save the clicker finger.  Keep it rocking Alteryx!

In a similar vein to the forthcoming enhancement of being able to disable a specific output tool, my idea is to have the inverse where you can globally disable all outputs and then enable specific ones only. This should help reduce the number of clicks required/avoid workarounds using containers to obtain this functionality and allow users to be very specific in which outputs run and don't run as required.

Using the Output tool to send data to a formatted spreadsheet apparently doesn't preserve formatting if the entire column is formatted.  I'd love this changed to keep the formatting when its applied to an entire column.  See this thread in Designer Discussions.