Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The Find Tool (View>Find or Ctrl+F) does a great job of finding text in a workflow.  The window displayed by the Find Tool includes each tool # and the Name from each tool's Annotation tab.

Please consider displaying this additional data in the window of the Find Tool:

- Annotation text for tools

- Caption for containers  (like the right-click Zoom functionality has)

Since Containers don't have a "Name" field like tools do, displaying the Caption for a container would be helpful.

See this thread: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Change-Serch-Results/m-p/388604

We were browsing the Alteryx Gallery recently and thought it would be great if the Alteryx Gallery was in Connect, or more like Connect - with certified macros/workflows and voting ability, making it easier to find the most popular macros and how many people are using them.

PS - I didn't see either Gallery or Connect available as labels 😕

Hi,

I did do some searching on this matter but I couldn't find a solution to the issue I was having. I made a Analytic App that the user can select columns from a spreadsheet with 140+ columns. This app looks at the available columns and dynamically updates the list box every time it is run.  I wanted users to use the built in Save Selection they don't have to check each box with the columns they want every time they run it. However I seem to have found an issue with the Save Selection option when the Header in the source has a comma in it e.g. "Surname, First Name".

As the saved YXWV file seems to save the selection in a comma delimited way but without " " around the headers. So as you can see in my example below when you try and load this again Alteryx appears unable to parse the values as it thinks "Surname" and "First Name"  are separate values/fields and not "Surname, First Name" and doesn't provide an error when it fails to load the selection.

Last Name=False,First Name=False,Middle Name=False,Surname, First Name=False,

So perhaps the Save Selection when writing the file can put string quotes round the values to deal with special characters in the Selections for the List Box. I have made a work around and removed special characters from the header in my source data but its not really ideal.
Thanks,
Mark

Hello!

There this very handy functionality in Alteryx that when you drag files from a Windows explorer onto the Canvas, the tools automatically convert to Input Tools. When making Alteryx smaller using this  - button, the canvas gets minimalized to nothing. This means I cannot drag files onto the canvas. The suggestion is to always keep a little bit of canvas space here to drop files onto. Just another small QoL issue. 

Cheers,

Marco 

In the Table/Query edit window, the datatable "frame" needs to do a better job of vertically autosizing to the window - it overruns the vertical space and then, if you have a lot of fields in your table and you want to see and/or select the fields in the table, you have to adjust the parent window's scrollbar to see the fields.  I think it would be better to shrink the table's window and use the table window's scrollbar because the table fields update as you scroll so it's easier to follow.

Hi Alteryx, 

I am not sure if there already is an easy solution to sharing workflows between people using different language settings in Alteryx, so here goes.

My colleague is using the German version of Alteryx and both I and our server is using the English version of Alteryx. When he shares a workflow with interface tools, all connection strings disappear. This is due to the references in the script behind Alteryx are different. So in the German version, the connection is supposed to connect to a tool called "Aktion", but for the English version it needs to connect to a tool called "Action". The same example with "Frage" and "Question". It is funnily enough only an issue if at least one of the connection tools is an Interface tool. If it is not Interface tools, then the original connection remains as if it auto-detects and changes the language.
The solution as is now is opening the Alteryx flow with a text editor and search for the German word, e.g. "Frage" and replace it with "Question". After saving and opening with Alteryx again, it works. However, we would like to avoid this little detour into the text editor. So, if it is possible for Alteryx to auto-detect and adjust the language for Interface tools as well or if it is possible to adjust the settings regarding language for a specific flow/macro, then this would be great. 

Please let me know if another solution is already available. 

Best regards, 

Jeanette

The "Open Example" feature that has been implemented for many tools helps new users quickly learn how to exploit Alteryx.  I would like to see Alteryx make further investments in this area and in particular I would like to see enhanced and organized documentation for functions with more and better examples.  I would encourage Alteryx to engage its ACE community and the other advanced users who are active in the Community to contribute to this effort. 

When you have a complex workflow and you need to identify what happens to a specific field throughout a LONG workflow, it would be great to have the paths, connections, etc highlighted.  

If the field is modified in a tool (formula for instance), the tool gets highlighted in orange.  If it just passes through a tool, it is highlighted in green and a tool where it gets dropped is colored red.

This will help in identifying which tools modify a field of interest as well as identify tools which "deselect" a field and cause it drop out.   I spend a lot of time tweaking workflows developed by other analysts, so this will greatly speed up troubleshooting and assessment time. 

As far as I know, in the current version (Jan 2018) of Designer the presentation settings for the canvas are global and are set by the user in the Canvas settings tab of the User settings.  There appears to be no way to adjust canvas settings at the individual workflow level that would over-ride the global defaults.  (Please tell me if I am wrong).

I propose that the user defined global defaults be retained but that the workflow configuration window include a new tab where local settings can be set.  This tab should include a button that enables a user to reset all local settings to the global defaults. 

Dear Alteryx Team !

When running an app the actual Analytic App Progress window is not very informative and can not help to know where do we stand in the process.

In order to improve that issue, it would be very nice to give the hand to developers to let them choosing which message should be display in the progress window.

Minimal need :

• At each macro step : A view of which macro is actually running with their corresponding iteration counter

Optimal need :

• Allowing to completely design and name the messages to display at each macro steps and iterations (free text + iteration counter + time estimation ...)

Many thanks

Arno

I would like to suggest a Canvas Mode: Can you make a feature where it is possible to maximise/full screen the canvas only (so that it pops up in a separate window)? I work on two screens so it would be handy to have the tools and ribbons with the results preview on one screen and a pure canvas designer on the other. 

Kind regards,

NN

I would like to suggest adding in additional options to the Output tool for running VBA code after inserts finish.

Similar to how the "7 Post Create SQL Statement" works for "ODBC" or "Oracle" Connections, having this option for excel would be game changing.

Our current processes rely on us calling a .vbs script, or manually formatting our output.

My job of automation would be significantly easier if this was an option.

Getting deliverable ready in an easy to digest format is key.

This would be very useful for testing changes in complex workflows.

It would be nice to have the option to overlay multiple addresses to find  marketing opportunities within the heatmap. Currently I have to map the addresses elsewhere and click back and forth between tabs to see where they lay within the chosen variables.

Comment tools are not aligned when using the ctrl & shift & +/- keyboard shortcut. It would be great if they were.

I'm curently creating  an app using interface tools to control multiple worklflows.  It would be nice if I didnt have to physically drag the interface tool to the recceiving node.  For example, right now I can click on the Left node of a join tool and it gives me the option to make connections to that tool or out of that tool wireless.  It would be nice if I could right click and have an option to select from a list of interface tool incoming connections.

I find that when I'm using Alteryx, I'm constantly renaming the tool connectors. Here's my logic, most of the time:

I have something like a Join and 3 browses.

1. I name the L join something like "L: on product/location join"
2. I then copy that descriptor, and past it in the Annotation field
3. I then copy that descriptor, select the wired connector, and paste that in the connection configuration

MY VISION:

Have a setting where I could select the following options:

• Automatically annotate based on tool rename
• Automatically rename incoming connector based on tool rename

THE GUTS/REQUEST:

If I rename a tool, and "Automatically annotate based on tool rename" is enacted, it will insert that renaming at the top of the annotation field. If there is already data in that field, it will be shifted down. If I rename a tool and "Automatically rename incoming connector..." is on, then the connection coming into it gets [name string]+' connection' put into its name field. I included a picture of the end game of my request.

Thanks for your ear!

As I'm sure many users do, we schedule our workflows to run during non-business hours -- overnight and over the weekend. Our primary datasource (input tool) is a remotely hosted database that our organization doesn't maintain (and hence cannot monitor the status of). If the database were to timeout or if our query were to overload it's resources, our scheduled Alteryx workflow would (attempt to) continue to run for an unknown amout of time. We would like the ability to cancel a scheduled workflow if it has been running for a certain amount of time in order to prevent this.

Please give the ability to use formulas when using the "Manually set values" option in the Drop down tool.

Screenshot below shows an example: