Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I haven't been able to find a similar idea, but I have a scenario were I'm fully joining a dataset but I get a mismatch of column names.

 

When using the column renaming functionality in the Join tool, data sent through the Left or Right connector is not renamed. When I'm performing a Full Join the Union tool is adding these columns to the resulting table.

 

The renaming column functionality of the Join Tool should apply to all join types for consistency. My workaround has been to avoid renaming columns in the Join tool if aiming to perform a multi-join.

 

I would like to see a pre-built visual flag or message/warning that shows if the join I made was cartesian or not.

 

To avoid cartesian joins I sometimes add a unique or summarize tool before the L or R inputs or add a message tool after the join.

 

If I don't do that then I sometimes calculate if the number of records in the L + C and L + R joins don't match up to the L and R input records.

 

It would be nice for Alteryx to be able to show some indication of if a cartesian join happened or not without having to add the extra tools or manual calculations

 

Something akin to Canvas>Connection Progress>Show Only When Running to be updated with the added functionality of Show with Cartesian Join Flags

Hi, when using the Join tool, I sometimes wish there are separate "*Unknown" fields for each of the left and right input.

I have occasions where the left input can be dynamic(modified upstream), but the right input fixed.

 

It's annoying to fix all join tool's selection when there are modifications in the upstream part.

 

 

I think it would be great to have a tool that allows you to update a dataset with another dataset. For example, this could be used in updating an archive table on a daily basis as data changes. Having a tool available that streamlines this data operation would be helpful to simplify workflows.

 

In the tool, you would be given the option to select your primary key fields, which are the fields used to identify records. Additionally, you have the option to perform an insert, modify, or delete operation, according to the primary key fields that you choose in the configuration.

 

Obviously this is something that anybody could create a macro for if they wanted to. But it would be nice to have a tool in place so that we dont have to worry about it. I think this would be a nice use case to bolster Alteryx usage as a data engineering tool for relational database management in particular.

Sometimes I find myself having to union too many tools together and get bothered with the drag-and-drop repetition. It'd be nice to be able to select multiple tools and have a "Union All" in the right-click menu that creates a union tool that is connected to the output of all the selected tools. 

 

It's kind of like a smarter "Insert After"

Having the ability to specify columns to be "coalesced" (essentially filled in automatically when records aren't present) across all inputs of the Join Multiple tool would be very useful, and save lots of tedious setup. In fact, I avoid that tool if possible, currently, because of the extra steps necessary in maintaining key column integrity after the join.

 

In the screenshot below "RecordID" is present in all 4 inputs. When they are joined together, however, not every record is present in all inputs, therefore each of the 4 "RecordID" columns has nulls. We then have to go through an extra step to find the first "non-null" record ID, and put that in a new column (or in the first "RecordID" column).

 

This could be simply fixed by adding a menu to specify columns that should be coalesced, or auto-filled from other inputs if it's missing in the first one.

 

The columns in the menu could be based on the first input, and then alteryx would look for columns with the same name in all other inputs and complete the logic below, for instance:

 

If isnull([RecordID]) then

      if isnull([Input_#2_RecordID]) then

           if isnull([Input_#3_RecordID]) then

                    [Input_#4_RecordID]

           else [Input_#3_RecordID] endif

     else [Input_#2_RecordID] endif

else [RecordID] endif

 

 

 

We waste a lot of time to search a field to join it in join or to deselect it select or to summarize in summarize. This mainly happens when we have long list of fields.

 

As search bar to find the field on top of any of these tools will be really helpful. 

 

Specially, for join tool if we can type the field name while joining would really help. 

 

Thank you,

Sanju

 

 

Please create a way to swap or change the order of the inputs and outputs for tools with two or more inputs and outputs. 

 

For example: When creating a workflow a join tool can end up moving to a location on the canvas that causes flow paths to cross.  To fix the overlapping paths with a simple option of change order of input and output with a simple up and down would be much better than deleting the paths and reconnecting and redefining all of the join fields.

 

I suggest an additional tool that would allow adding columns to the data, if and only if they do not exist already.

 

Currently working with data that has a dynamic set of columns can be a bit tiresome as the Select tool will not allow to select columns that have not been witnessed in the data.

 

Adding a tool that would ensure that certain columns are available downstream can currently be achieved by:

 

1. 'Append Fields' tool with a 'Text Input' tool which will always append the fields, renaming them on the fly if needed
2. 'Union' tool with a 'Text Input' tool

Both options do not seem straight forward and I expect have a performance impact.

 

A separate tool to achieve this seems the more user friendly and performance oriented way.

When manually configuring a Union tool within a module/app, once it's saved, if you go in at any point in the future, and change anything upstream from the Union Tool, it causes an error "[some field name] has been changed and the Union Tool needs to be reconfigured".

This happens even if you do not reconfigure any upstream tools, but mearely access them, physically move them, say, an inch to the left or something like that, etc.  Basically if you just "touch" any tool upstream, the Union Tool thinks that the manual config needs to be done over.  But even if you do reconfig the Union Tool (either delete it and bring a new one in, or change the current one to Auto and then back to manual), it STILL does not recognize the tool as being correct.

The only way I have found to correct this issue is to click Play, and let it throw the error.  Add Select Tools before the Union Tool to change the names to be common, then click on the Union Tool, and switch it to auto.  Then click Play again.  This can be very inconvenient if you have a module that takes hours (although you can limit your input records).

My suggestion would be to either disable the manual configuration, or add notes to the Help Files stating to use the manual configuration at your own risk, because once it's set and works at the time of creation, you cannot modify any upstream tools thereafter or else it will break the Union Tool and it cannot be repaired -- only choice is to use the Select Tool as I described above

Hi Folks

 

So have been using the fuzzy match function quite a bit of recently. Love the tool, however it could benefit form being able to wire in a list of 'Don't generate' keywords. 

At the moment we can enter them manually, however where for example i might want to exclude city or area names etc... from the do not generate list this becomes quite a tedious manual entry task, so being able to load in keyword data from pre-existing lists etc.. would be a time saver. 

 

Cheers

 

Gavin

 

 

Sometimes on the "Join Tool" Interface in the Config screen.

You can not scroll down to read last item. The scroll bar is not at the bottom nor can be scrolled further down.

 

I am aware there are posts on this in the community and that there is a macro available to do this on the public gallery, however I think this is such important functionality that it should be incorporated into the main product.  I want to be able to join 2 data sources by a date range.  In SQL the code would look like this:

 

select ric.*,map.*
from
Staging.TicksHourlySummary ric
LEFT OUTER JOIN Reference.ReutersInstrumentCodeMap map
on (
ric.#RIC = map.ReutersInstrumentCode
and ric.[Datetime] >= map.EffectiveFromDate
and ric.[Datetime] < map.EffectiveToDate

)

 

 

It would be great if we can determine the type of join operation between the fields we choose to join. For example, if we join 2 fields a and b below, we should be able to determine the join operation whether it's an 'AND' or 'OR' operation.

 

Is it possible to have a feature for Left / Right Outer Joins within the existing (out of DB) Join tool? At the moment, let's say I want to do a Left Outer Join, I have to do a Union of the Left segment & of the Inner Join. This is a little inconvenient. Any way we can give users a choice about Left / Right Outer Join and Left / Right Inner Join?

Hi All,

I think this suggestion would be be ideal for the Join tool and it's related cousins (Join Multiple etc.) and would improve the experience of data blending for all users.

I am going to rely on Qlik Sense for this explanation as this functionality is native to that product.

 

When we bring in two data sources and use the join tool to blend we are required to select the field or fields upon which we want to base our join.

In Qlik Sense we can see our two data sources:

 

 

We can then drag them together and it will form suggestions based on data association density:

 

 

This helps with identifying how tables should be joined, and at the very least shows commonalities between data streams, based on the data within the tables and not any naming conventions.

It would be nice to have the functionality to generate suggestions based on association density between two data streams, and then to apply the join from a selection.

 

 Thoughts?

I am finding that I often need to use a union tool after a join to capture the entire data set I am trying to isolate. It isn't a huge deal but it does happen often enough that it seems worthwhile to consider more options to customize the join type. For example- it would be helpful to be able to configure the Join tool itself to specify a left inner or left outer join instead of needing to Union the L and J anchors afterward.  

Hello!

I recently did Alteryx Weekly Challenge #243, in which i needed to use a join multiple tool at the end to join my three results.

To do this, i joined based on Record Position - and the join was fine, however the order was completely different to that at which was set inside the join tool:

As you can imagine, this was very confusing. However, it seems that if i move one field down, and then back up, it works fine:

 

This seems to suggest that this selection is not used until it has been adjusted, which is difficult to troubleshoot and may be confusing for new users. I simply suggest a small fix for this, to take this order by default.

Cheers,
TheOC