Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Despite being an Alteryx user for 2 and a 1/2 years this is something I have only recently came across but it does not appear that you are able to use debug mode appropriately with macros.

What I mean is, I have a macro input which drives a series of drop down boxes. In debug mode my drop down boxes will not populate. Now I understand why, Alteryx doesn't know what the input is so it doesn't generate the meta data for the debug mode drop downs.

What I suggest Alteryx do is automatically convert your macro inputs for file browses for the purpose of debug mode (I had to do this myself manually and it was a tedious task, not only to set up but then maintain two separate versions, one essentially an application and one a macro).

Or, by default debug mode uses the macro input data to run through debug mode as.

Ben

When building an Alteryx Macro - one of the tough parts is that the input data you put into the Macro Input is used for testing, but you cannot set the type.

So for example - I want to test with the value 1, and Alteryx automatically assumes this is a Byte.

However 1 is just a useful test value, but I need this to be an int 64.

Can we provide the option to strongly type the macro inputs - this way, we can give advanced users the ability to control the type on Macro Inputs, and not run into this sort of issue with test data implicitly defining the type?

Note: this is similar to the idea here:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/Set-data-type-in-Text-Input-tool/idc-p/115209...

I frequently make analytic apps for my clients that requires them to enter information or parameters to the workflow via a prompt before running. The user could be entering codes that will affect a certain filter or it could be a prompt to browse to the new source file required to run the workflow. In order to make adjustments to the workflow itself, I need to work in Debug mode so that I can see the data as it passes through each node in the workflow. Once I am done making all of the changes in debug mode and I am satisfied with how it works, I then have to remember each change I made, and copy and paste each tool and its contents over to the workflow that I am debugging. This is a pain because it is like I am fixing the workflow twice. A good solution to this would be allowing the user to apply changes made in debug to the workflow you are debugging, so that there is no duplication of efforts!

I have some fairly long running analytic apps on my private gallery.  We have many different users who will run these apps and I would like to send them an email when the app is complete so that they don't have to keep checking back for results.

I came across a few different posts that explained how to use a text input named __cloud:UserId to determine the user id of the person running the app and then to query the MongoDB for that user to retrieve their email address.  These posts were very helpful, as I do have it working in my analytic app.  However, I tried putting all of this into a macro so that I didn't have to copy/paste every time I needed the current user's email address.  Unfortunately, the __cloud:UserId text box does not seem to work if it is in a macro. 

Here's a twist on the iterative macro.  Suppose, like a generate rows tool, you could initialize a container to iterate on it's internal processes without having to construct a macro?  The container could include anchors for iterations and for output and allow the user to DoWhile inside of the container.

Just a thought....

Hello,

It appears that Alteryx does not accept .svg (or other vector image format) for icons (I think to custom macro icons), image in comment, etc...

I think that would be a great idea, especially to manage web integration and support of different resolutions.
here an example of a svg logo I made :


As you can see you can zoom in/out without loose quality.

Hi all,

Is it possible to add an option to 'Add an Image' in the settings option of Interface Designer while building Apps or macros?

Currently, we can add Group box, Link, Tab, and Label. It would be really helpful if we can add static images as well!!

This would enable a developer to add an explanatory image just as a link or label is used to communicate to end user.

I am attaching a screenshot for the reference.

Thanks in advance!!

Regards,

Shreyansh Rathod

Pardon the length of this post, but I have been working with Alteryx since version 2.0 (11 years) and have been accumulating a wish list ever since.  Some of these suggestions have been made in the past but have yet to be embraced.  This is the first post for the first 'idea' but, as I said, this is a wish list that has grown since I was first introduced to Alteryx. More posts will follow.

I will break this into sections to hopefully make the suggestions easier to categorize and digest.

Application interface - Since I was introduce to Alteryx, the application interface (what is presented to users) has remained rather stagnant and, with the rumored push to adopt HTML as a replacement for pcxml, could benefit from the following additional settings. I suggest these based on the fact that dot Net classes for interface controls are readily available in Windows which allow for manipulation of each of the controls attributes.

1. The ability to set 'style' attributes for each of the interface tools in the application interface (font-family, font-style, font-size, font-weight, color, etc. This could be presented to the developer as an additional (perhaps optional button) in the Configuration panel for each interface tool as below:

These settings would be specific to the type of interface tool and to how the individual tool would layout and/or be styled relative to the application interface window. One layout option, applicable to most interface tools, would be where the label would be relative to the object itself (top, bottom, left, right). The CSS could be stored in and interpreted from the XML of the yxwz file referencing the ToolID of the Node in a section of the XML hierarchy called <CSS> or something standard.  An option to alter the default CSS could be displayed with a radio button control so that if not selected, the tool would fallback to the default system CSS of the tool.  This default could also be set in System settings so that a consistent interface could be defined across the enterprise.

2. Moving to the actual window that displays when the application is opened, a lot of the same concepts could be applied to the Interface Designer pane.

Attributes that could be set could include position on screen when opened, width and height of the window, and all the attributes of a dot Net form.  The same radio button strategy used for individual interface tools could be employed to use or not use system defaults.

3. In the UI, it would be nice if there was additional flexibility in how the interface tools could be laid out.  Along with the relative position of labels for each control, being able to layout controls horizontally as well as vertically would allow for a more organized interface.

 The Radio buttons would work as normal with the Text Box controls inside each Radio button and only displaying when the button is selected.

I realize a lot of the current development in Alteryx is focused on the new Alteryx Connect and being able to attach to more data files and services. But, if there is still also a concerted effort to move from what could be considered a legacy proprietary mark up language, pcxml, to a more robust and universally accepted mark up, html and css, then, in my humble opinion, expanding the options for developers to design more user friendly and customizable applications to a standard 'style' across the enterprise, both on the desktop and in the gallery, is a worthy endeavor.

Thanks for your attention.  More to follow.

Dan

It would be helpful to be able to embed a macro within my workflows so in the end I have one single file.

Similar to how Excel becomes a macro enabled file, it would be great if the actual macro could be contained in the workflow.  As it stands now, the macro that I insert into a workflow is similar to a linked cell in MS Excel that points to another file.  If the macro is moved the workflow becomes broken.  I often work on a larger workflow that I save locally while developing.  Once it's complete, I then save the workflow to a network drive and have to delete the macros and reinsert these.  It also makes it challenging if I were to send a workflow to someone else... I will have to give them instructions on which macros to insert and where.  Similar to a container, they could be minimized so to speak to their normal icon, and then expanded/opened if any edits were needed....then collapsed when done.

Thanks for the consideration.

The behavior of an "Overwrite Sheet (Drop)" configuration is such that it breaks formulas (#REF) that point to the overwritten sheet and named ranges that reference the overwritten sheet.  This is a bummer because the only way I've found to overcome the issue is to write a script that re-applies the named range.  This works, but it greatly raises the barrier to using this tool and in some corporate environments it won't even be possible.

What would probably be a good alternative behavior is to delete the contents of the sheet, rather than the rows/columns/cells of the sheet.  I think both probably have valid use cases but my proposed functionality is going to cause fewer issues and be the more popular behavior for most users.  I believe there is a google sheets API call for just this kind of behavior...

Current State:  When a macro contains nested macros the only method that reliably works to share them is via yxi (which I fondly refer to as my wixies). 

Future State:  Allow macros published to the gallery be their own tool palette so that when I or any user connects to the server the macros are there and just work, no import, no visible install just a single set of tools that work on that server. 

Side task - also get export to yxi 

Storing macros in a central 'library' and accessing them via the "Macro Search Path" is great for ensuring that everyone is using the same code.

It would be great if the Alteryx installation process prompted for this information. In that way, a new user would automatically have access to the macros.

A problem that recently came up for us was the need to be able to build an application, called App A, that would launch App B and its set of choices under one set of logical circumstances, launch App C and its set of choices under a second set of logical circumstances, etc.  After working with our Alteryx rep and trying to use the Run Command object to launch the apps from the command line (which caused a licensing issue error), we've been told that this is not something that is currently possible in Alteryx.  We were wondering if it would be possible to get functionality like this in a future edition of Alteryx.

I have reviewed a number of batch macros that work well for mirroring the "NetworkingDays" excel calculation but it would be great to add an interval type for "weekdays" to the DateTimeDiff formula ie

 DateTimeDiff ( [Date01],[Date02], "WorkDays")  where any Saturday or Sunday between the dates would be discounted.

I am using a Dynamic Input within a Batch Macro to allow the user to read (dump) data from multiple Oracle tables with varying schemas.  If a table read has 0 rows output, then an error message like the following is displayed at the end of the job execution:

Because it is always possible to return 0 rows from the read, I'd like to mute the error message.  If this message is present, I don't want to STOP the macro/application.  I do however want to stop the application if an ERROR Message that I care about is encountered (e.g. Output file is not defined).

Cheers,

Mark

There are many circumstances when you have to build an interative macro where it's not just the iterating data set that needs to change every iteration, but also a second data set.

Think about this like a loop where two different variables are updated on every iteration, not just the control variable in the For xxx control variable.

The way that users work around this is to use a temporary yxdb file where instead of a macro input you input from the yxdb, and then write back to the same yxdb.    This allows you to pretend that you can adjust 2 different data sets on every cycle of the loop.    there are 4 downsides to this:
a) User complexity - this breaks the conceptual simplicity of macro inputs since now the users have to understand that in situation X I use macro inputs; and in situation Y I have to use some other type of tool.

b) Speed penalty - writing to disk is between 1000x slower and 1 000 000x slower than working with data in memory (especially if it's in cache) - so by forcing this to go through a yxdb file, you do incur a speed penalty which is just not needed

c) blocking penalty - Because of the fact that you can't write to a file that you're still reading from, you need to pepper this with Block until done tools - and you need to initialize the macro using a first write to the yxdb file outside the macro - which further hurts speed.    Given the nuanced behaviour of block-until-done, this also introduces user complexity issues

d) Self-contained - because you have to initialize these files outside the macro - the macro is no-longer self-contained and portable (which breaks the principle of Information Hiding which is a key pillar of good modular decoupled software design.

The other way that users work around this - is to serialize their entire second recordset into a field which then gets tacked onto the iterating data set using an iterative macro.   This is HIGHLY wasteful becuase then you have to build a serialize & deserialize process for this second recordset.    It fixes the speed and blocking penalites from above, but introduces a computational overhead which is generating no value; and makes this even more complex for users - and a further blocker to using macros.

Recommendation:

We could make this simpler by allowing users to create multiple pairs of macro input / macro outputs so that 2 or 3 or n different data sets can be updated with every iteration.

Below is a screenshot demonstrating this, from an Advent of code challenge - the details of the problem are not important - the issue at hand is that there are 2 record sets which both need to be updated on every iteration.

cc: @NicoleJohnson @Samanthaj_hughes @SteveA 

I've recently been delving into using the interface tools and there are a couple of glaring issues for me as a developer/designer, all having to do with the UI, ironically (yes, I used that correctly!) with the interface tools. The irony here is that the interface tools utilise a poor user interface.

Firstly, I finished this video to ensure I was indeed doing things correctly, and I was.

The UI for designer's interface tools is incredibly sluggish. In order to rearrange tools, each time you create a new one, you have to push the up arrow for each tool and you have to traverse the groupings.

This will take forever. I counted 36 clicks.

Instead of this, I suggest two changes to the interface designer.

1. 1. Allow a control-click in the interface designer layout view so that multiple elements can be selected and they can traverse the groupings and be moved together. When one has, say 4 elements in 2 nested groupings, that is a lot of clicks to get your new element to the top. Having to do it with its radio-button partner: pretty much infuriating.
2. ONE at a time, children. No control-clicking. That would lead to pandemonium?Allow control-click in the tree view as well. The fact that we can only click one item at a time and move it one slot at a time is incredibly time consuming. It seems a no-brainer to at least allow a control-click here.
   • Bonus: Include the ability to jump to the top and/or pop out a level with left/right arrows in the tree interface. 

I know not everyone is building macros/apps and dealing with this, so I have little faith that this will jump to the top of your queue. But this is a painful part of the UI. I don't know if your UX designers could easily fix this or if it is more pain on your end than the pain you're giving me, but I just want to say: This hurts. 35 clicks every time I add a new element with no option to 'move to top' like you (wonderfully) do in the select tool is a big drag on my time (hint: maybe add that sort of functionality too; the select tool manages this stuff so well!). Which is supposedly valuable. In theory. But it certainly doesn't feel that way when I've spent 10 minutes clicking an up arrow (and yes, my UI is slow. And I may be exaggerating, but not by much!). 

Thank you for your continued improvement!

-Çædric Justice
Alteryx Developer
Cambia Healthcare

I would like to see In-DB batch macros, currently we are joining tables with 30 million+ records and we are having to run it through standards tools because we are unable to process via In-DB, which has a 20% improvement in processing speed based on the peformance profiling.  

With the Action Tool, if you use the "Update Value" action type, you have the ability to check the "Replace a specific string" option

If you use the "Update Value with Formula" action type, you no longer have the option to Replace a specific string.

Can't think of any reason why we should not have the ability to replace a specific string while using "Update value with formula"

Please can you add this in next release?