Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

We are starting to use Alteryx as a full ETL DW build tool (and blogging about it too..)

 

Compared to other tools in the market there do not seem to be the usual SCD(slowly changing dimension) and other "standard" tools or templates to start building.

 

It would be great to have a template/Macros/guide to starting to build a DW solution. It is rather daunting starting with a blank page!

 

 

I have a user who has a batch macro set up for processing customer records as they relate to stores. The macro loops based on the storeID. In some cases, some stores do not have customers and the user would like to have an "Exit" button so that the rest of the tools downstream won't run if no records are present and the batch macro will start over automatically with the next store.

Idea:   I think the Interface Designer's "Test View" window should allow control parameters to act like "Text Boxes" and allow the designer to manually edit, or type a control parameter for use in a debug module.
 
When designing batch macros, there currently is not an easy, built-in way to test or debug their functionality.  There are two reasons to build a batch macro:
1) to reconfigure the macro at run time, just as if they were the answers to questions in the macro GUI;
2) to group the records going in the macro inputs into batches.
If I am designing a macro to perform the 1st function -- reconfigure the macro at run time -- I need to be able to test its functionality in a debug module.
 
The Interface Designer's "Test view" window should provide this ability by allowing you to type an example control parameter value.  However, the Test View window only allows you to "dropdown" to a value via a dropdown box.  This dropdown box is always empty, thus never allowing you to enter a test control parameter.  I think the Interface Designer's "Test View" window should allow control parameters to act like "Text Boxes" and allow the designer to manually edit a control parameter for a debug module.
 
I've attached a screenshot of a simple, two control parameter batch macro.  As you can see, in the Interface Designer, I don't have a way of inputting a value in either control parameter field to open a debug module.
 
 

 

Here is a thought I posted about on my Alteryxuser blog: http://alteryxuser.blogspot.com/2015/02/alteryx-and-github-place-for-sharing.html. I interested in hearing your comments!

Would be nice to have a place where general use macros or packages could be published by the community and then used within the designer.

Thinking of something along the lines of the NuGet package manager: https://www.nuget.org/
 

It would be very powerful to be able to multi-thread batch macros. Since the data for each batch is known and unrelated between batches, it seems like the processing of each batch could be distibuted to multiple processors without issue. This could dramatically increase performance in certain situations.

Dear Alteryx Team

A nice to have :
Possibility to create output directories automatically using a given fieldname in order to organize properly macros outputs

Thanks a lot

Arno

 

Dear Alteryx,

Alteryx 9 new Macro configuration module, is great
One thing that could be improved :

For Iterative macros, it's very frustrated to set a Maximum of Iterations manually :
when the number is too high it keeps going unnecessarily
when it's too low, we are missing iterations

Ideally this parameters should be calculated automatically by Alteryx
It would just implie to have the possibility to declare the numeric field that must be used for Iteration ... then Alteryx could calculate before launching the job, the Min/Max to set automatically the iteration band.

Is this idea stupid?

Thanks

Arno

Currently when I open and run an app in designer mode im unable to access any other modules while it runs.  It would be nice to be able to work on other modules while an app runs without opening a debug.

This should be quite easy to implement. I think it would be great if could we have:

1. A User repository for macros in the Users folder, e.g. My DocumentsMy Alteryx Macros

This would make it easier to install macros without needing any administrator rights

2. A right click operation on a yxmc file (or a menu operation in Alteryx) that Install the macro ie. will move any macro into the folder above.

This would make it very simple to show new users how to install any macro you send them

Both these ideas will make it easier for partners and the Alteryx user community to share macros.
 

When creating an Annalytic App, in the Actions tab, when creating an action, have the window display the actions in numerical order.  

When developing modules and looking to refactor/improve areas where tools should be placed into a macro (for re-use, or for module cleanliness), it would be nice if I could simply select all the tools that should be in the macro, right click, and have an option to "Create as Macro". The option would create a new module/macro, copy the tools to the canvas, and create the necessary macro inputs and outputs automatically. Additionally, the original module could be updated to replace the selected tools with the newly created macro.