Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello,

There are several dozens of data sources... maybe it would be useful to have a search in it?

Best regards,

Simon

To increase Performance on some old Buissness Logic, i am trying to switch an existing system to In-DB tools. This has given me a lot of headache because there is no Multi-Field Formular Tool in the In-DB section. It is a very tedious job to run through every workflow to manually set the same regex for a table with more than 20 Fields. 

I have had the idea to implement such a tool myself but i think this could be helpful for other developers in Alteryx Desktop too, so i am bringing this up here.

The Idea is to have a similar approach to the new Multi-Formular Tool like the other already existing Tool in Preperation. 

Hello all,

As of today, you can only (officially) connect to a postgresql through ODBC with the SIMBA driver
help page :
https://help.alteryx.com/current/en/designer/data-sources/postgresql.html#postgresql

You have to download the driver from your license page

However there is a perfectly fine official driver for postgresql here https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/releases/

I would like Alteryx to support it for several obvious reasons :
1/I don't want several drivers for the same database
2/the simba driver is not supported for last releases of postgresql
3/the simba driver is somehow less robust than the official driver
4/well... it's the official driver and this leads to unecessary between Alteryx admin/users and PG db admin.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello,

As of today, DCM is great to store credentials. But once we want to dive deeper in technicity, like using macros or Applications, it's really bad. One of the things I hate is that we can't retrieve any informations from the DCM connection, just the id. Not good for logs, really bad for understanding and have some conditional logic related to connection type or name.

Here an example

Nice, I managed to retrieve an id but I have no idea of what it means : what kind of connection? what's name?

Best regards,

Simon

I would like the ability to configure a default naming convention for yxdb files created through the "Cache and Run Workflow" feature.  For example, the naming convention could be <YXMD filename>-<ToolID>-<CreatedDateTime>.yxdb.

This would make it easier and faster to identify and re-use yxdbs.

I work with lots of Excel files, and because they don't always consistent schema, I'm often changing the configuration.

The default Window frame/window for the "Options" panel in the Input data tool only shows 3-4 rows, plus title (the section in RED in the image below).  As I have large screens 

The panel size can be resized by dragging the line above the "Preview (first 100 records)".  However, once I move from this tool, if I return to the tool, it defaults back to 3-4 rows, plus title.

I would like to be able to set the default size of the Options panel/frame/window.

• This would improve my efficiency when setting up flows
• This would improve debugging - I would be able to see all my parameters at a glance

I was exploring how to make the Outlook 365 tool run faster, and I noticed in my Action tool that there are Start and End Date parameters. However, they come across as these large numbers. I learned today from Alteryx Support that "The numbers you provided for StartDate (1725163200000) and EndDate (1726751052709) represent Unix timestamps in milliseconds. Unix timestamps indicate the number of milliseconds that have passed since January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC."

While I am attempting to build a custom macro myself, it feels like this enhancement could just be included in the tool itself! Relatively simply conversion using DateTimeDiff([#1],"1970-01-01 00:00:00",'milliseconds') 😊

Edit: it's there for the Calendar option, but ideally it could be included for the Email option too! And while you can you the search parameters, we could make it easier for the user.

• Have anyone experienced the same error?
• If yes, is there any workaround to connect with M365?

Hello,

Here is the proposal about an issue that I face frequently at work.

Problem Statement -

Frequent failure of workflows that have either been scheduled or run manually on server because the excel input file is sometimes open by another user or someone forgot to close the file before going out of office or some other reason. 

Proposed Solution - 

The Input/Dynamic Input tools to have the ability to read excel files even when it is open so that the workflows do not fail which will have a huge impact in terms of time savings and will avoid regular monitoring of the scheduled workflows.

Whenever I overwrite an Excel sheet with data of the same format just different values (e.g. Q2 data versus Q1 data) all of my Pivot Tables break and I have to manually recreate them even though the schema didn't change.  Somehow the Table is being deleted/removed and replaced with a completely different Table which is what causes the Pivot Tables to break.  The only way to avoid this is to manually set the Cell Range, but who has time for that?  The only solution I have found is to manually copy all values and paste them over the existing data which is very inefficient the more sheets you are working with.

The management of connections, especially in a collaborative environment is not cohesive or intuitive.

1. When configuring an input tool for a server / gallery connection, hunting for the correct connection in a long list is quite frustrating.  There is no search, no sort and the list of connections does not sort in any logical order by default.
   SUGGEST:
   
   • List of Server Connections is sorted Alphabetically by default
   • Give the ability to search and sort
2. Add additional connection metadata
   • Primary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Secondary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Connection String (surface the server name and login name to the connections list, omitting the password)
3. Rethink the concepts of RCM, Gallery Connections and the external file method of storing credentials for In-DB connections.
   • Make one overarching, cohesive method of storing and sharing credentials across the platform.
   • Enable Artisans to create
   • Enable Artisans to share
   • Retire concept of external files to store credentials, as is used with In-DB connections

Hello all,


As you all know, you can use API with the Alteryx Download tool. However, this tool is not that easy to configure.
On the other hand, the API world use a lot tools such as Postman  or Bruno (an open source clone) which allows easy test, debug... I use it everytime I had to work on a rest API and then I try to translate it to the final tool (such as the Alteryx Download tool). Both tools offer "collection", a set of request, and also environment configuration. Here are some examples on the project I'm working on :

And you can even get some code



I would like to leverage those collections in my download tool configuration, that would be quite easier to use !

Best regards,

Simon

Apologies if this has been suggested or exists. I often find myself using manual Excel files as a data source. These files frequently use cell formatting elements, such as cell color and text color, to convey important information. However, when these files are imported into Alteryx, this valuable formatting information is unfortunately lost.

To address this, a dedicated input tool that can read Excel files with separate fields for these formatting elements would be very helpful. This would be incredibly beneficial, especially when the data lacks other fields that relate to the coloring. Currently, I manage to achieve this using a Python tool, but integrating this as a built-in feature in Alteryx would undoubtedly be more efficient and user-friendly. This enhancement would not only simplify data preparation but also ensure the preservation of the full context of the original Excel file.

Hello all,

As of today, when you want to retrieve or create a file on Apache Spark for Databricks, you have only two choices :  CSV and Avro

However it's clearly missing parquet file type :
-it's faster
-it's better for storage
-it's standard and already supported as input/output of Alteryx or for HDFS so doesn't seem hard to add here.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello,

It's nice to have this OpenAI Connector but it seems it must be the default OpenAI URL. In my company, we use OpenAI on an Azure instance and I'm unable to connect to it.

(by the way, I know pre-sales teams have developed lot of connectors for fireworks, mistral, etc.. it would be very cool to have it available).

Best regards,

Simon

Hi all 

Currently when you set your workflow to don't write outputs (disable all tools that write output) under runtime of the configuration of workflow- the render and green output tools become greyed out and do not write an output (as expected). 

However, this is not the case for connectors - for example, if you use the SharePoint output tool and click disable all tools that write output, it will not be greyed out and still write an output. Is it possible for these connectors to also not run when this is selected in the configuration? As otherwise currently, you have to add it to a container and disable it.

Hi is it possible to add sheet names (to spreedsheet files) to the output of a file directory tool

I know y'all are working on data lineage for some future offering and it is very much needed. For highest quality results, please make logs a primary source of lineage information. Being able to use dynamic naming with some tools and macros makes the names in the workflows simple foobar placeholders and do not reflect what actually happened. Today Connect doesn't use logs and leaves many lineage gaps because of this

Please move this to a more appropriate category if needed. This future feature work is not part of Connect.

Hi all,

When preparing reports with formatting for my stakeholders. They want these sent straight to sharepoint and this can be achieved via onedrive shortcuts on a laptop. However when sending the workflow for full automation, the server's C drive is not setup with the appropriate shortcuts and it is not allowed  by our admin team.

So my request is to have the sharepoint output tool upgraded to push formatted files to sharepoint. 

Thank you!