Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Idea:

A funcionality added to the Impute values tool for multiple imputation and maximum likelihood imputation of fields with missing at random will be very useful.

Rationale:

Missing data form a problem and advanced techniques are complicated. One great idea in statistics is multiple imputation,

filling the gaps in the data not with average, median, mode or user defined static values but instead with plausible values considering other fields.

SAS has PROC MI tool, here is a page detailing the usage with examples: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas/seminars/missing_data/mi_new_1.htm

Also there is PROC CALIS for maximum likelihood here...

Same useful tool exists in spss as well http://www.appliedmissingdata.com/spss-multiple-imputation.pdf

Best

I've come to realize that the JOIN tool is case-sensitive by design but it would be helpful if you could turn that behavior on/off (via checkbox?) within the JOIN tool.  For those of us that work predominantly in database environments that are not case-sensitive, this default behavior has caused me problems many times.  Having to force the case to either upper or lower upstream of the JOIN on both flows in order to ensure a successful join is an extra step that would not be necessary if you could disable case-sensitive with a checkbox.

There is a web hosted trial that anyone can have a hands on experiance with alteryx tutorials  without even downoading the tool.

That's awesome... http://goo.gl/dpSoe2

It may be a nice idea to;

1) either start seperate "Alteryx-kaggle" instances with data sets specific to each kaggle competition so that anyone want to try out may have a go with those well known examples thru the Alteryx site, 

2) Or even better have a partnership with kaggle so that anyone can just have it's own Alteryx trial per specific competition on the kaggle website...

I'm sure this will draw a lot of attention...

Rationale;

You'll immediately have a greater reach in Kaggle community, some data hobbiyists and cs, ie students and acedemics (which will eventually end up doing lot's of data blending when ther are going to be hired by top notch firms...

I find it very difficult to read Warnings in the Messages palette because the text is a light yellow against a white backgroud.

I'd love to be able to change either the text color, the background color of the palette, or both.

In v10, I am using the summarize tool a lot and getting tired of selecting one or more fields and doing a sum function and having to revisit each summary tool when you add a numeric field upstream... I was hoping there would be a more dynamic method, e.g. select all numeric fields and then doing a SUM on _currentfield_.

Then I remembered the Field Info tool. (on a side note, I'd bet this tool is overlooked a lot). This tool is great because for each numeric field you get Min, Max, Median, Std Dev, Percent Missing, Unique Values, Mean, etc.

The one thing that's missing is SUM. Can you add it?

Also, can you give the user option to turn off layouts and reports so it runs faster? I only care out the data side.

or is there another way to do sum on dynamically selected numeric fields? (include Sum on Unknown field)

It would be great to have a spatial function that could be used to evaluate whether two spatial objects are equal/identical. I see this being available in at least three places:

1. An "ST_Equal" Formula function
2. A SpatialMatch "Where Target Equals Universe"
3. An "Equals" Action in the Spatial Process tool

Currently there is no option to edit an existing macro search path from Options-> User Settings -> Macros. Only options are Add / Delete. Ideally we need the Edit option as well.

Existing Category needs to be deleted and created again with the correct path, if search path is changed from one location to another.

The sum function is probably the one I use most in the summarize tool. It is a silly thing, but it would be nice for "Sum" to be in the single-click list, rather than in the "Numeric" category...

Move sum function

This setting is currently in the Options menu under user settings, but I think it would be more intuitive and more consistent with the norm for most software if the check box were directly on the splash screen.

Idea:

In forecasting and in commercial/sme risk scoring there is a need for trying vast number of algebraic equations which is a very cumbersome prosess. Let's add symbolic regression as a new competitive capability.

Rationale:

Summations, ratios, power transforms and all combinations of a like are needed to be tested as new variables for a forecasting or prediction model. Doing this by hand manually is a though and long business... And there is always a possibility for one to skip a valuable combination.

Symbolic regression is a novel techinique for automatically generating algebraic equations with use of genetic programming, 
In every evolution a variable is selected checked if the equation is discriminatitive of the target variable at hand. In every next step frequently observed variables will be selected more likely.

SR comparison with linear regression neural nets and random forests

Benefit for clients:

This method produces variables mainly with nonlinear relationships. It is a technique that will help in corporate/commercial/sme risk modelling, such that powerful risk models are generated from a hort list of B/S and P/L based algebraic equations.
There is potential use cases in algorithmic trading as well...

There are 3 very interesting world problems solved with symbolic regression here.

A very relevant thesis by sean Wouter is attached as a pdf document for your reading pleasure...

R side of things:

I've found Rgp package for genetic programming, here is a link.

Competition:

I haven't seen something similar in SAS, SPSS but there is this; http://www.nutonian.com/products/eureqa/

Also there is Bruce Ratner's page

I would love to see the option to publish the description information from an alteryx workflow into Tableau tde files as the default comment field

As with Output Data tool, it would be very helpful to have this option within the Calgary Loader tool.  I have a series of ordered analytic apps and if I could name the Calgary database using the "Take File/Table Name from Field" option I would be able to chain the apps and be much more efficient.

Thanks.

When we copy and paste a tool into a workflow, we then have to drag the pasted tool into the workfow where we want it. It would be better if we could right click on a connector, select "paste", and have the tool paste into the flow where we put the cursor. Or to be able to right-click on a tool and select "paste after" similar to how we can "insert after".

This idea has been superceded by "Paste Before / After"

Hello,

Many mouses (mice?) allow you to tilt the mouse wheel either left or right. It would be great if this would scroll the canvas left or right, similar to rolling the wheel to scroll the canvas up or down. This would be especially useful considering that users have been nudged to create their workflows horizontally.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Just to give you some context, we have a customer that requires that for every Tableau workbook we deliver, we must add extra documentation, as for instance, for every calculated field, in which views it's used, and the formula of that field (yes, I know exactly what you're thinking right now :P)

So I decided to take a shortcut and do a workflow that extracts the basic (I mean VERY basic) data from the .twb file, so I can save a lot of time. 

Then I came with this idea...

Having a lot of Tableau's under the hood experts in this Community, It would be great to gather some of them and create a Tableau Documenter Macro.

I'd love tho hear what you think, and who's being able to help.

Idea:

Some well known scoring methods use optimal binned variables for added robustness. Let's add this capability to Alteryx.

Retionale:

Here's a basic link on why to do that; http://documents.software.dell.com/statistics/textbook/optimal-binning

Current status in Alterys as I'm aware of:

Tile tool or Multi-field Binning tool for completing same task as Tile tool on multiple fields, splits the variables by 5 methods;

• Equal Records or Intervals or Sums

• Smart Tile

• Unique Value 

• Manual

Unfortunately "equal something" binnings are bad idea, as the values are categorized "blindly" irrespective of the effects on the predictive power of the models. 

What to do:

What's needed is to bin both numerical and categorical variables optimally such that the Weights of Evidences (WoE) should present a monotone increasing or decreasing pattern. Maybe at most a V or U shaped "convex" structure.

Quick win:

Without constraining ourselves with monotonicity or convex cases, the easiest practice would be running a C4.5 or CHAID tree algorithm (produces multiple splits rather than binary splits in CART) for a single variable and select the target as the dependent variable and all the resulting nodes will be the bins we are looking for. Doing this for multiple variables at once is the key to the tool to be generated.

Clients:

This capability is sought by risk management departments building robust, stable Basel compliant models in financial industry, especially by banks.

When working with complex modules, it would be great to allow an option to add a tool upstream and automatically rewire to downstreams tools.

Simplified example:

Text Input flows to (1) Filter and (2) Formulae Tool. If I want to drag and drop a Formulae Icon after the text input to be applied to both paths, I can't. I have to either choose To apply to Path (1) or to Path (2).

I know that you can right click, press insert after, and search for the tool, but this is not a time efficient manner.  You can also delete the wiring and rewire yourself, but if you have mutliple downstream tools, this is a pain.

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!