Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Submitting this idea from a different category as I couldn't find an appropriate category.

I think that it is important to have an offline documentation in either PDF or HTML format (or both) with each major release (or minor release where new features are introduced, such as Alteryx Designer 2025.1.2) for at least the on-prem products (such as Designer and Server) for the use cases or scenarios where either internet connectivity might be limited or non-existent or the user might want to access a part of the documentation quickly (especially in PDF format though searching from the index, where one wouldn't have to navigate between web pages).

It would be great to have the new expression editor in the Interface tools such as Action and Error Message to have the modern expression editor, not only for highlighting and autocomplete but also the "preview result for the first row" (which is the only row when you are writing an expression for an Interface tool.

I think that the addition of this feature is especially necessary because of the "Update Raw XML with Formula" feature, which requires you to clearly be able to see the output of your formula, which in turn usually requires you to first test the XML in a separate workflow with a Text Input tool.

Problem:
In large Alteryx workflows, renaming a column using a Select tool (or similar) causes downstream tools like Formula, Filter, Join, Sort, etc., to break or throw errors if they reference the old column name.
This means every time a column is renamed, I have to manually go through every tool that used the old name and update it - which is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone.

Proposed Enhancement:
Add a feature to automatically propagate field name changes across all tools in the workflow that reference the renamed field.

This could work similarly to how modern IDEs allow you to "rename variable" across an entire codebase, or how refactoring works in platforms like Tableau Prep or Power BI.

Benefits:

• Saves time when making structural changes to data schemas.

• Reduces human error caused by missing updates in some tools.

• Makes workflows more scalable and easier to maintain.

• Improves usability and development speed for all users, especially in large or collaborative workflows.

Block-Until-Done could be improved through adding time delay option settings between steps 1,2 and 3. An Excel workbook, for example, must be opened and closed before it can be reread or multiple tabs appended which takes time for a computer to process. Often a workaround or custom macro must be used to account for this time delay. A time delay feature directly in the tool would enable a user to customize the delay period between steps and allow for functions external to Alteryx to complete before next step is taken without macros or workarounds. If no option(s) is selected, default parameters would apply.

Our team was very excited with the deployment of Alteryx One Enterprise Edition, but had to scratch our head on why DateTimeNow and Data Cleansing is available to Full Users but not Basic Users. What had us scratching our heads further, is Designer Cloud for Basic Users have DateTimeNow and Data Cleansing. 

Hopefully the community and Alteryx can agree these are basic tools for everyone!

Alteryx Help References:

Alteryx>Alteryx One Editions>User Roles>Basic User Role>Basic User Capabilities

Alteryx>Alteryx One Editions>User Roles>Full User Role>Full User Capabilities

Alteryx>Alteryx One Platform Editions>Enterprise Edition>Enterprise Edition Capabilities

Additional formatting functionality would be great to see in the Interface Designer.

First off, I want to acknowledge other submitted ideas (vote for them too!):

• Allow Drag and Drop in Interface Designer - Alteryx Community
• Alteryx Interface Designer - Place Element Where S... - Alteryx Community

Both of these are great suggestions and I want to show support of them as well!

To take it another step further from targeted placement or drag/drop... I would also like to see new objects included in the ADD menu.  We have Groupings but I'd like to see horizontally split groupings.  Meaning, I want the ability to place two Date Inputs next to each other, or short prompts across instead of listed vertically.

Example:

Why this matters:  If Alteryx aspires to be a bonofied contender in the Analytic Application space (which I think it is), then we need added functionality that puts a greater emphasis on the user-experience side of things.  Because as we know, user acceptance, ease of use, and adoption all depend on a clean presentation for the elements they interract with.

If you agree, your "thumbs up" of support is only one click away!

Search Box for Tools like Formula Tool where a drop down list of all columns is present to choose from the list. It might take quite a while to search for a specific column in a Formula tool when there is hundreds of columns in a data stream. This is quite an important case when we work with raw columns directly from an SAP extractor.

When building join operations in Alteryx, it can be time-consuming to manually scroll through long lists of fields to find the right one to join on, especially when working with large datasets or unfamiliar schemas.

It would be great to have a search-as-you-type filter in the Join tool’s field selection interface. Similar to the existing field selector search, this feature would allow users to start typing a field name and instantly see a filtered list of partial matches. This would significantly speed up the process of identifying and selecting the correct join fields and reduce the risk of selecting incorrect fields due to visual clutter.

I would like the parse tools (regex, split to columns...) to by defualt, not point at any column.

The parse tools need to be pointed at a column, however they by defualt configure them selves to point at the first column. Every time I use them, I enter the other configuration options, such as a regular expression, then hit run. After hitting run, my output column will be populated with only null values yet I will recieve no error. 

The reason for this, is 100% EBKAC (error between keyboard and chair), as I have forgotton to point the tool to the correct column, and instead its looking at the defualt (first column)

If the defualt option didnt exist, or was blank, the tool would then error telling me to think about what im doing and point the tool to the correct column. 

I believe this change in the tools defualt behaviour would save hours of debug time, wondering why my regex statment isnt working, when in actual fact im just looking at the wrong column. 

When working within the Table Tool, there are many options to help users format the width of their columns (i.e. Automatic, Fixed, or Percentage).

It would be nice to see an option added to disable word-wrapping.  Meaning, expand to encompass the header or data within the field so that each row is of uniform height regardless of the option:

Fixed:  The rest of the data would just be masked like in excel:

Percentage:  Same as fixed (above), but relative to the variable width...

Automatic:  Resizing to the required width, regardless.

• It would also be nice to have options under automatic, akin to constraints
  • Automatic, but with a maximum width of...
  • Automatic, but with a minimum width of....
• But regardless without word-wrapping

Why this matters:  When producing automation, especially for finalized outputs such as reports and tables; having maximum control over the output format is vital to ensuring downstream users don't have to continue to manipulate the output to suit their needs.  Maybe this isn't best practice, but when has customer demands ever taken a backseat to best practices!  😉

In the Table tool, is there a way to edit the bar graph's max and min values using a formula based on table values, rather than a fixed value? 

For Example, the automatic selection may choose bounds of 0 and 3324539 to include all values. Still, realistically, 100% needs to be a specific value from the table, with batch reports making this amount dynamic.  

The current update notification in Alteryx Designer can feel overly persistent and disruptive — especially for enterprise users whose Designer must stay compatible with an Alteryx Server version. Users often see repeated prompts to upgrade Designer to the newest version, even when doing so would break compatibility with their organization’s Server, which can cause errors, confusion, or rework.

Proposed Solution:

Server Version Awareness:
When Designer is connected to Alteryx Server, automatically check the Server version and suppress any upgrade prompt that would lead to a version mismatch.

Flexible Dismissal:
Allow users to snooze or permanently dismiss the update notification for the current version cycle - or dismisal longer than 30 days which is the current max - rather than re-seeing the prompt each launch.

Impact:

Prevents accidental incompatibility between Designer and Server

Reduces user frustration with repetitive prompts

Why This Matters:

Many organizations cannot upgrade Designer independently of Server, and compatibility mismatches lead to support tickets and lost productivity. A smarter, quieter update experience respects these realities and makes version management more reliable for everyone.

In complex Alteryx workflows, it can be hard to navigate between different tool containers - especially when there are dozens spread across in a large canvas.

I would love a feature where users could create a 'table of contents' using clickable text or bookmarks at the top of the workflow. For example, Clicking on a text label named 'Output Calculation' would automatically scroll to view to the Tool Container named 'Output Calculation'.

Suggested Implementation ideas : 

• Text boxes or Comment Tools support clickable links that scroll the canvas to a specific container or tool.
• Add a new 'Bookmark' or 'Jump To' action tied to container names or Tool IDs.
• Right click on a text label or container and choose 'Link to' or 'Scroll to this container'.
• Use CTRL + Click or ALT + Click behavior on a text comment to jump.

This would massively improve usability and workflow navigation, especially for large teams or workflows that are shared across departments.

Inspiration : 

Tools like POWER BI and TABLEAU allow similar dashboard or bookmark style navigation . Implementing this in Alteryx designer would be a game changer.

Hello,

The Data source window allow severla kind of connections like quick connect, ODBC, etc. But the order is not the same and this is confusing :

Best regards,

Simon

Currently the simulation sampling tool doesn't accept model objects from time series tools as a model input. It would be beneficial if it could so one could run simulations from Time series output (or a new tool is built to offer this functionality) 

The global constants, specifically the user-defined ones (within the Workflow configuration) are a great tool for making quick changes. I would love to be able to include the value of these constants directly within a comment: the Comment tool, the captions for Tool & Control Containers, or the Annotation of individual tools. My immediate use-case would be to clearly show what the constants are set to, directly on the canvas, though there are certainly a lot of other uses as well.

It would be great for the Run Until Selected Tool to be able to used on Browse tools. In complex workflows, it is useful for testing certain parts and investigating all records in the Browse component instead of the subset previewed in the previous tool leading up to the Browse tool.

Hello,

Could there be a way to explore the details of the results window by double-clicking on a value of the Browser profile?

Basically if the profile of a field in the Browser tells me that there are x records meeting that value, could they be selected by double-clicking on that value in the profile? A bit like when you explore the underpinning rows in a pivot table in Excel; if you want to see which records meet the criteria, you double-click on the value.

For example clicking twice either on the label or the count and the specific records would show.

I would like a function to be added that pulls the weekending date of an entered date.

For example, the week ending date for today, 2025-06-10 would be 2025-06-14.

It could be called DateTimeWeekEnd and look like DateTimeWeekEnd("2025-06-10","Saturday")

The value entered first would be a date or field with an optional parameter to choose Saturday or Sunday for the week ending date. I would think Saturday would be the default week ending date but I am not sure.