Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi Team,

Alteryx designer to integration with VSTS/ GitHub to have multiple resources working on same workflow.

In current scenario we are facing issue if we have two developer that need to work on complex workflow and need to complete in short timeline.

Please have a thought around to see if there is any faster option to integrate.

Thanks In Advance.

Hey Alteryx,

Would it be possible for comment defaults to be "send to back"?

I use comments everywhere in my workflows and it's painful having to right click on each one and "send to back"

Ta

Do you often present your workflows to others within Alteryx, as opposed to just printing a PDF? Wouldn't be nice to have a formatted heading that describes your workflow?

I'm sure you may already be adding and formatting nice headers, like many of our Alteryx tools. For example, the Filter tool:

However, once you begin to scroll down the headers disappear. I recommend we add the ability to freeze the canvas. In this scenario, I would want to view this Header no matter how far I scroll down or right. This would be extremely beneficial when presenting to stakeholders. Additionally, it would be nice to have this repeat on each page, when printed!

Thanks,

Mark

We are using Alteryx designer to bulk upload to Snowflake database. We also use Alteryx Connect to pick up metadata from Snowflake. It would be awesome if the designer can add table and field description and snowflake loader can pick up the description automatically. 

As of now, the metadata loader doesnt pick up metadata content in real time. This feature will motivate our analysts to document which will improve Connect adoption in our department. 

My employer just started with Alteryx, so I'm sure after a few months, this will be basic simple, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has made this mistake, so there you go...

I was running a larger workflow that ends with outputting a table with about 80 columns.  Everything was working fine, except for one column, which kept coming up as all 0s.  Took me a while to find it, but the error all traced back to an error I made with a "Contains" function in a Formula node.

The Alteryx "Contains" function takes two arguments, 'string' and 'target'.  I interpreted this as 'find this string in this target variable', and entered two arguments: the string of characters I was looking for first, and then the name of the column I wanted to search in second. 

I think I had this backwards.  You need to enter the column name first, then the substring you want to look for second.  So the column name is the 'string' and the search term is the 'target'.  Me getting these reversed did not produce any errors or warnings, which I understand (e.g. maybe you might want to pairwise search for the text in one column in the text of another).

I think the terms 'string' and 'target' are kind of vague labels in this case (in Excel, for example, the analogous "Search" function takes the arguments 'find_text' and 'within_text', which is a lot harder to misinterpret).  So I would suggest changing the argument names in Designer and the online documentation, or at least adding text to the Alteryx Documentation (https://help.alteryx.com/2019.2/Reference/Functions.htm) that clarifies which is which.

Normally, I'd say this is a pretty minor thing, but since this is a potential 'silent error', I'd argue it's worthwhile.

(Also, the online documentation seems to imply there is a "CaseInsensitive" argument you can pass to "Contains", however I don't think there actually is.  May want to edit that for clarity.)

Thanks!

Problem:

When searching for Alteryx help on Google the search results rarely return the current version of the Help documentation from the Alteryx website. Instead, what often happens is that an old version of the Help documentation is returned.

For example, a search for 'Run Commend Tool Alteryx' returns links for the 2018.3 and 11.3 instances of the help page:

These relate to prior versions of Alteryx and a better result would be to link to the /current/ version of the page (the URL for which never changes).

https://help.alteryx.com/current/RunCommand.htm

The problem above can be replicated for almost any tool or variant of search terms.

Since Google is such a crucial resource for troubleshooting, there is a risk that (a) users will inadvertently access out of date documentation and (b) users will be confused by the presence of multiple search results.

Solution:

By adding a 'robots.txt' file to web pages for prior versions of the tool these results can be suppressed from Google search results.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en

This should result in the /current/ documentation pages rising in search results and being more prominent when users search for help on Alteryx using Google.

When you drag a comment box into a workflow it should sit underneath all other data tools by default.

Currently, the order of tools is set by the order of placement (that is, tools placed in the workflow first are placed below subsequently placed tools).

When selecting a colour for a container I would like to be able to click randomize and let Alteryx pick the colour, however I would like the option to click 'random new colour' so it picks a colour not already used in a container on the current workflow  I should then be able to customize the transparency as per normal.

As an enterprise customer, we need to know that Alteryx products are kept secure.

Please post vulnerabilities and fixes, and provide a way for me to subscribe to these alerts.

Hi,

Please provide users the option of downloading course videos and transcripts. If it is already there, please let me know.

Regards,

Meenakshi

Dear Alteryx GUI Gang,

I'll create a container and then customize the colours, margins, transparency, border and then want consistency for other containers.  It would be nice to have a format painter function (brush) to apply the format of one container to another.  This of course could be extended to other tools like comments.  There might be a desire to apply this to more tools too, but the comments and containers would be my focus as they are almost always custom configured.

Cheers,

Mark

Hello,

From my experience, an SSD drive allows a big improvement of performance when the RAM is not sufficient and Alteryx has to swap on the temp storage location. It really changes the user experience. Also, I noted a correlation with the AlteryxProcessManager::Start : ConnectNamedPipe :  error : I think it happens less with a SSD.

Given that, shouldn't be a requirement or at least a recommandation?

Make the Container Caption Font Size Adjustable

I find it helpful to see the entire workflow at once.  It would be very helpful for the container size font to be adjustable.  For example, I am documenting a workflow with many containers and tools.  The containers represent segments of my workflow.  When I am looking at or printing the entire workflow, the container heading is too small to be read.  If the font size were adjustable, it could be increased to be readable and still fit easily into the length of the container.  

Thanks to zuojing80 and tcroberts for their comments on 9/10/2018.

Now that spell check is implemented ( https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Spell-Check-in-Documentation-Tools/idc-p/343... ), it doesn't work like I expected.

To quote Jpoz :

The language check is based upon the language you selected in the installer when you installed Alteryx.

However, on my computer, Alteryx is set in French. On some project, documentation is also in French, on some others, especially when I have to work with foreign coworker, it's in english.

Can we imagine a language by workflow file, with a default coming from the settings. Something like that :

UI language (User settings)

Default WF language (User settings, if not manually changed, coming from UI language)

WF Language (linked the ywwf/yxmd/yxmc file coming from Default WF)

It would be AWESOME if Alteryx had a feature to export logic that is within the workflow into a Visio, PDF, or Excel document to support documentation. Documentation isn't 'fun', but it is important/necessary.

Can a spell check option be included that will check the spelling in the comment tool text box and tool container captions?

Ideally a global check would be nice for the annotation section of each tool, especially if it can be determined if I changed the annotation from the default one on some tools.

When saving my workflows to the gallery I'd like to see the description field be populated with the text I used during the last save. I like to add text here and it is frustrating to have to re-type it every time.

On the Reporting palette, the Map Legend Builder tool has an extra "the" in the tooltip. I have enclosed an image below. Full disclosure: it isn't a bug, it doesn't affect functionality, and it's trivial. This is version 2018.3.4.51585.