Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

In the Overview pane - can you please show which tools have completed the current run, when viewing this pane during a canvas run?   That would allow for a progress check at a glance.

In short:
Add an option to cache the metadata for a particular tool so that it doesn't forget when using tool that have dynamic metadata such as batch macros or alteryx metadata engine can't resolve such as python tool.

Longer explanation:

The Problem:

One of the issues I often encounter when making dynamic workflows or ones that require calling external services is that Alteryx often forgets the metadata of what columns to expect. This causes the workflow to forget configuration of downstream tools when a workflow is first opened or when the metadata engine refreshes. There is currently the option to disable the metadata engine from automatically refreshing but this isn't a good option because you miss out on much of the value it brings.

Some of the common tools where I encounter this issue:

• Json parse
• Batch macros
• Python tool
• Regex parsing to rows

Solution:

Instead could we add an option to cache the metadata for a particular tool, this would save the metadata from the last time the workflow ran to within the workflows XML so that it persists when closed and reopened. Then when the metadata engine runs when it gets to this tool instead of resolving the metadata from the tool it instead uses the saved version in the XML. Obviously when it actually runs it would ignore this and any errors would still occur.

This could be an option in navigation pane of each tool. Mockup below:

This would make developing dynamic workflows far easier and resolve issues of configuration being lost when the metadata changes and alteryx forgets the options.

Similar to being able change the parameters of a tool using the interface tools, it could be very useful if Alteryx Designer had an option where the configuration of a tool can be modified by another tool's output (which can only consist of one row & column and may include line breaks/tab characters, only first row is used if there are multiple rows) while the workflow is running, therefore reducing the need to chain multiple apps.

This feature could be made possible as the "Control Containers" feature is now implemented, and it could work like below:

Suppose you need to write to a database and may need to specify a Pre-SQL statement or Query that needs to be dynamically changed by the result of a previous tool in the workflow.

In this case, as the configuration of a tool in the next container needs to be changed by the result of a previous formula, there would need to be an additional icon below the tools, indicating that the tool's result can be used for configuration change.

This icon which will appear below the tools will only be visible once at least one Control Container and an Action tool is added to the workflow, and will automatically be removed if all the control containers are removed from the workflow. User can change the configuration of the destination tool using an action tool, which must be connected to a tool in a container that will be run after the one it is contained in has finished running, as a tool (or several tools) that is contained in the next CC in the workflow needs to be dynamically modified before the container it is contained in is activated.

If a formula tool containing multiple formula fields is added to the action tool, the user will see all the formula outputs similar to connections (i.e. [#1], [#2]...) that can be used as a parameter.

The screenshot below demonstrates the idea, but please note that this is a change where adding an action tool may not mean that this workflow will need to become either a macro or an analytic app, so a new workflow type may or may not have to be defined, such as "Dynamic Configuration Workflow (YXDW)". Analytic Apps and Macros which utilize this feature could still be built without having to define a new workflow type.

I just noticed in a workflow I'm looking at, that I derived a column but after a bit of developing, forgot about it, so there it sat, unused.  It doesn't hurt anything, but it would be useful if that sort of thing would automatically generate a soft warning on the tool in question: e.g. any item not referenced downstream automatically generates an "Unused variable" warning.

Alteryx is very quick already but it world be useful to know the computational cost of different approaches to building a workflow using a lot of data. This would make it easier to know if your optimization to the workflow is working as expected and also which tools in particular are doing the work best. Other software such as Power BI has a performance analysis section which breaks down how each action impacted performance. 

It would be great to get a similar breakdown of how long each tool is taking to run in the results window. 

With the onset of Workflow Comparisons in V2021.3, it only seems natural to me that the next step would be a method of handling those changes. Maybe have some clickable dropdowns on the changed tools that have a few options as to what you'd like to do about them. I think the options to start off with would be "Apply this change to that workflow" and "Apply the other workflow's change to this one" along with the "Apply all of this workflow's changes to that one" and "Apply all of that workflow's changes to this one" somewhere in the header.

I know that I will occasionally get a request to change a workflow while I'm already in the middle of making a change to it or am waiting on approval for a change I've made and am hoping to implement. The current version control system on Server does not make it easy to implement multiple changes that may need to be implemented in an order other than the one in which they were started. The current process seems to be to merge them later by going through the whole process of selectively copying the changed tools and pasting/replacing them or otherwise manually modifying the tools to make them match.

Likewise, implementing the version merging proposed here will allow versioning strategies more akin to branches in git. One could more-or-less maintain two streams of changes until they were both complete and merge or productionize them as they're complete and ready.

The excel driver (.xlsx) converts these values to 0.  If you use the legacy excel driver (.xlsx) it brings in the #N/A values.  This issue was reported in the community and I am forwarding it to the New Idea as a problem that needs to be addressed on behalf of @JohnDoe.

In case of system crash/ upgrade, transfer of Alteryx license from one system to another system or from one user to another. User should be able to surrender/ borrow/ transfer license from one machine to another. This helps for more flexible use of product.

It would be handy if it were possible to order (i.e. right-click to drag, as in the Select Tool) ALL constants created by the user, including Question constants etc.

Problem:

Currently, the scheduling via designer controller is independent of the gallery. So, even after a canvas is deleted, the scheduler still continues to execute the cached version of the canvas, as long as the scheduler exists.

Note, this issue does not occur when the canvas is directly scheduled in the gallery, and only occurs when you schedule via the Designer on the controller directly.

Steps to replicate issue:

1) Publish a canvas into gallery

2)Schedule the canvas to run daily via the Designer --> Options --> View Schedules --> Select Controller --> Create new workflow and schedule

3) Delete the canvas from gallery

4) You will notice that the canvas is still getting run on the defined schedule, even though you have deleted the canvas

Observed in Alteryx 11.5.1

Idea Recommendation:

Golden copy of a canvas should be the version existing in the gallery. Once the gallery instance of the canvas is deleted/replaced with a new version,

• All related artifacts to the old version should be marked as "Deleted"
• All existing schedules should be stopped from being executed
• We should continue to retain all meta data attributes and execution history related to the old version (should not be wiped out) but clearly marked as archived/deleted

@SeanAdams @LizaNemchynova

Maybe this pointless but my guess is that memory usage could be as important as processing time and is probably a simple addition to the performance profiling feature.

When I run a Standard Workflow in the Designer, I can continue to work on other workflows, I can even run two workflows in parallel.

In contrast, when running an Analytical App in the Designer, the entire program is blocked and neither another workflow can be edited or run.

I propose to allow access to the Designer GUI also when running Analytical Apps.

Quite often, I would love to be able to use Browse tools already while the workflow is still running, if that specific Browse tool has completed (green box around). This would help to debug and save a lot of time.

In this case, the lower Browse tool would be enabled already now.

Current:

Currently in Result window we have datacleanse, fileter and sort functionality which makes life easier.

We dont have column Rename and Data type change functionality. In order to do that we need to drag a tool for the same for Rename of column.

Expectaion:

Result Tool should be capable enough to Rename column and Data type.

It will save a lot of time ,

Hello all,

EDIT : stupid me : it's an excel limitation in output, not an alteryx limitation :( Can you please delete this idea ?
I had to convert some string into dates and I get this error message (both with select tool and DateTime tool) :

ConvError: Output Data (10): Invalid date value encountered - earliest date supported is 12/31/1899  error in field: DateMatch  record number: 37399

This is way too early. Just think to birthdate or  geological/archeological data !

Also : other products such as Tableau supports earlier dates!

Hope to see that changed that soon.

Best regards,

Simon

I often have to cache my workflow at certain points to do further development/analysis since the run time is so long. I can't express how frustrating it is when i need to edit a formula tool that's like 2 tools behind the cache but the whole entire cache is lost when i have to edit it. why can't the cache be kept up until the tool that was edited??

Performance profiles work at the tool level. When I want to evaluate the performance of a group of tools, I have to click on them one at a time, log the performance, and calculate manually. I want to be able to click on a container full of tools or lasso some myself and view the granular and subtotaled performance profile.

Don't know if someone else already flagged this... however if you click on a tool link in the result window, while the workflow is running, the window doesn't go back to the "main view" until the workflow stops.

It's fine if the workflow takes a few minutes to run, but if you are trying to debug a heavy workflow and you click by mistake on a tool link halfway through... it's a bit annoying that you can't see the output messages until the end

I am working with client to modernize the way to provide data to core systems - in this case, Prophet.  

The data volume is huge, and the logic is complex, also some files are in legacy format, so AMP engine not able to deliver a satisfactory result.  

Appreciate if the team can work on AMP engine enhancement to help handling Flat files, or other tools so to make the workflow truly automated.  This will definitely help to justify the investment on server to clients with similar need.