Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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 doesn't seem that Alteryx tests data that isn't on the same hard drive. If my data is located locally, Alteryx works great. If my data is located on a shared server, OMG it takes forever for it to do anything. Simply clicking off a tool onto the canvas can cause a 30-60 second freeze/wait. I literally spend about 1-3hrs per DAY waiting for Alteryx to simply load a tool view. 2024.2 is the worse so far, I have to wait for it to do anything.

It seems Alteryx is getting worse and worse at this, processing non-database data that isn't located locally on hard drive. My idea is to get better at this.

Hi,

I was wondering if would be great to have something like TEST RUN. Where it would check all settings of the tools. 

Example -  I have workflows that pull a lot of data, do some calculation and at the end they post to Tableau. It happens from time to time that my Table Token has expired so after running for like 3 hours I am getting error for the Tableau Tool. Or similar situation with output to excel to discovered that I have choose to Create not overwrite the sheet and have to re-run the workflow. 

It would save me a lot of time when I could just do a Test Run for all the tools to make sure that everything is set correct and I am good to run the workflow and start pulling down all the data. 

Not sure if this is possible but I am pretty sure that I am not the only one with this issue :)

sometimes we deal with hundreds of columns and it's hard to scroll and locate a specific one in the Data panel.

In the Metadata panel it's easier to locate the fields by scrolling vertically, however it would be even easier if we could click on the 'Name' column header and have that temporarily sorted so as to quickly locate a given column.  (This would be IDEA 1).

Additionally, but not necessarily dependent on IDEA1, if we could have the Record number of each of the fields in the metadata, also included alongside their respective names in the Data panel, that would make it for much easier location of particular fields in the Data panel, as users could look for a given field in the Metadata, find their 'order number' and then switch back to the Data panel and scroll directly to that number.

Additionally, column name search buttons could also be added to both Data/Metdata panels for a 'contains' like field name search.

Thanks!

I love the ability to cache data. Sometimes, I've cached too far and I need to go back and alter a tool's configuration or make some other cache-destroying change. I then have to recache somewhere and sometimes the dataset is so huge it is a pain. I'd love to create multiple cache points as a safety or backup.

Currently, you can only type forward in the Description Window in the Meta Info tab.  So once your description is in there for your workflow, you have to retype the information or type it in notepad and save it back in there. It would be nice if you could type on any previous line in that window.

It would be nice to also have some additional fields that appear to be common among the community, such as Data Sources and Purpose.  That way you could use the Description window for version notes and any other notes for the user.

Hey team,

I like the profiling function in the browser. Unfortunately, there is not built-in export function. Would it be possible to implement a function to export the profiling results into excel and PDF?

Thanks,

Christoph

This is a question which is somehow in between Designer and Gallery ideas.

When saving a workflow to the Gallery, the user can select the Assets (elements which are also copied to the Gallery). The point in time during the save process is a bit questionable from my perspective.

Often, I develop workflows locally until they reach a state in which I want to move them to the Gallery so that they can be included in Schedules or be made available to other users. I would like to be able to select which macros or datafiles are copied to the Gallery as well much earlier in the development process. From my perspective, it would be great if the user could set the Assets settings in the "Workflow Dependencies" window as well. I propose 3 possible values for each element (macro or data file):

• "Auto" → decide on asset when saving the workflow to the Gallery (current behaviour)
• "Yes" → Copy this element as asset in the Gallery
• "No" → Do not copy this element to the Gallery 
• "N/A" → The question does not apply to this row (e.g., directory)

It could look like this:

When I open I'd workflow, I'd like the option click on "something" to see content previous created for the workflow.  The content I'd use most frequently is:  How was the INPUT data obtained?  ALL of the Alteryx workflows I will be creating with my current employer will require some level of pre-build of the data sources.  I would like to document the pre-build requirements (could be pages of text, so "comments" aren't optimal) and be able to ask for them as needed.

Optimally, this feature would accept .docx, .pdf and other standard formats.  Another option would be to support a URL that would link me to the content.  For my purposes, this would be even more advantageous as all of our knowledge content is on-line.

One of things I like to do is select a bunch of tools and to see the collective performance of particular part of a workflow. It would be super cool if these stats were aggregated. 

I could imagine then you could run alternative solutions side by side and then just select the tools involved to compare.

Currently, Cache and Run Workflow cannot be used if there's a second branch of data which goes around the tool which you want to cache. This slows down intermediate runs especially in complex workflows with a lot of inter-dependencies.

For example:

If you want to cache at the formula "Do something", Alteryx will not allow this because a single temporary cache file at this tool will not be sufficient:

My suggestion is that Alteryx allows multiple cache files for one single cache event. In this case:

Proposed process:

1. Run the cache run from the initial source(s) of data (here the Text Input tool) via all tools needed to produce the output of the selected tool (here Formula "Do something"). In this case: Text Input, left Select, Formula.
2. Produce a cache file for every tool which has a connection towards outside of the direct tool chain. In this case: Cache file 2 (as Alteryx does it today), Cache file 1 (new behaviour)

This way, I could use Cache and Run Workflow much more often which would save me a lot of time. 

Currently,  using AMP Engine will cause any workflow that depends on Proxies to fail. This includes any API workflow or any workflow with Download tool, etc.

They will all fail with DNS Lookup failures.

Many newer features in Alteryx Designer are now dependent on using AMP Engine, making those features (such as Control Containers) totally useless when running inside a corporate network that uses proxies to the outside world.

Please re-examine the difference between how a regular non-AMP workflow processes such traffic vs how AMP does it, because AMP is broken!

Hi!

Under User Settings, if you could add options to change what Alteryx shows in the tool configuration window. Currently, it shows Field, Type, Size, Rename, Description. I've been using Alteryx for almost 20 years, I've never used the Description field for anything. If Alteryx provided the option to remove it from the view for users who never use it, then the Rename field would no longer get truncated, which is a field I think is more widely utilized.

There are certain constants available for use with the tools supporting formula, WorkflowFileName being one of them. This makes it possible to i.e. capture the date information in the workflow name using RegEx to dynamically filter a field by this information (especially useful in Analytic Apps).

Based on this example, I think it would be useful to make it possible for the users to use the container's name as a constant (such as CurrentContainerName), especially when it is necessary to add a hardcoded value to several tools and update the values i.e. periodically or client-based. This would also make it easier to track the hardcoded values used in the tools.

The Summarize tool returns NULL when performing a Mode operation. This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere in Alteryx documentation nor the community. Please fix this behaviour.

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??