Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

In a previous lifetime I spent a lot of time developing data processing workflows in Microsoft Access before moving into Alteryx as my primary data processing tool. Although Alteryx is, on the whole, vastly more feature rich than Access, Access has a couple of very simple features which Alteryx could integrate into the Browse tool to significantly improve its usability. In particular, I am suggesting the option to add a totals/summary row to the browse tool to calculate basic statistics for columns on demand. 

Attached is a screenshot of a totals row for a dummy table in Access. As you can see, a user can select from various summary statistics including sum, average, count etc. 

Almost every day I export data from the browse tool to Excel multiple times, simply to calculate column totals. A totals row in the browse tool would remove a major source of reasons for me to export to Excel and would significantly increase the browse tool's usefulness. 

Dynamic macros that fetch the current version at every run time vs storing a static copy of the macro with the workflow at publish time are challenging to pull off using shared drives. 

This suggestion is to store dynamic macros in the gallery and secure their use with collections.

Right click + "Insert After" and Right click + "Paste After" should behave the same. In the picture below I show the two cases. Currently, the "Insert After" option inserts a tool between the selected tool and the tools after it. The "Paste After" creates a new branch with the pasted tool. I think the "Paste After" should behave the same as the "Insert After": paste the tool on the existing branches. In case we want to create a new branch, we will paste the tool and connect a new branch to it.

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.

Being able to specify a name for the FileName field in the Input Tool configuration would be helpful for cases where a field named FileName is already present in the input data and has a different purpose than the newly added FileName field. Instead of having to use Field Info and other tools to rename the last field into something else (i.e. AYX_FileName), this would be an easier approach.

The C API for e1 is included in the Designer Desktop installation. The new AMP engine must have a C API as well, but it has not been released publicly.

Let tool and SDK makers create custom tools that plug into the AMP engine by releasing the specifications of the AMP C API.

Sometimes when creating a workflow, or a chained application I create fields or parameters in a formula tool and need to be able to quickly copy and paste the entire formula output column into another formula tool across a different part of the workflow / entirely different workflow.

This most often happens when standardizing fields across different data streams. We have the ability to save expressions, but if you save too many that can quickly get messy. We also have the ability to copy and paste a formula within a formula output column...so why not extended the functionality slightly to copy/paste the entire formula output column?

In this proposed enhancement a user could right click on the 3 lines at the top left of the formula section and copy/cut a formula output column between formula tools:

When I work I typically have 2 to 3 screens at my desk, or an oversized single screen. Being able to take the results window and float it on to my second monitor is great as it allows me to view more canvas and more data results in one setup. However the results window will not maximize or dock to my second window, would be great for it to have this Windows feature. 

I hope have a flexibility to adjust the print area workflow.

in the canvas.

it similar to excel print area, so we can adjust all the area easily.

for security. it may add function to check whether all tools is covered in print areas.

it is hard to cut the workflow to pieces when it is huge. 

Alteryx can enhance the interactive dashboard capabilities by adding more visualization options, such as heat maps, treemaps, and network diagrams. This will allow users to create more informative and engaging dashboards, and enable them to better communicate insights to stakeholders. For example, Alteryx can add support for heat maps and treemaps, allowing users to visualize data density and distribution, or network diagrams, allowing users to visualize relationships between data points.

Alteryx should take a look at the BI platform so they can integrate the Dashboard Capability and remove the dependency of Visualization tool and become one stop solution

It would be great if I could see my save history in the debug menu. Currently it looks like this:

I'm not asking to be able to undo saves, I just want to be able to see where the workflow was saved within this menu so that I can easily see what actions have been taken since my last save. 

When we use search option it might be helpful to see also tool category where we can find searching tool.

I think adding a highlight color option to the fields in the select tool would be a helpful field organization feature. Many times I am appending data/joining data, and I would like to visually separate the original fields from the appended ones, and then sort on the highlight colors chosen--and maintain these colors through the workflows. For example my raw data customer fields would be highlighted in blue: ID, First Name, Last Name, Address and my appended ones in, say, yellow: (marketing fields such as Dwelling Type, Household Composition, etc). Then it would allow to easily sort and visualize by append through the workflows.

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 ,

The look of the canvas is important. Being able to toggle between viewing classic icons (as seen throughout this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwgYYP_xlA), to the extent available, and current icons would provide users with more variety. As a secondary benefit (when toggled to show the classic icons), users would be able to differentiate between the tools that are not classic (i.e., the newer tools that don't have an older design) and the classic tools.

Thank you very much.

I am facing an issue regarding the result window. The tabbed document function is disable for the result window. I did not see the entire result window. Kindly find the below mentioned screenshot for your reference.

Request to reverse the feature.

The current Export Workflow user experience is extremely frustrating and it sometimes takes me several attempts to export the workflow with all of the correct assets. Some ideas for improving the UX:

• Allow the width of the window to be expanded or maximized. I often have many assets that start with the same folder structure name and I have to scroll to the right for each one to decide whether to check or uncheck it. 

•  Have a display option for "Group asset by Type" (e.g., Input, Output, Macro). I typically only package up my workflows with the embedded macros, not the Inputs or Outputs. (This is especially important during development and testing, when interim yxdb's are saved to facilitate QC and trouble-shooting.) I would like an easy way to "Check all Macros" without having to go through the list one-by-one. I may have over 100 assets; with the current UX, it's really hard to get all the right assets checked.

• Add an option to filter the display to see only the assets that have been checked. 
• Add a way to copy the asset list (checked and/or unchecked) to the clipboard. This would allow us to confirm that all of the assets needed are included BEFORE EXPORTING. 
• Add an option Select All or Deselect All 

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??

ARIMA, ETS, TS Forecast, TS Covariate Forecast are difficult to differentiate, more distinct icons would improve differentiation on the canvas.