Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi,

I am not sure if it is only me, but quite often, I am getting distracted. I believe I am not the only person bombarded by the amount of notification/ping on chat etc. That is the reason why quite often, I forgot what I am doing.

Let's imagine a scenario like this. I want to use the date-time parse function. First, I look at the data. I want to figure out what the format is, and I want to start writing a formula.

I know what format it is, and I am writing a formula in a formula tool. I remember the date was the first position but what was next? I got distracted. I don't know the original formula was structured.

Wouldn't it be cool to see the results from the previous tool still when working on the new one?

My workaround is to copy-paste pics into one note when I am working on something but I am not a big fan of a workaround like this 😀

For the Image Input Tool please add:

   1) A wildcard input for filename.

   2) A check-box to choose sub-folders.

When Alteryx Designer detects an existing 32-bit Oracle driver on a user's machine, it displays an error message saying  that it requires a 64-bit driver.  If there is no driver at all installed, it will go ahead and install one. 

Can we get Alteryx to simply prompt the user to install the 64-bit driver instead of the 32-bit driver present error message? 

(I know they can co-exist since removing the 32-bit driver will cause Alteryx to install its own 64-bit driver after which one can re-install the 32-bit driver.)

Thanks!

D

When outputting data to a spreadsheet, the default option is "output to a new sheet". The second time you run your process, you get an error unless you are amazing enough to remember to change the output option to "overwrite sheet".

If you change to "overwrite sheet" for the first run, it actually works just fine and creates the new sheet. 

Can Alteryx just eliminate the "output to a new sheet option" so that users will no longer be concerned that "Alteryx doesn't work" when they get this error after creating their first process? And the rest of us will be able to save the run time with an error, then the change of the option?

Thanks!

The option to "Disable all Tools that Write Output" doesn't currently affect the Publish to Tableau Server output tool.

Yes.  I'll admit it.  I have set up email events and forgot to enter my address into the 'to' field.  The upshot is that an error was occurring in my workflow, the tool went to email me, and then double borked because I hadn't filled in a recipient. 

Lots of tools error out without appropriate configuration applied, it shouldn't be too difficult to get this working on the events panel also. 

Thank you for attending my TED talk on improvements to the Events pane.

If you open a workflow in Designer from the Gallery, make some changes, and then attempt to save it back to Gallery (i.e., Ctrl-S), you receive the Save Workflow dialog (as per attached).  However, if you then realize that you want to make an additional change before saving the workflow and click 'Cancel', the workflow closes without saving.  The expected behavior would be for the Save Workflow dialog to close, but not the entire workbook.  This is terrible functionality and should be fixed because it results in lost work.  Thank you

When developing workflows, it would be great if there was a feature to be able to disable multiple containers at once, rather than having to click on each one individually, for example through selecting all of the required containers and right clicking "disable selected containers".

In the meantime, a workaround is to copy the portion of the workflow being developed onto a new canvas.

Whenever I output the Count using the Summarize Tool I am unable to tell it to sort the results by Count and am forced to grab a sort tool.  It would be nice to offer a sort option from within the Summarize tool itself instead of requiring a subsequent sort tool or to use the Results window to manually sort it.

I was exploring how to make the Outlook 365 tool run faster, and I noticed in my Action tool that there are Start and End Date parameters. However, they come across as these large numbers. I learned today from Alteryx Support that "The numbers you provided for StartDate (1725163200000) and EndDate (1726751052709) represent Unix timestamps in milliseconds. Unix timestamps indicate the number of milliseconds that have passed since January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC."

While I am attempting to build a custom macro myself, it feels like this enhancement could just be included in the tool itself! Relatively simply conversion using DateTimeDiff([#1],"1970-01-01 00:00:00",'milliseconds') 😊

Edit: it's there for the Calendar option, but ideally it could be included for the Email option too! And while you can you the search parameters, we could make it easier for the user.

Whenever I start something in Alteryx Designer which takes some time (e.g. opening a workflow), and I want to do something in another application in the meantime (e.g., Explorer), Alteryx Designer repeatedly catches the Windows focus back and brings Alteryx Designer to the front, interrupting my work in the other application. And Alteryx does this really multiple time during an action (often multi times per second), not even only when finished, causing me to  have to press Alt-Tab multiple times to get the other window in the front again).

First, this is annoying: If I purposely select a different tool to be in the front I want to work in that tool and not be disturbed by a different tool that catches the focus back.

Second: This cannot be good for performance. Sending the "I want the focus" signals to Windows also takes time.

Suggestion:

Switch off all requests for getting the focus in entire Alteryx Designer. Instead, the Alteryx entry in the task bar might blink once or twice in green when the background action is completed.

If there are people who like this catching focus thing, then please introduce a setting so that it's possible to switch it off.

When using "Find and Replace", the content of the search term field ("Find") is cleared when switching between workflow windows. From my perspective, there's no reason for that. Why does Alteryx Designer decide that I don't want to search for the same term in another workflow?

Please change that behaviour that content in "Find", "Search Locations", and "Replace:" are preserved when switching between Designer windows.

I have a sales column in my dataset that includes both a dollar sign and a period (e.g., '$320,000.00'). When I use the data cleaning tool and select 'Remove unwanted characters' with the punctuation checkbox, it removes both the dollar sign and the period. However, I only want to remove the dollar sign. It would be great if @Alteryx could allow users to specify which character they want to remove after selecting the punctuation checkbox. Thanks!

Hello team,

It would be really nice if user interface tool can be set with a default set up that will flow into the connected tool. Currently it will always been blank as no data flow in.

There are ways to bypass it as run the automation in Open Debug, but then if you want to amend the the automation you need to go back to the original WF and then run it again with Open Debug.

Of course you can set a static data for these fields however then you must remove them before saving it to the Gallery, which might create future errors if you are forgetting to delete the static data.

So if I added a Select Date, it will be nice if it will be possible to select a data in that tool and that date will reflected in the WF. It is less an issue at the development part as normally at that stage these tools will not be set up, however when you need to upgrade existing WF or amend one due to changes, that's were it will be very handy and will save a lot of time.

Improve the user experience by enable search filtering options in browse tool result just as in the canvas. See attached pics.

The management of connections, especially in a collaborative environment is not cohesive or intuitive.

1. When configuring an input tool for a server / gallery connection, hunting for the correct connection in a long list is quite frustrating.  There is no search, no sort and the list of connections does not sort in any logical order by default.
   SUGGEST:
   
   • List of Server Connections is sorted Alphabetically by default
   • Give the ability to search and sort
2. Add additional connection metadata
   • Primary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Secondary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Connection String (surface the server name and login name to the connections list, omitting the password)
3. Rethink the concepts of RCM, Gallery Connections and the external file method of storing credentials for In-DB connections.
   • Make one overarching, cohesive method of storing and sharing credentials across the platform.
   • Enable Artisans to create
   • Enable Artisans to share
   • Retire concept of external files to store credentials, as is used with In-DB connections

Few ideas for boosting the expression editor:

1) When writing expressions it can be hard to trace the matching brackets. Can we add some corresponding bracket colours to address this.

2) When I want to wrap an expression in brackets ([{or other symbols!}]) I have to manually add a bracket to the beginning and end of the expression. In Jupyter Notebooks (and many other softwares or IDEs), you can highlight a string, add a single bracket to it and it'll wrap the entire highlighted string with an opening and closing bracket. 

3) Multi-line cursor. This is a real gem of a feature if possible.

I will add a GIF that demonstrates all three together in action:

All the best,

BS

Would it be possible to Hide all annotations by default rather than each time a new workflow is created?   It's a simple thing but can save time.

Workflow configuration

Create a connector for Azure Cosmos DB, integrate it directly into their Alteryx workflows