Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Block-Until-Done could be improved through adding time delay option settings between steps 1,2 and 3. An Excel workbook, for example, must be opened and closed before it can be reread or multiple tabs appended which takes time for a computer to process. Often a workaround or custom macro must be used to account for this time delay. A time delay feature directly in the tool would enable a user to customize the delay period between steps and allow for functions external to Alteryx to complete before next step is taken without macros or workarounds. If no option(s) is selected, default parameters would apply.

Hi, currently using the reporting tools, you need to use the render tool to output it, which makes sense.

However, is there away to render an output when using a connector tool e.g. sharepoint output

Additional formatting functionality would be great to see in the Interface Designer.

First off, I want to acknowledge other submitted ideas (vote for them too!):

• Allow Drag and Drop in Interface Designer - Alteryx Community
• Alteryx Interface Designer - Place Element Where S... - Alteryx Community

Both of these are great suggestions and I want to show support of them as well!

To take it another step further from targeted placement or drag/drop... I would also like to see new objects included in the ADD menu.  We have Groupings but I'd like to see horizontally split groupings.  Meaning, I want the ability to place two Date Inputs next to each other, or short prompts across instead of listed vertically.

Example:

Why this matters:  If Alteryx aspires to be a bonofied contender in the Analytic Application space (which I think it is), then we need added functionality that puts a greater emphasis on the user-experience side of things.  Because as we know, user acceptance, ease of use, and adoption all depend on a clean presentation for the elements they interract with.

If you agree, your "thumbs up" of support is only one click away!

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.

In the Table tool, is there a way to edit the bar graph's max and min values using a formula based on table values, rather than a fixed value? 

For Example, the automatic selection may choose bounds of 0 and 3324539 to include all values. Still, realistically, 100% needs to be a specific value from the table, with batch reports making this amount dynamic.  

In complex Alteryx workflows, it can be hard to navigate between different tool containers - especially when there are dozens spread across in a large canvas.

I would love a feature where users could create a 'table of contents' using clickable text or bookmarks at the top of the workflow. For example, Clicking on a text label named 'Output Calculation' would automatically scroll to view to the Tool Container named 'Output Calculation'.

Suggested Implementation ideas : 

• Text boxes or Comment Tools support clickable links that scroll the canvas to a specific container or tool.
• Add a new 'Bookmark' or 'Jump To' action tied to container names or Tool IDs.
• Right click on a text label or container and choose 'Link to' or 'Scroll to this container'.
• Use CTRL + Click or ALT + Click behavior on a text comment to jump.

This would massively improve usability and workflow navigation, especially for large teams or workflows that are shared across departments.

Inspiration : 

Tools like POWER BI and TABLEAU allow similar dashboard or bookmark style navigation . Implementing this in Alteryx designer would be a game changer.

Currently, this option is available in the SharePoint Input tool, which will only output a list of files/items found in the directory specified, which is helpful in cases where we need to add some comparison logic to avoid reading a file that have been processed already (in like a data copy type of scenario). However, this feature was not included in the other connectors (Azure Data Lake File Input, One Drive Input, Box Input, etc.).

Additionally, including an optional input anchor to feed in a list of files to read would also be extremely helpful, similar to a Dynamic Input tool, and avoid the need of creating a Batch macro to perform this operation.

Currently the simulation sampling tool doesn't accept model objects from time series tools as a model input. It would be beneficial if it could so one could run simulations from Time series output (or a new tool is built to offer this functionality) 

The global constants, specifically the user-defined ones (within the Workflow configuration) are a great tool for making quick changes. I would love to be able to include the value of these constants directly within a comment: the Comment tool, the captions for Tool & Control Containers, or the Annotation of individual tools. My immediate use-case would be to clearly show what the constants are set to, directly on the canvas, though there are certainly a lot of other uses as well.

It would be great for the Run Until Selected Tool to be able to used on Browse tools. In complex workflows, it is useful for testing certain parts and investigating all records in the Browse component instead of the subset previewed in the previous tool leading up to the Browse tool.

I only have 2023.2, hoping to get 24.2 soon, so I haven't been able to try the newest color feature, but my idea is additional columns in the Navigation panel of a tool to update multiple connection features in one place (names and color at the moment). I'm using Python, and I have a variety of data inputs I would like to be able to easily reference in my code. Currently default names are #1, #2, based on order of connection. Similarly, I know for tools that accept multiple inputs, like Union and Join Multiple, this could also be useful if needing to reorder based on the connection names. I'm also not sure how this ties in to the color feature as described in Connection Configuration, but this could also be a good place to change colors of multiple connections at once instead of clicking into each connection. This would also require this list to allow for multiple selection at the same time, as right now you can't hold shift and select multiple lines.

Currently, the Marketplace Add-ons interface when opened within Designer only contains the more significant, Alteryx made tools:

Which is a very useful feature, however if the tool I want to download is not on this limited list (or, I want a particular version), I still need to go through the Marketplace to download this.

It would be great if this functionality had all tools on the Marketplace included - potentially with the option to filter to Alteryx made tools only.

Cheers!

Given that the current Iterative type Macro will hold each iteration output in memory, to merge it all at the end of the iterations, wouldn't it make sense to have a checkbox for "Large Data Sets" where each iteration's output is stored to a tmp file, to be merged after the iterations stop?

As it is, holding multiple iterations in memory may often be too much data for a PC, no matter how hefty.  By off-loading the memory objects to a tmp file and only holding the currently working iteration in memory, speed and efficiency would be gained.

This is especially critical when using Iterative Macros to cycle through APIs (pagination) and while each individual data pull may be small enough, they quickly grow in memory as each data pull is added to the in-memory object.

In CrossTab tool, it have Total Row and Total Column as option. 
For Total Row, it work all the sum, count, and avg etc.
but for "Total Column", it only sum (even i not select the sum)

To solved this I suggest to add Total Column for Count, Avg and etc.

version 2024.2

Is there a way to update workflow constants in analytic apps using an interface tool?

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 :)

I have to switch to using alternate software anytime I need to input a file where the spatial projection is not recognized by the input tool for a spatial object field.

I would really like to see an option added to the input tool that allows custom designation of a spatial projection. Allowing manually choosing the projection and being able to open a ".prj" (or something similar) for Alteryx to use when ingesting the data.

As many Alteryx Designer users are already aware, there is an option to connect a tool to multiple tools at once by right clicking on it and selecting View Possible Connections.

I would like to suggest an enhancement for this feature, which I think will make it even easier to connect multiple tools.

Scenario 1

Suppose you drag & dropped many Append tools to existing connections as you realized you needed to add an extra information to your data. For example, a year input from a Text Input tool that is modified by the interface tool. If there were 30 Append tools, you would have to select all those available "ID - Append Fields S" checkboxes one by one.

Scenario 2

You added multiple Input Data tools to canvas but don't want to select them individually to connect them to a single Union tool.

Idea

If there were a group checkbox for each tool category on each side (Output Connections and Input Connections), creating multiple connections would be as easy as clicking on the group checkbox on the Append Fields category on the Input Connections side (for Scenario 1) or clicking on the group checkbox for Input Data category on the Output Connections side (for Scenario 2).

Allow the user to select which type of Join is happening in the join tool. Allow the J anchor to output the join type within a radio option in the tool configuration. Right now the J anchor outputs matches in both inputs. New suggestion would allow the user to select a Right Outer or Left Outer join without having to use a Union tool after the Join.