Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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Featured Ideas

Very often, I used a container to make notes about certain parts of the workflow. Some of the comments that I created are pretty long. Could the user have the possibility to have at least rows for the title of the container?

 

Emil_Kos_0-1627035618539.png

I have created a screen to show what I have in mind. Potentially users could have the ability to turn this option on or inside the container?

Emil_Kos_1-1627035835238.png

 

  • Enhancement

Hi

 

The action of the 'tab' key in configuration window recently appears to have changed from indenting to a navigation function. 

 

The user should be able to select which action the tab key performs. 

 

Alternatively, tab should indent and shift-tab (or alternative) navigate. I'm not the only one who would appreciate the choice.

 

PuffinPanic

 

It would be great if we could add example workflows to our macros, accessible in the same way as from the original tools (example hyperlink shown after single-clicking on a tool in the tool palette or when searching in the search bar).

 

There is a post on how to do it for custom tools How to add an example link in the custom tool (alteryx.com). The way described there has limitations and does not seem to work on macros: I was able to get the link to show up, but nothing happens when I click.

 

My suggestion, make it easy to add an example workflow to a macro, like it is to change the logo or add a help link.

example workflow.png

The Edit menu allows you to see what your next undo/redo actions are. This is super helpful, however sometimes I decide to scrap an idea I was starting on and need to perform multiple undo's in a row. It would be great if we could see a list of actions like in the debug undo/redo stack menu then select how many steps we'd like to undo/redo.

 

For example, using the below actions, if I want to undo the Change Summarize Properties and also the Modify Summarize, currently I have to do that in two steps. I'd like to be able to click the Modify Summarize and have the workflow undo all commands up to and including that one.

Kenda_0-1661880963011.png

 

  • Enhancement

In the RecordID tool,  provide additional options for the creation of the ID, specifically allow for the ID to 'Intervals'. 

For example, Record ID every 10, meaning instead of creating an ID of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 .... you could create an interval of your choosing, the most obvious would by 10 or 100  thus your ID's would then be 10, 20, 30, 40 ....  or  100, 200, 300, 400, 500 ... etc. 

 

 

Enable files as inputs to Alteryx that have been protected with either Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)

 

From: Alteryx Support <support@alteryx.com>
Sent: 04 February 2022 22:43
To: candice.darcybryant@alteryx.com
Cc: Sundaramoorthy, Nishanth-XT <nishanth.sundaramoorthy@ubs.com>; clientsvcs@alteryx.com; Bignell, Nicholas <nicholas.bignell@ubs.com>; chiggins@alteryx.com; Jaganathan, Prasanth-Ram <prasanth-ram.jaganathan@ubs.com>
Subject: [External] Case #00528349 - Fw: Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) [ ref:_00DE0JJZ4._5002R1On7Ru:ref ]

 

Hi Candice,

Thanks for reaching out. At this juncture, formal validation of data sources with AIP or MIP applied has not been conducted. Coincidentally, earlier this week, another user submitted an inquiry pertaining to Sensitivity Labels of MIP. They had observed that files with their organization's "Confidential" label applied were unable to be input within workflows.

Similar to password protected or encrypted files, Sensitivity Labels (and other AIP/MIP implementations) may be configured in a manner that prevents drivers (e.g. Excel) of Designer from reading the file. For any incompatibility that's observed within data sources with AIP or MIP applied, it's recommend to submit an Idea as to the Designer application supporting the scope of these implementations. Our Product and Engineering Teams actively monitor Ideas to help ensure we're delivering the best product experience to our users.

Thanks for writing in.

Best,

–Josh
Sr. Customer Support Engineer | Alteryx
 

You may be selected to participate in a short feedback survey. Any comments regarding your experience will help to ensure we're delivering the best support. Thanks!




--------------- Original Message ---------------
From: Candice D'Arcy-Bryant [candice.darcybryant@alteryx.com]
Sent: 2/4/2022 1:59 AM
To: clientsvcs@alteryx.com
Cc: nishanth.sundaramoorthy@ubs.com; nicholas.bignell@ubs.com; chiggins@alteryx.com; prasanth-ram.jaganathan@ubs.com
Subject: Fw: Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)


Hi Support,

 

Please could you provide the options we have for files protected with either Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) to be used as inputs to Alteryx?

 

 

Please let us know if you require additional information.

 

Many thanks,

 

Candice D’Arcy-Bryant  

Strategic Customer Success Manager | +44 (0) 7872 959 067 

ca?ndice.darcybryant@alteryx.com | alteryx.com

 

 

Upcoming Out of Office:

February 07-11, 21-25

 

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Alteryx UK Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 08806138.  Its registered office is located at 5 New Street Square, London EC4A3TW.  

 

This email and any files transmitted are for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.  Any unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited.  If you have received this email in error and are not an intended recipient, please contact the sender and remove it from your system.

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From: Bignell, Nicholas <nicholas.bignell@ubs.com>
Sent: 03 February 2022 10:15
To: Candice D'Arcy-Bryant <candice.darcybryant@alteryx.com>
Cc: Sundaramoorthy, Nishanth-XT <nishanth.sundaramoorthy@ubs.com>; Jaganathan, Prasanth-Ram <prasanth-ram.jaganathan@ubs.com>; Craig Higgins <chiggins@alteryx.com>
Subject: RE: Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)

 

Hi Candice.

 

Seems there is an internal programme to implement this.

 

I have been contacted by three teams so far in the IB,  IB FX trading and IB Operations and IB Risk management.

 

 

In terms of potential impact it could be bank wide, but seems to be starting with the IB since November last year.

 

The program site (called DRM internally) states:

 

The Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution helps us manage data more effectively by putting a 'digital lock' on highly sensitive files. This means that even when a file is lost by accident, the external person who finds it cannot access its contents. These DRM classified and protected files can still be accessed and edited internally by UBS employees.

After a file has been classified according to its level of sensitivity DRM will automatically encrypt files if they are classified as 'confidential' or 'strictly confidential'. The classification and protection of a file can be set manually, or is automatically set for downloads of reports from applications that contain sensitive information or for users that have access to CID from specific applications (see details in the DRM guideline).

DRM is available globally in UBS.

 

Thanks Nick

 

From: Candice D'Arcy-Bryant <candice.darcybryant@alteryx.com>
Sent: 03 February 2022 09:32
To: Bignell, Nicholas <nicholas.bignell@ubs.com>
Cc: Sundaramoorthy, Nishanth-XT <nishanth.sundaramoorthy@ubs.com>; Jaganathan, Prasanth-Ram <prasanth-ram.jaganathan@ubs.com>; Craig Higgins <chiggins@alteryx.com>
Subject: [External] Re: Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)

 

Hi Nick,

 

Yes, I'm enquiring internally and will get back to you as soon as I have some information.

 

In the meantime, it would be good to understand:

  • Who is impacted by this issue?
  • What the impact is?
  • Where in the business this is being felt the most?
  • How many users / workflows are affected by this?
  • When did this first start to affect users / workflows?

Many thanks,

 

Candice D’Arcy-Bryant  

Strategic Customer Success Manager | +44 (0) 7872 959 067 

ca?ndice.darcybryant@alteryx.com | alteryx.com

 

Upcoming Out of Office:

February 07-11, 21-25

 

*******************************************************************************************************************

Alteryx UK Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 08806138.  Its registered office is located at 5 New Street Square, London EC4A3TW.  

 

This email and any files transmitted are for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.  Any unauthorized use or disclosure is prohibited.  If you have received this email in error and are not an intended recipient, please contact the sender and remove it from your system.

*******************************************************************************************************************

 

From: Bignell, Nicholas <nicholas.bignell@ubs.com>
Sent: 03 February 2022 08:48
To: Candice D'Arcy-Bryant <candice.darcybryant@alteryx.com>
Cc: Sundaramoorthy, Nishanth-XT <nishanth.sundaramoorthy@ubs.com>; Jaganathan, Prasanth-Ram <prasanth-ram.jaganathan@ubs.com>
Subject: Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)

 

Hi Candice

 

Can you investigate what options we have for users that want use files as inputs to Alteryx that have been protected with either Azure Information Protection (AIP) or Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)

 

Thanks Nick



ref:_00DE0JJZ4._5002R1On7Ru:ref

While the result window allows sorting and filtering, every time the user switches to another tool within the same run, the configuration is lost. It would be good if there was a 'Retain" button so that the user does not have to keep setting this each time the tool is switched or when the canvas is retriggered.

  • Enhancement

Hello,

I think the option Overwrite File (Remove) shouldn't throw an error if the file is not present

simonaubert_bd_0-1625302116528.png

Or, I don't know, make 2 options : one with fail if file is missing, the other to not fail.

This idea is the same than https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Overwrite-Table-for-output-write-indb-should... but for files.

Best regards,

Simon

We will not be enabling DCM for the time being (see https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Enable-auto-complete-predictive-typi...).  

 

But, when you do not enable DCM, you get an annoying pop up every time you open Designer that says "DCM toggle is not enabled". 

 

Please give us the ability to turn this pop up off.

  • Enhancement

Please update the Render tool to allow users to name the Excel sheet for the output. Alteryx currently errors when using same naming convention that works in normal Output tool.

Note: This idea doesn't strictly fit into any given category as it involves enabling support for something that affects numerous aspects of Alteryx's already existing spatial features.

 

I live in Australia. As do a large number of your users. Like me, many of those users use Alteryx to process spatial data. There is only one problem; we live on a roving continent. Every year our continent shifts ever so slightly but over time that shift becomes significant. For this reason we have our own continental system of spatial coordinate projections. It's called the Geocentric Datum of Australia or GDA.

 

Since 2000, the official Australian geodetic datum has been GDA94.  However, according to the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), because the coordinates of features on our maps, such as roads, buildings and property boundaries (and so on), are all based on GDA94, they do not change over time. This is why they have since adopted a new datum: GDA2020. This has now become the standard for mapping in Australia, bringing Australia’s national coordinates into line with global satellite positioning systems.

 

A more detailed explanation of this can be found on the ICSM's website: What is changing and why? | Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (icsm.gov.au).

 

Of course Alteryx supports the more global WGS84 standard, which like GDA94 is a fixed datum. But there is up to a 1.8 metre discrepancy between GDA94 (and WGS84) and GDA2020. For spatial analysis projects that don't require metre accuracy that's not a problem. But imagine you are building a bridge, plotting the lanes of a road or programming a GPS enabled tractor. That 1.8 metre discrepancy between the real world coordinates and the projection is enough to cause problems. 

 

And it is. Which is why we request that Alteryx include support for GDA2020 in its existing selection of spatial projections.

 

This will enable spatial datasets configured in GDA2020 to not require conversion and thus risk corruption or error. This includes providing the ability to configure GDA2020 as the spatial projection in the input tool and all spatial tools.

 

Doing so would go a long way to supporting your ever growing Australian user base and maintaining Alteryx's position as a trusted software for processing spatial data.

  • Enhancement

Add Unicode category to the cleansing tool

It would be oh so nice to be able to copy a container's properties and paste those formatting options onto other containers.  It could be accomplished through a Paint Brush icon on CTRL-Copy and Right Click to paste format.  either way it would save setting the Color (multi-step select), Margin, transparency.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Please consider implementing a consistent case-sensitive option for all tools and functions.

 

To compare string values, including case-sensitivity:   This post had a good description of the challenge, but the post has been archived:

   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/IF-equation-ignoring-case-BUG/m-p/4170...

   For all the time I've used Alteryx, I thought that IF "test" = "TEST" would evaluate to false. Today I realised that isn't the case and I was surprised. I'm very surprised that "equals" performs like it does.

 

A few existing Ideas request case-sensitivity for individual tools:

   Case insensitive option while joining two data sets
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Case-insensitive-option-while-joinin...

 

   Unique tool enhancement - deal with case sensitive data
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Unique-tool-enhancement-deal-with-ca...

 

 

This new Idea requests system-wide consideration for case-sensitivity, for all tools and functions.

 

Current state:

 

These tools and functions are case-sensitive:

  • Tool: Join
  • Tool: Tile
  • Function: FindString
  • Functions: MD5_ASCII, MD5_UNICODE, MD5_UTF8

These tools and functions are NOT case-sensitive:

  • Tool: Unique
  • Function: CompareDictionary

These tools and functions can be either case-sensitive or NOT case-sensitive, depending on the options used:

  • Function: Contains
  • Function: EndsWith
  • Function: StartsWith
  • Functions: REGEX_Match, REGEX_Replace, REGEX_CountMatches

Current Challenges:

   How do we easily identify Lower Case, Upper Case, Mixed Case?

   How do we easily compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity?

 

Request:

   Ensure all tools and functions include an option to ignore or consider Case

   Create new functions for IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase

   Create a new function for IsEqual, with an option to ignore or consider Case

 

See attached workflow, which

  • uses REGEX_Match to create 3 new fields: IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase
  • creates a field [Flag: Original value IsEqual, case-sensitive], to compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity

 

As an international organization we deal with clients in multiple-countries.

 

Name matches for names including Chinese characters generate a unicode conversation warning and are excluded from the fuzzy match.

 

It would be good if fuzzy match could be enhanced to handle Chinese characters.

When you start using DCM - you may have existing canvasses which use regular old connection strings which you want to migrate to DCM.

 

Currently (in 2023.1.1.123) - when you select "Use Data Connection Manager" - it shreds the configuration of your input tool which makes it difficult to just convert these from an existing connection to a DCM connection

SeanAdams_0-1685363363519.png

 

 

The only way to then make sure that you don't lose any configuration on the tool then is to use the XML editing functionality of the tools and copy across your old configuration.

 

Could you please add the capability to keep my current tool configuration, but just change from using a regular old connection string to using DCM?

 

Many thanks 

Sean

 

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

 

Sometimes, Control Containers produce error messages even if they are deactivated by feeding an empty table into their input connection.

 

screenshot_error_in_spite_control_container_deactivated.png

(Note that this is a made up example of something which can happen if input tables might be from different sources and have different columns so that they need separated treatment.)

 

According to the product team, this is expected behaviour since a selection does not allow zero columns selected. This might be true (which I doubt a bit), but it is at least counter-intuitive. If this behaviour cannot be avoided in total, I have a proposal which would improve the user experience without changing the entire workflow validation logic.

(The support engineer understands the point and has raised a defect.)

 

Instead of writing messages inside Control Containers directly to the log output (on screen, in logfile) and to mark the workflow as erroneous, I propose to introduce a message (message, warning, error) stack for tools inside Control Containers:

  1. When the configuration validation is executed:
    1. Messages (messages, warnings, errors) produced outside of Control Containers are output to the screen log and to the log files (as today).
    2. Messages (messages, warning, errors) produced inside of Control Containers are not yet output but stored in a message stack.
  2. At the moment when it is decided whether a Control container is activated or deactivated:
    1. If Control Container activated: Write the previously stored message stack for this Control Container to the screen and to the log output, and increase error and warning counts accordingly.
    2. If Control Container deactivated: Delete the message stack for this Control Container (w/o reporting anything to the log and w/o increasing error and warning count).

This would result in a different sequence of messages than today (because everything inside activated Control Containers would be reported later than today). Since there’s no logical order of messages anyways, this would not matter. And it would avoid the apparently illogical case that deactivated Control Containers produce errors.

Currently when debug mode is entered in analytic apps and macros, the direct inputs to the app/macro when the error occurred are hardcoded into a workflow in debug mode, so that errors can be more easily detected.

 

However, inputs into analytic apps also create global variables which can be used in the more code-heavy aspects of Alteryx such as the Formula Tool. These are not updated in the same way which can cause workflows to break in debug mode - it would be really helpful if global variables could be updated in the same way as the inputs into tools are.

Dear Developers,

 

it would be great, if SSO would be possible for Salesforce connector. 

Our company is not so much in favor distributing log-in details for a service account. 

If there is already a solution in place, than perfect, but if not, I guess this functionality would be a lever to use Alteryx in our company.

 

 

Best Regards,

Johanna 

Hi 

 

The wording of the tool tip displayed in results window cells with long strings is misleading.  The current wording is "This cell has truncated characters".   

danilang_0-1616587137476.png

 

 

New users tend to infer that this means that the data value has been truncated somewhere upstream.  See here, here and here.   Changing this message to something like "Only a portion of long strings is displayed" will help reduce the confusion immensely.

 

Dan  

  • Enhancement
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