Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

One of the common issues when you build macros is the error "the schema of macro output XXX has changed between iterations"

So the next step that we commonly follow is to put a select tool into the flow just before the macro output - and convert all the fields to a specific type; untick the "unknown" field; and then sometimes have to go into the XML to add the "Forced = true" flag into the XML so that it doesn't change over time:

Please could you add an option under the "Options" tab to force / lock down the type of every field with one click?     That would eliminate dozens of clicks on every creation of a macro.

Thank you 

Sean

When you enter a search term in the results window, it would be great if it highlighted that term in the data results window. Otherwise, it still takes work to find where your search term is located in each row.

CI / CD is critical to any production level process, especially when multiple authors are contributing new features to the same workflow. Currently, multi-author editing of workflows is extremely difficult, and something that would be aided greatly by using git to control different branches of ongoing work. Luckily, that's something we can already do today! However, the ability to test before merging a pull request is critical to modern CI / CD pipelines. For this, it we need to be able to run a headless workflow from a CI / CD environment. Also, having the ability to pass in parameters to the workflow would allow for robust integration testing - something that isn't straightforward today without running on production environments. 

When building a workflow with testing tools, you tend to want to be able to put these in container and then minimise this to improve readability of the workflow.

For example instead of this:

You might want to minimise the error checks like this:

However when running apart from reading through the results window, there is no immediate indicator that there is a tool inside the container that has errored:

So the feature enhancement request is to add in an exclamation marker to show the user that a tool inside has an error and you can then easily open it up and investigate further.

Currently if I drag a tool onto the canvas and it has multiple input anchors, Alteryx will try to connect to the first input anchor from the output of the nearest tool I am hovering near.

However the improvement I would like to see is where there are specific tools which are required to go into each input that it 'intelligently' connects to the correct input, for example on the gif below I have a PDF input and PDF template tool (pre-computer vision), and when I bring the image to text tool in, it will try and connect the output of the template tool into the D input anchor, when the correct input is the T anchor. What this leads to is me having to delete a connection and then re-wiring which slows down the development time.

To embed the "Not ok" filter option in the browse tool

When I proceed with this command in a python tool:

from ayx import Package

Package.installPackages(package='pandas',install_type='install --upgrade')

in Alteryx it only updates to 0.25, but the Latest version is 1.1.2.

When I would like to upgrade from the Python side i get the following:

ERROR: ayx 1.0.54 has requirement pandas<0.25.0,>=0.24.2, but you'll have pandas 1.1.2 which is incompatible.

Can you please make sure we can upgrade to the latest version of pandas without any compatibility issue?

This is important because of json_normalize. Really useful tool, available from pandas 1.0.3!

Often I need to add filters or other tools early on after the workflow is already been mostly built. If a tool connects to one tool I can drag the filter over the connecting line and add the filter seamlessly. However in large workflows there is often this situation:    

The Filter will only connect to one of the lines I'm hovering over. If I could connect to all lines simultaneously and drop in the connection to achieve this (would be awesome):

When using the Sharepoint Output tool - we have seen a few situations (which are widely reported in the designer discussions thread) where the write to sharepoint fails, but no error is raised.
This often happens because of mismatch in data types, but we've also seen this for other reasons (e.g. we had this once due to column ordering).   In the worst case - this can end up with the sharepoint list being emptied out if the write fails on the first item, again with no error indicator.

The Sharepoint Input and Output are very widely used as a way of giving users a very simple UI to input data that can flow into an Alteryx Canvas - so this is a very commonly used pattern in our environment.

Could we request that the Sharepoint output tool be changed to include explicit errors and warnings on write, so that the user has a guarantee that either the write took place or there was an error to reflect the issue?

Thank you.

Currently, the "SQL editor" window only contain a box for typing text in, we could not see the schema and table on it's side as a reference, we need to jump back and force between "Visual Query Builder" and "SQL Editor" search for table and column names. If we could see the database schema and table in the SQL Editor interface, it will save us a lot of time.

Hello all,

As of today, if you have admin and non-admin version of Alteryx Designer installed on your computer, and install Business Intelligence Suite, you are able to run either version. It will not run both versions. This means whatever reason you installed admin and non-admin version, Business Intelligence Suite will run with only one Designer. 

I installed my computer Alteryx Designer 22.3 non-admin and 23.1 admin versions, both Predictive Analytics. I also installed BI Suite admin version, and BI suite non-admin version. Alteryx will uninstalled admin version, and kept non-admin version of the BI Suite. So, I can use BI Suite only with non-admin version now.

I'm bringing this idea for your vote to make available for both profiles/versions within Designer.

Thanks for voting

Hello All,

I am not sure whether my idea makes sense or not. 

In today's advanced analytics world, we used RPA for various automation, process simplification, etc. There are CO-BOTs that are designed to run the Alteryx flow as well. Through RPA we are able to log in to the system and tools like Cognos, Oracle, TM1, and so on.

So, I am thinking, if Alteryx developed RPA as a tool in the Alteryx Designer like other tools such as Join, Transform, ML, Computer Vision, Interface, etc. 

I believe the implementation of RPA in Alteryx will prove an Asset, and make Alteryx.com more powerful.

Thanks,

Mayank

Hi - Please delete this if it perhaps exists already in a newer version.  (I am on 2022.1 and don't see this functionality.) 

I would love to see the ability to right click a tool that isn't in a container and be able to add it to an existing container.  Currently I drag it over and drop it into the container then move it back to where it was.  Inevitably I misalign the tools and spend time getting it linear again. It would be cool if based upon the choice made in the right click, it would bring the assigned container around the tool in its existing location.

OR

Perhaps within the config of the container you could choose tool #s to add to the container?

Anyways this isn't a huge need but it would be nice to see that additional functionality for people that spend a disproportionate amount of time aligning and distributing their tools HORIZONTALLY.  (Nobody cares about the people that do vertical workflows.)

I'd love to have a shortcut (like Ctrl+I) that opens the Insert Macro feature, saving the time of right-clicking, and scrolling down on the menu (Note: Once you spent a "little time" using Designer, this menu can be a very long one, and the mouse wheel doesn't work on it).

Currently in 2020.2 (but I assume all versions), when you have a workflow running and click on the Tool Name/ID (1 - in the picture below) in the results window it is then not possible to click on the canvas OR get back to the messages for the full workflow as it is then locked to that tool.

The idea is that it should be possible to get back to all of the workflow messages if you click on a tool name in the results window whilst the workflow is running.

However, a neat little tip that I found is if you click on the input, output or browse hyperlink (2 in the picture below), it will open a pop-out browse rather than show the data in the results window, meaning you can still see all of the messages)

This leads me to think that it could and should be possible to see browse anywhere data whilst the workflow is running if this is fixed. Here's a separate idea for that. 

When opening an Alteryx workflow that has been saved in a newer version, a warning message is shown, but you are still able to open the workflow, provided that it doesn't contain tools that don't exist in your current Alteryx version.

This does not work for packaged workflows that contain macros, for instance. You have to manually edit the xml of the extracted package file.

It would be great if we could have the same ability with packaged workflows that exists for normal workflows, i.e. the ability to extract and execute them with a warning.

In order to make it easier to find workflow logs and be able to analyze them we would suggest some changes:

• In the log name instead something like "alteryx_log_1634921961_1.log" the log name should be the queue_id for example: "6164518183170000540ac1c5.log"

This would facilitate when trying to find the job logs.

 To facilitate reading the log we would suggest the following changes: 

1. Add the timestamp 
2. Add error level 

For the example of current and suggested log: 

 Please consult the document in attachment.

In the suggested format the log would be [TIMESTAMP] [ERRORLEVEL] [ELAPSEDTIME] [MESSAGE] 

Hi,

This idea is to suggest we add additional comparison capability to the Designer Join tool to more closely mirror what is possible in SQL. Usually, teams work around this limitation by adding tools after the Join tool (or using SQL queries at the start of a workflow), but it would be great to do this in the Join Tool itself.

The current Join Tool in Alteryx only allows for exact field comparisons, but not for more flexible joins, such as the example below

LOAD * FROM Table A

LEFT Join Table B

ON A.Firstname=B.FirstName

And A.Country <> B.Country

AND A.Lastname LIKE (B.Lastname)

OR A.Nationality = B.Nationality

I've drawn a mock-up of what I think could be enhancements to the existing tool. In simple terms, I think there are these options for improvement:

1. When joining on specific fields, allow the user to specify operators for how the fields should join, e.g. Field A=Field B and Field C  !Contains  Field D (almost like the Filter Tool does this). This could be enabled by permitting operators in the menu between the 2 fields, as illustrated below

2. Have the option to say that if either field matches, you'd like to join (i.e. option to choose if this is an AND or OR join condition). A new field would need to be made to the left of the field selection, as illustrated below

3. Perhaps there could be the option to write the expression as you would a formula for the Error message tool (but in a positive context), e.g. Field A != Field B

4. How about enabling the Left Join/Right Join/Full Outer Join options from within the Join tool? E.g. if you select the Venn Diagram buttons, you will return your selection? If you don't want to compromise existing capability, you can automatically add a pre-configured Union tool (with the correct left/right/join inputs) after the Join tool based on the user's selection?

Regards,

Tom

It would be great if Tool Containers had an I/O connector icon where you can connect the last tool in that container to and then Cache the container so that it wouldn't have to run every time.

For example, in the diagram below, the output of the Spatial Match would connect to an object such as the "I" that I drew below. We would then be able to cache the output of that container so that all objects in the container wouldn't have to run each time. The "O" would be the cached output and would feed the rest of the workflow.