Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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

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).

While it is good to have the test tool stop outputs based on tests, it isn't too insightful to users on the full details of these error messages. It would be more useful to have an output location for a test if these errors appear so that end users can troubleshoot instead of the workflow developer having to work through all of the error messaging.

There are workarounds for this that can be used, but they are often extensive and require the addition of significant logic. Adding optional outputs to the test tool would be a simple fix that could save a lot of hours of debugging when end users find an error.

Hi,

I am not sure why it is so complicated to troubleshoot formula tools in Alteryx. When I am getting an error with information parse error at char (char number) why we don't get this information highlighted in the configuration tool at the left. 

It should be crystal clear for the user where he needs to troubleshoot his workflow. We can say that the formula tool is showing us where the formula is working, so it isn't so bad.

When working with a multi formulas tool, it isn't easy to figure out where the mistake occurred.

Can we highlight somehow this specific character and make users life easier?

Dear Alteryx Gods, I beseech thee!

The most common use of the Browse tool in the Alteryx Designer is to pop the results out into a full window. Can we PLEASE have a single button to do this rather than this functionality being hidden under the action menu?

M.

Passing data to the next app running in a chain from the gallery varies from challenging to impossible. An impossible situation I've found is when the same user needs to run multiple instances of the app simultaneously. Very difficult is just allowing two different users to run simultaneously without risk of passed data mixing between the two.

This idea would add the capability to pass values from one app in the chain into user variables in the next app in the chain.

Hello Alteryx Support,

I’m a Business Analytics Manager at Evernorth. My team and I use Alteryx Designer 2020.2 x64 for daily data preparation + analytic purposes; primarily, the desktop version but also have access to the company Alteryx Server ‘Gallery’ as well. Recently, we ran into a challenge and after asking around we still couldn’t find a solution.

Our Need:

We are seeking a solution to ‘add an example link’ in our custom built macro.

Our Challenge:

We don’t have the proper permissions to save and/or write to the “C:” designated folder location required to host the file as specified within the Alteryx Community help documentation (e.g. outlined below). --> We understand this is an internal IT obstacle that will take time to work out from a corporate data governance perspective, which is why we are seeking Alteryx Support.

At the end of the day, we are reaching out to see if your team can help us understand if there are alternative solutions that we can explore. Making the assumption, that is…that we can’t take the suggested approach in the documentation. See below for details about what we are trying to achieve.

Current macro state (…as viewed by Alteryx Designer users in the user-interfaces top tool panel for viewable macros):

Desired future macro state:

***Help Documentation***

What we currently know: (According to…How to add an example link in the custom tool - Alteryx Community)

Prerequisites

1. Alteryx Designer

Procedure

1. Place the sample workflow in the %ALTERYX_INSTALL%\Alteryx\Samples\%LANG%. A separate folder can be created to store the workflow. An example of a directory: C:\Program Files\Alteryx\Samples\en\MyTest
2. Add in the "Example" tag with "Description" and "File" child tag in the tool configuration file of the custom/user tool.

Example:
 
    <metainfo>

 ...
     
            Open Example
            Path to the workflow
       

... 

Limitations

1. The sample workflow can only exist in %ALTERYX_INSTALL%\Alteryx\Samples\%LANG%. The link will fail  if the file is located in a different path.
2. The sample workflow needs to be distributed separately from the custom tool installation since it has to be stored in %ALTERYX_INSTALL%\Alteryx\Samples\%LANG%.

Thanks for your support and consideration to create a feature enhancement that allows Alteryx Designer users to 'add an example link to their custom tool' without having to go to the C:\ file location in order for it to work!

Respectfully,

Corey

Currently Alteryx supports floating windows for some of the windows. But I would like to open multiple workflow at the same time. It is good for multiple display since I can view 2 workflows at once, 1 for main development and 1 just for testing a small part before putting in the main workflow.

Simple request to revert back to the functionality that generated an error at the onset of running the workflow.  

Using a wide-screen monitor and canvas, I typically initiate a workflow by clicking the RUN button.  But, in my canvas, I am usually working in the left or middle portion of the screen.  The Run button is to the far right and find myself moving to the right to click the button and then back to my workflow location. 

I'd like to be able to have this relocated or optionally functionality to move this button (maybe even creating a customized personnel quick access toolbar or button panel) to the left portion of the canvas window.  Sure, there is a key board shortcut, but if the button is provided, than it implies that it is a valid UI feature.  I've also seen and liked the ability to have this as a right-click menu enhancement. 

There are three places that provides the log information:

1) Regular results window:

Pro: In the process sequence so the user can understand the order of the process.

Con: Doesn't have info on how long each tool takes to process.

2) Workflow -> Runtime -> Enable Performance Profiling

Pro: Processes are sorted in the processing duration descending order which helps to identify the ones that took long to run.

Con: Doesn't show the process sequence.

3) Actual Alteryx log file:

Pro: There are timestamps for each process so the duration can be calculated.

Con: Not ready accessible and not user friendly to be seen from the interface. Not clickable to see more details in the workflow.

I think it will be SUPER HELPFUL to integrate all three together to show in the process order along with the running time.

I know we have the capability to copy a Tool, and paste it into a Connection. This step requires having to right click on the connection to select the option Paste In Connection. I don't know how many times I've tried to copy tool, click on connection, and do Ctrl + V to paste just remember that it does work that way. It sure would be nice if it did.

Hello all,

As of today, when you want to retrieve or create a file on Apache Spark for Databricks, you have only two choices :  CSV and Avro

However it's clearly missing parquet file type :
-it's faster
-it's better for storage
-it's standard and already supported as input/output of Alteryx or for HDFS so doesn't seem hard to add here.

Best regards,

Simon

After using the PCA can there be a model object to output to be able to "score" new data?

Similar to PCA transform here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26182329/how-do-i-convert-new-data-into-the-pca-components-of-my...

As currently there is no way to use this model with new data

Hi currently if you use the cross tab tool and the names of the new fields should have special characters they end up being replaced in the new headers with underscores "_", and then need to be updated in someway. It would be great if this was all done in the tool. In other words the new headers have the special characters as desired

When working in the Designer, I sometimes have to undo changes. And this experience is quite often very confusing and annoying.

For every change in the workflow, you have to press undo once. However, quite often, one user interaction results in other actions such as automatic move of the donwstream tool, change of size of a tool container etc. In such cases, you have inserted a single tool but need to press undo a couple of times to get back to the original situation. It is, however, often not clear how often. In most cases, I fail using undo at the end and revert my changes by hand.

Please change undo towards undoing one user-action in one undo step.

In case there might be users who like the current behaviour, you might make this a user setting how to deal with the undo history.

One of the most frequent issues I have with my workflow is when the Join Tool reorders columns for no reason. There is an option in the configuration to have the columns revert to the incoming order. It would be nice if the workflow automatically had this set as a default, or provide a toggle option in the settings for this to happen. In many of my flows I've had to create macros to keep the integrity of the column order or remember to go into the settings of this tool and re order the columns before a workflow run. 

I think we can all agree that Workflow Summary Tool is immensely powerful in summarizing large and/or complicated workflows.  However, some companies have begun to bar the use of certain GenAI applications, like ChatGPT. Unfortunately this makes the use of the Workflow Summary Tool impossible.  At the same time those companies are allowing the use of other forms of GenAI, like AzureAI.

In the Workflow Summary tool, it would be nice to have the capability to select which GenAI engine you want to use (ChatGPT, AzureAI, etc) so that you don't break corporate policy by using barred applications.  This could simply be a dropdown in the GUI configuration for the Workflow Summary Tool with a list of the most common engines.  The user would then supply their API key for that engine, and you're off to the races.