Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When I import an Excel file in to Alteryx I get an error: “shared strings root=x:sst” and Alteryx cannot read the file.

I can work around this by manually opening and saving the excel before importing it into Alteryx but this is not ideal, especially considering the automation implications.

I believe this may be happening because the XLSX generated by the source of the report has a prefix “x:” in all the tags in the Shared String XML embedded in Excel. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/open-xml/working-with-the-shared-string-table 

Essentially, it would appear Alteryx is not able to read generated Excel sheets which has the prefix "x:" (e.g. from a bot). The second file which has been opened and saved in Excel manually can be read by Alteryx correctly.

Example of file as exported from ”BOT”:

How the same file looks once it is manually opened and saved:

Ideally Alteryx would read the file as is, i.e. with the "X:SST" tag seen above as having to manually open and save the excel before it can be read is rather clunky.

Thanks!

Currently, you have two choices for Auto Configure while working on workflows:

• Auto Configure switched on: After every change, the configurations (= columns) of tools are re-evaluated for the entire workflow (at least, this is how it feels like).
• Auto Configure switched off: Configuration of tools is only re-evaluated when pressing F5 (or when using the clipboard).

Pros and Cons of both:

• Auto Configure switched on:
  • Configuration in each tool is always accurate so that working on tools is straight forward.
  • Editing workflows gets annoyingly slow for complex workflows, especially when data sources from network locations or macros are used. Sometimes I have to wait a minute between two mouse clicks.
• Auto Configure switched off:
  • Editing workflows is faster (at least in theory).
  • I have to press F5 all the time (because I nearly always change output configuration of tools when working on workflows). Even after pressing F5, Alteryx does not always succeed in calculating the correct configuration of a tool.
  • Working with clipboard, loading, saving workflows is still slow.

I would love to have something in between all, kind of an intelligent Auto Configure with following features:

• F5 still starts full configuration evaluation.
• Configuration of input tools is frozen (unless F5 pressed) so that no network access is started during editing the workflow.
• Check for update of macro files is switched off (unless F5 pressed).
• After changing a tool configuration, either a flag is set that this tool was changed but no re-assessment of the workflow configuration is run (approach 1), or only downstream configuration is updated (approach 2). Whether approach 1 or 2 is started could be decided on various criteria: Number of downstream tools (or other measure of complexity), how many "change flags" according to approach 1 are already set, etc.
• If approach 1 was chosen: If you edit a tool which is downstream to another one for which the change flag is set, re-evaluate only the portion of the workflow between the previously changed upstream tool and the tool supposed to be edited.
• Using Clipboard should not invoke full re-configuration.
• Before saving a file, full re-configuration needs to be run (as already now).

This idea will add quite some complexity into the logic of Auto Configure but should have quite some potential to speed up editing workflows because network access and number of re-evaluated tools in each editing step will be reduced.

Hello!
I like to annotate my workflows when finished, and it can be a bit of a pain to add more and more comment tools by searching for them, or going through the current right-click menu:

What would be nice is the option to right click anywhere on the canvas, and have the option of 'add comment', similar to how we have the option for 'add container' when selecting tools on the canvas.

Cheers!

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.

The order of the join fields effects the ordering output

For more complex joins it would be nice to have up and down arrows much like the summarise tool:

It would be helpful if we could open 2 or more workflows at the same time from a gallery connection. Sometimes they are related or part of an overall update process, so opening all of them at the same time would save many clicks and a lot of time. 

We would like some enhancements to the Salesforce connectors (input and output) to allow:

- Either the Batch or the Bulk API to be used. Batch API is much better for smaller jobs while the Bulk is better for larger jobs (larger numbers of records). It would be very useful to allow the selection of which API was used by the tool to use the most efficient API.

- The number of records per batch to be defined in the tool. I know this can be achieved using a batch macro but it would be far easier (from a user point of view) to be able to enter this value in the Salesforce connector and have it manage the batch size. We frequently have issues with the batch size being too large and Salesforce having errors (and records not updating).

The data view of any anchor is searchable. I want to search the metadata view please.

Hello all,

This is a very interesting feature of the List Box and Drop Down interface tool : the ability to select fields

However such a feature is not available for in-database, highly limiting the use of macros.

Please change.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

Here the issue : I have a workflow in my One Drive folder



In that workflow, I use a macro that writes a file with a relative path (..\6_Big_Data\EN\.csv ) :




Strangely, it doesn't work and the error message seems to relate to a folder that doesn't exist (but also, not the one I have set)

ErrorLink: Output Data (1): https://community.alteryx.com/t5/*/*/ta-p/724327?utm_source=designer&utm_medium=resultsgrid|Cannot access the folder C:\Users\saubert\OneDrive - Business & Decision\Documents\B&D_Market\6_Big_Data\EN\.

I really would like that to work :)

Best regards,

Simon

Formula Tool --> Functions --> Operators list

The operator titles for the two comment functions are too similar, the difference cannot be determined unless checking the hover text.

Can the title for /* Comment */ be adjusted to make it more clear that it is for block or multi-line usage?

I didn't understand the difference until I saw this post on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7165816592063266817/

/* Comment */ --> /* Block Comment */   |   /* Multi-line Comment */

Hello All,

I'm using the dynamic input tool for SQL requests in my Workflow (WF).

I'm using the "Replace a Specific String" to replace elements in the SQL statement dynamically depeding on results of prevoius tools, user input etc.

So the statement looks like

select * from Schema_Name_xx where invoice_number = 'invoice_number_xx'

Since Schema_Name_xx is no valid Schema in the Database, the statement (= Validation) won't work. Only if I replace Schema_Name_xx by e.g. Invoice_Data_Current it will work, same with the invoice number, invoice_number_xx is replaced by e.g. 4711.

Therefore, validation makes no sense and will never work, only if the WF is running, the correct Schema is inserted in the SQL statement by the "Replace a Specific String" function.

It would be great to disable it in the users settings or wherever in the Designer, changing a config file would also be great :-)

Pls. note: I'm thinking (since I'm not allowed anyway ;-)) about changing/disabeling anything in the Alteryx Server settings.

Reason:

1. Speed: Validating a WF with SQL statements that don't work takes time (every time I save it), sometimes I get even a timeout...

2. WF error entries: Each upload with a  failed validation creates an entry in the WF result list which makes it harder to seperate them from the "real" WF errors...

Thanks & Best Regards,

Thomas

Hi, I was looking for this but couldn't find a similar idea, so I post a new one. If someone knows about a similar idea, please ask the moderators to mer

CountChars(<String>, <char to count>,<case sensitive>)

Where <char to count> and <case sensitive> are optional parameters.

If <char to count> is not provided, the funtion will return the total character count within the <String>.

If <char to count> is provided, it'll return the number of ocurrences of that character within the <String>.

PS: For those tempted to suggest a workaround, I've been using REGEX_CountMatches() for this. Actually, the focus is to simplify user's experience and workflow performance providing a native function, instead of using REGEX which it's very demmanding on resources.

Hi:

I believe the ability for Alteryx Designer to read from/write to parquet files will enhance its capability to serve the DSML community better. Potentially someone can design this connector as part of the App community but given the importance parquet file formats have gained as a columnar storage format (as opposed to something like Avro - which is a row storage format), Alteryx supplying native connectors to such files would be awesome. 

Thank you,

Shiva Badruswamy

Principal Architect - DSML

Stratascale

It'll be great to have different icons whether Designer is executed Elevated or not, so it's easy to identify the instance you need to work with.

I'm Left handed and use my mouse in my left hand.  As such I use the following right-hand keyboard operations in the programs like Excel etc; CTRL-INS (Copy), Shift-INS (Paste), and Shift-DEL (Cut).

In Alteryx Designer these don't work for me in the Workflow window (but do in say the meta Info window) - is there a setting so I can enable them for the Workflow Window, or can the feature be added.

So there's a shortcut for running a workflow but for the life of me I can't seem to find a shortcut for running a workflow as an analytic app.  Surely there should be one? 

Ctrl + Shift + R seems like an obvious choice.

Shifty

Sometimes, when you change the system settings on Alteryx Designer, you get this annoying message :

Error: "Settings Validation Error" Alteryx Service failed to initialize, likely due to inconsistent RuntimeSettings.xml file: Unable to start Queue service, insufficient license

well, well, well...

I found the solution to this page https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Settings-Validation-Error-when-usin...

"Under Environment Setup Type, you must select "Designer Only" if only Designer is licensed"


Maybe instead of the current message, Alteryx can check the licence and help with a "you must choose Designer only option ath the beginning because only Designer is licensed".

Best regards,

Simon

Hello!
I have recently come across something within Alteryx that caught me by surprise. Currently when you are within the configuration window of a tool (in this example, the browse tool) and use ctrl + backspace (shortcut for deleting a previous full word), a blank character is instead added.

Please see example:

Currently in the Browse tool configuration

Go to change the Name of the tool - and naturally to clear it, use ctrl + backspace:

[] is added to the end. From what i can gather, this is a 'control character' , used when an application does not support ctrl+backspace.

Ctrl + Delete however, is supported.

I am proposing for this character/functionality to be supported. I believe the configuration window is the main - and potentially only, i couldn't find any other examples - place this is not supported.

Hope this makes sense!
TheOC