Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Instead of 'Show Dprecated Tools' functionality more helpful and intuitive would be always display deprecated tools inside new tool category.

Hello Team,

I am working on the different Alteryx Models for my monthly and weekly reporting and reconciliations. Several times during recon and validation, I forgot to close the output file and run the Model, few of my Models take around 9-10mins to complete a 1 run, in that case, after10mins the Model kicks off the message - "Error: Output Data: Unable to delete Excel file", this wasted the whole running time. 

I suggest two Idea options - 

The first Idea is, it would be great if you provide the functionality to overwrite the output file manually, for example - if the user forgets to close the output file and run the Model, at the end when Alteryx Model generates the output, It will ask a user to whether you need to overwrite the existing file or not. In that way, we save the running time and effort of the user. It's a very general mistake any user doing while working on the Models - forget to close the output file.

The Second Idea is, It would be helpful for users if Alteryx Model provide a message in the first place when the run kicked off - that output file is opened please close it. It will save enough time from the user prospect 

Thanks,

Mayank
 

Current:

Currently in Result window we have datacleanse, fileter and sort functionality which makes life easier.

We dont have column Rename and Data type change functionality. In order to do that we need to drag a tool for the same for Rename of column.

Expectaion:

Result Tool should be capable enough to Rename column and Data type.

It will save a lot of time ,

The look of the canvas is important. Being able to toggle between viewing classic icons (as seen throughout this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwgYYP_xlA), to the extent available, and current icons would provide users with more variety. As a secondary benefit (when toggled to show the classic icons), users would be able to differentiate between the tools that are not classic (i.e., the newer tools that don't have an older design) and the classic tools.

Thank you very much.

The current Export Workflow user experience is extremely frustrating and it sometimes takes me several attempts to export the workflow with all of the correct assets. Some ideas for improving the UX:

• Allow the width of the window to be expanded or maximized. I often have many assets that start with the same folder structure name and I have to scroll to the right for each one to decide whether to check or uncheck it. 

•  Have a display option for "Group asset by Type" (e.g., Input, Output, Macro). I typically only package up my workflows with the embedded macros, not the Inputs or Outputs. (This is especially important during development and testing, when interim yxdb's are saved to facilitate QC and trouble-shooting.) I would like an easy way to "Check all Macros" without having to go through the list one-by-one. I may have over 100 assets; with the current UX, it's really hard to get all the right assets checked.

• Add an option to filter the display to see only the assets that have been checked. 
• Add a way to copy the asset list (checked and/or unchecked) to the clipboard. This would allow us to confirm that all of the assets needed are included BEFORE EXPORTING. 
• Add an option Select All or Deselect All 

I often have to cache my workflow at certain points to do further development/analysis since the run time is so long. I can't express how frustrating it is when i need to edit a formula tool that's like 2 tools behind the cache but the whole entire cache is lost when i have to edit it. why can't the cache be kept up until the tool that was edited??

ARIMA, ETS, TS Forecast, TS Covariate Forecast are difficult to differentiate, more distinct icons would improve differentiation on the canvas. 

Don't know if someone else already flagged this... however if you click on a tool link in the result window, while the workflow is running, the window doesn't go back to the "main view" until the workflow stops.

It's fine if the workflow takes a few minutes to run, but if you are trying to debug a heavy workflow and you click by mistake on a tool link halfway through... it's a bit annoying that you can't see the output messages until the end

I recently downloaded version 2021.2. I noticed in the results when filtering that there is now a "data cleanse" feature in addition to the "filter" and "sort" features.  The data cleanse filtering feature should be an optional addition.  This feature is not necessary within the results to perform a quick filter on the results.  Adding this feature decreases functionality and efficiency as the user now has to pass over this option to get to the "filter" and "sort" features.  If anything, this option should be put below the filter and sort features.  Please consider making this feature within the results section optional or put the feature below the more important features of filtering and sorting.  

If I paste or insert a tool in a connection, tools to the left will sometimes vertically move a few pixels. I have to realign them and it is a nuisance. Please move only the tools to the right and only horizontally.

On Canvas settings, in the screenshot below, the entire context is visible, but still have a scroll bar. It should automatically adjust:

The double click to insert is great. I believe one cool addition to that would be if I have multiple tools selected on the canvas and double click on tool to add it, it could add to all the tools that were selected. 

I got so used to double click the tool on the tool pallet to insert it on the canvas that whenever I search for a tool, I keep double clicking it in the search results and, of course, nothing happens. 

I love the macro indicator. It is not obtrusive and over the top. Can I have something similar for tools that are available to be cached? I don't want to hunt and right-click on tools to see if the cache option is greyed out of the context menu. Please just put a wedge or some other shape on the tools that can be cached.

In older versions, I could delete the text of an annotation. It didn't matter if I wrote it or if it was autogenerated. Now, I cannot remove the text of the annotation. Yes, I know that I can hide the annotation of that tool. I want to delete the text. I have to select all the text and replace it with a space. I don't know why this functionality changed. Please change it back.

It would be great if you could fix the Interactive Trainings - great idea to have them, but they are constantly down (at the moment Apps does not work, then went to Predictive Grouping, which also does not work). Not quite sure why this is so complicated, maybe the whole thing could be moved to youtube (if you have server limitations) and then have the test questions separately on the alteryx website.

Really demotivating that whenever I have an hour to learn  during the day, it is a lottery, whether the interactive trainings will work or not.

Before new ideas, we should also be conscious of getting the basics right.

Thanks

Hello,

I am currently testing whether my company could use OneDrive as repository for all of our new projects.

Example path:

C:\Users\MyUserNameFolder\CommonCompanyOnedriveFolder\SpecificTeamsDirectoryFolder\

"C:\Users\UserName" is dynamically changed part of all dependecies located on our Onedrive TEAMS folder. In order to dynamicaly define that part for all of our input/outputs we have to utilize GetEnvironmentVariable("USERPROFILE") function at all input/output routes.

Problem lies with macros. Although I can use %TEMP% user variable to define paths for all macros, I wasn't able to replicate that with %USERPROFILE%

<EngineSettings Macro="%TEMP%\CommonCompanyOnedriveFolder\SpecificTeamsDirectoryFolder\OneDriveTesting\testingmacro.yxmc" /> works

<EngineSettings Macro="%USERPROFILE%\CommonCompanyOnedriveFolder\SpecificTeamsDirectoryFolder\OneDriveTesting\testingmacro.yxmc" /> doesn’t

Could you please enable all user/system variables to be detected at runtime (even custom ones)?

This would enable Alteryx Designer to support cloud based storage folder natively, as filepaths for all OneDrive based files stored locally would be dynamically changed across users with a particular workflow opened.

Alteryx version 2020.4

I tend to use a lot of the 'Names' for the connections. 
If you're not familiar with this option, or the above makes little sense, when you select a connector (line) on the canvas, within the configuration window, you can enter a 'Name' (or just some text) in the box, that will then appear on the canvas. 

I'd like this option to be expanded on. 

Rather than just putting in some text, I'd like the ability to have the text centred on the line between the tools. Maybe have the text a different colour. One definite option I'd like is for 'Wrap-Text'.

I tend to use this option to make notes on my workflow, as I find that it looks better than a comment box or tool annotation. It's useful if your workflow has multiple streams and you want to note what one stream does. 

As an example of how I use it: 

To be able to have this 'Wrapped' would make it so much neater. 

Only a 'small' change I guess(?)

This error may be encountered and replicated when you are using an image in the reporting "Header" tool where the path contains an "&". Yes this is rare, but possible and sometimes you want to keep the path, but can't update the path name. If you select the image in a path with an "&", then you'll get an error similar to the following:

Error: Report Header (36): The Action "Update Image Tool" has an error: ParseError: Unterminated entity reference, 'D' at line 2 and column 19
while processing "Action_UpdateRawXml"

A discussion began in 2016 on this topic:
Solved: Insert Image in Report Header: ParseError: Untermi... - Alteryx Community