Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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.

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

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!

@RithiS ,

I'm a fan of using DETOUR tools in Alteryx.  I often place "test" code into a standard workflow and opt to use it or not based upon a detour.  The challenge is that adding a detour and detour end invariably leads to having to re-route connectors (default of adding tools is to connect to the left).  Here's a picture:

What I'd like to do is SELECT the tool or tools that I want to connect around (in this case, just the formula tool).  I'd like to right-click and DETOUR.  The detour and detour end would be added (putting the selected tools in the path of the RIGHT option.  This would greatly speed up the tool configuration process.

If you want to go for extra credit, you could modify the GUI to express which direction a detour is travelling in a standard workflow (e.g. make connections wireless or dashed when not selected).

Cheers,

Mark

@Claje @Hollingsworth @SeanAdams 

Hello!
Currently when you share a workflow that contains a Directory tool, it will instantly fail if you do not setup the directory tool to point at a similar folder structure. This is expected, but can make it painful to share workflows between multiple users, especially when a shared network drive and dynamic paths cannot be used. 

What I propose as an addition to Alteryx Designer would be the option to 'convert to yxdb' / 'cache and replace' any tools that are at the start of a workflow, similar to the cache and run workflow option:

What i expect this to do is to containerise the tools previously used, and create a new file within a temporary location, and replace the containerised tool connection with a new data input to that file:

Why this would be fantastic, is that it would allow me to now export the workflow, including the file that has been created:

and I could then share that with a colleague.

Kind Regards,

Owen

Containers are a great feature.  They allow us to create larger workflows in smaller canvases, and manage the flow and appearance of our work.  However the design whether intentional or flawed that allows the container window to interact with the layers behind it is annoying.  Connection wires should not redirect within a container because of things on the canvas behind the container.  Likewise if I have a container open, I should not be able to grab a tool or container behind the open container through the container canvas.  Please fix this flaw.

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 would like to propose a more interactive results window.  The reason is that if you click on any of the tool hyperlinks next to the messages while the output is compiling, you get trapped inside that tool's output for the entire time that the workflow runs.  You do not get to see any additional workflow result/detail as it compiles until after the entire workflow is run. It would be great if a user could escape back to the main workflow's results.

For instance if I am running a fairly long or complex workflow that does not all fit on one screen...I may want to zoom in on a tool if it has a warning or error before the workflow finishes.  By clicking on the hyperlink "Union(5)" the palette will zoom to Union (5) so I can see which tool is a problem.

I can see any messages attached to Union(5), however I am stuck with this view the rest of the time the workflow runs.  Clicking on the canvas (or really any other action I try to take) does not take me back to the overall workflow result window.

Granted if I have an error I may want to stop the workflow altogether, but sometimes warnings may prompt further investigation once the workflow is run and I may want to get an immediate read on where in the workflow the problem is while it is still running...which inputs might I have to check etc.

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

I find it annoying that the count records and heat map macros have file inputs which point to a W drive. This will show up in workflow dependencies and can cause false alarm warnings. Since these are packaged with Designer, simply change the macros to text inputs instead of file input. 

Thanks!

When viewing results of a workflow that has Errors, could we add External error resolution data if the user clicks on the error message?  Like browse everywhere it could lookup the error in help and in community posts.  

cheers,

 mark

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

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. 

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.

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.

Maybe this pointless but my guess is that memory usage could be as important as processing time and is probably a simple addition to the performance profiling feature.

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

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.