Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Vanilla Alteryx Chained Apps can only progress linearly, which means developers could not let users skip few applications ( or ) reach the last app in the chain ( or ) let the user select which specific app to trigger based on the requirement.

This can be bypassed by using a render tool with output as PCXML and HTML link of the Application you can trying to divert to, which does not affect the existing workflow in any way.

By using the below set of tools on any workflow/chained app you can either branch the flow of apps ( or ) you can skip a few apps in the chain.

1. A excel or csv file which has the links of the apps -  the reason for keeping the hyperlinks in an external file is so that we can update the link if the server link changes/updates - refer Image 1
2. A filter tool to specify which application to move to ( can be changed using a radio button/drop down to app 2/3/4/5 etc.)
3. A text tool ( This is where the magic is ) - configure it to pick the server link from the incoming data from the filter tool as hyperlink and generate a output preview, as shown below - refer Image 2
4. Use a render tool as output and write to any PCXML file ex: "File.pcxml" - refer Image 3

Image 1 - Input Configuration with the flow that can be part of any existing application

Image 2 - Text Tool Configuration

Image 3 - Render tool Configuration

POC in action

• Let assume our 3rd application is located in www.alteryx.com - if the user selects 3rd app in the radio button

• Which would generate an Output Preview like below

Now If clicked on App 1, it would divert me to www.Alteryx.com

Regards,

Maithreyan S

The Append Fields tool will issue a Warning if/when the Source data stream has no records that reads something like this:

Append Fields (823) There are no records present in the source.

I can imagine many situations when this issue should be flagged as a Warning. However, I have use cases when both the Source and Target data streams are expected to be empty. Because it is a common, expected scenario, I do not want it flagged as a Warning for the user. 

My Idea: provide another option to suppress warnings for this situation.

Perhaps it could be a standalone checkbox, for example:

                 [x] Suppress Warning when both source and target streams are empty

Alternatively, the tool currently has 3 options to manage warnings or errors related to "too many" records. Perhaps this could be added as a 4th option to the dropdown list, although that would necessitate changing the label slightly.

In our environment, we often have to replace a table.  It would be nice if there was a tool that could pull out all of the input or output tools that referenced a given dataset.  Someone wrote a XML file that we parsed, but it doesn't seem like all workflows are included.  

Hello - the added feature to show the designer tool detail of the four highly used tools (Join, Formula, Filter, and Summarize tool) is an incredible addition to Connect functionality. Can this functionality expand to the In-DB version of the same tools? We leverage In-DB when possible to utilize the processing power of the database. Adding this as well to Connect would be a huge benefit to see the complete picture of a workflow.

Whilst the "Disable All Tools that Write Output" option within the Runtime Settings in Designer is useful.

I think a Workflow "Live" status / indicator could be really useful?

One key thing we have to seriously remind people whenever they start using Designer, especially when they are potentially picking up a workflow that some else has built is to sternly remind them that they need to understand the workflow outputs properly before pushing the run button!

One thing we do to get this message across is to demo the disable outputs option.

What would be better is to have some kind of interface / visual similar to the browse tool visuals that are created. But within the canvas / workflow / runtime config window?

This would instantly draw users attention to the fact that the workflow is connected to live outputs and that they should proceed with caution / turn off outputs etc.