Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Currently, the results window returns varying column widths, not related to the width of the data.  We are able to select an individual column and double click the edge to auto fit the column to the data.  It would be helpful to have all columns automatically fit, and allow us to select multiple columns to adjust at the same time.

With the allowance of personal use coming I would love to see Alterxy create a free 'Community Edition'. In my mind this would be a free version of Alteryx (similar to the Tableau Public App) with a few key limitations to the product, such as only allowed to connect to a local file, no download tool, only output to local files can only save to the gallery etc. 

This would mean people who cant access Alteryx through work (or can't afford to purchase it for themselves) can learn, develop and share. It also means that when a user comes to deliver a POC they have a bit more experience than just the 14day trial period

Like many of you, I have a lot of modules and macros ... and growing. I keep them fairly organized in different folders and subfolders but sometimes I can't find that particular module I was working on weeks ago.... and I need to get it now. Now I end up doing an advanced search in windows explorer by date and maybe looking for certain keywords.
It would be nice to keep track of them in alteryx - add tags, customer names. depts to modules (meta info tab)?
Maybe a special container/gui with time line would read the meta info tab so you can more easily find that one module/macro

Also, another gui containing tool name tags so you can easily find all module that use that one tool you're looking for

I find that each time I create a new Workflow, I have to go into the "Workflow  - Configuration" and update to the settings I would like even though they are usually consistent.

Usually this is checking the "Cancel Running Workflow on Error" box (so if I am connected to Salesforce and my Password or Security Key changes it will not lock me out by continuing to connect as well as letting me know right away if there is an error)

If there was an option to save different Workflow Settings (so we can name them based on their use) for different purposes so when anyone presses "New Workflow" they can choose a specific one to work from - important to have a default one that is used most (Sometimes it's nice to have Horizontal - other times Vertical | Sometimes we want annotations, other times we don't).

I am using an Excel worksheet as input to get detailed information from a database for each cell.  Using the Dynamic input tool I set the character limit to 12000 based on each cell containing 10+(comma+string quote) characters.  This worked fine till the 1000 limit encountered where some cells could have less than 10 characters and some cells could have over 10 characters.

" Error: ORA-01795: maximum number of expressions in a list is 1000".  

The data is accessed using a read id and cannot insert into a table and then use in IN Statement.

(Select * from table_info where key in (select key from list_table) -->unlimited

vs 

(Select * from table_info where key in ('ABCDEFGHIJ','ABCDEFGHIJKL','ABC',..........)  -->String limitation and then Ora-01795.

The limit should be based on the Database limitation and not on number of string characters and the tool should be smart enough to build the In Statement based on the connection established.  Please fix.

I use large workflows with multiple comments and tool containers to document and organize the different sections of the workflow. The issue I continue to run into is whenever I have to move or edit a comment box/tool container or a tool within a comment box/tool container my AlteryX freezes up and becomes unresponsive for a period of time. This issue seems to happen more frequently if you are sharing your screen. Has anyone else experienced this lag? Are there any work arounds to minimize the down time when using comment boxes or tool containers?

Sometime you have two or more workflows open in one instance of Alteryx and you want to easily be able to compare and/or  copy/paste.

Not a big need, but it would be handy to either be able drag the tab to the desktop to take that workflow into a new instance of Alteryx or to right click on the tab to open in a new instance of Alteryx. 

It would be extremely useful if most Alteryx tools had the option to output error records seaparetly. This functionality is already present in most other ETL packages, even freeware ones like Pentaho - Kettle. From its wiki: http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/EAI/.09+Transformation+Steps

http://wiki.pentaho.com/display/EAI/.09+Transformation+Steps

Step error handling allows you to configure a step so that instead of halting a transformation when an error occurs, the rows that caused an error are passed to a different step.

Currently you can just give a name to a connection:

But I would like to see the ability to apply additional formatting to a connection, most importantly color. 

Currently you can click on an individual tool and the incoming and outgoing connections will be color coded, but when working in a complicated workflow color coding would make understanding the connections easier, without the need to click on individual tools.

Just like the ability the right click on a tool and say "Make (incoming / outgoing) connections wireless" you should be able to right click on a tool and specify the formatting of all  incoming or outgoing connections.

Let's say I have an Input tool and a Browse tool connected in my workflow (Picture 1). I drag and drop another tool between them, it's fine (Picture 2).

Now I have a Select (or any other tool) connected to the Input tool but not to the Browse (Picture 3). So now my input tool has two output connections.

I want to add a tool, let's say a Filter tool after the Input but to both connections. If I drag and drop the Filter tool where connections are together just after the output anchor of the Input tool it insert the tool only within one of the connection (Picture 4).

The idea (and you might have guess by now) is to automatically add the new tool to all output connections  when it is dropped near the output anchor of the a tool present in the canvas.

When it comes to something going wrong in Alteryx the last thing I can ever remember is the email address to use for support. Instead of trying to remember whether to use customersuccess@ or clientsvcs@ why can't it just simply be support@?

At your time of need, please make it as simple as possible to get help.

I built some workflows which will input full or sample data in multiple Input Data tools based on changing the value of a user constant. These workflows have email events enabled after run.I want to change the email subject based on whether the workflow ran in full or sample mode. That's my use case. I know that I could do this using the Email tool and that's not going to work in my use case. If the workflow fails, there won't be an email. Also, I don't know if the Email tool is blocked by just my Gallery or by all Galleries.

To generalise this, I want to dynamically change email event subjects, bodies, and more by either using expressions/constants from the workflow or by having an expression editor directly in the event itself.

Thank you.

As in power point, it would be great to repeat the last action done, such as drag again into the canvas the last tool that was drag, if you just selected some tools and aligned them vertically, then selected other tools, press F4 and align those too...

Do you often present your workflows to others within Alteryx, as opposed to just printing a PDF? Wouldn't be nice to have a formatted heading that describes your workflow?

I'm sure you may already be adding and formatting nice headers, like many of our Alteryx tools. For example, the Filter tool:

However, once you begin to scroll down the headers disappear. I recommend we add the ability to freeze the canvas. In this scenario, I would want to view this Header no matter how far I scroll down or right. This would be extremely beneficial when presenting to stakeholders. Additionally, it would be nice to have this repeat on each page, when printed!

Thanks,

Mark

 Hi!

I opened up WorkflowA and WorkflowB.  Later, I went to Windows Explorer, and clicked open WorkflowA, because I wanted to make another change in it.  Not realizing that it was already open, I inadvertently forked WorkflowA into two versions.

It is desireable to be able to open a workflow twice.  Say, I made several changes and wanted to compare that to the original. However, it would be nice if Alteryx produced a warning saying that the workflow has already been opened.  In my case, WorkflowA was pretty complicated, and I don't know if I "un-forked" the workflow correctly.  A notice would have prevented this scenario, which has happened to me multiple times.

Thank you,

Joe Kelly

There has been the idea of running tools in a workflow in parrallel...

It's a tough job becuse there are a lot of complex dependencies I get that...

but how about a lazy parallelization so that 

until the independent parts of a workflow merge, with a join or a union or an append, 

these clusters can be run in parallel I believe...

The ability to create multiple fields in the Multi-Field Formula and Multi-Row Formula tools. Currently I have to drag 3 tools to the canvas which can become cluttered. We should be able to create multiple formulas in one tool, similar to how the formula tool works.

Is there a technical reason why you can't navigate the GUI while the module is running? There can't be because it works using Overview. Can you enable the scroll bars?

Allow users to disable any steps in workflow except input and Join conditions.

To edit existing workflow sometime we may required to remove few steps, it is better if we have option to disable and update mapping instead of delete.