Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I would like to have all my annotations show on top of the tools by default. I can change them one at a time, but I would like to be able to change the default setting to be "Show Annotations on the Top" always.

I've got six workflows up on my screen now and must reboot. I would like the option to save the workspace and reopen all flows at once.

Cheers,
Mark

I would love to see a detailed change log to help when I encounter issues after upgrading from one version to the next. For concrete examples, I've come across these issues recently:

1) Files saved to %TEMP% were displayed to the end user in the 10.0 but not 10.1 when running in the gallery. 

2) The cross tab in 10.1 would run with a warning if you had column heading of "p_d" and "p d" where the space in the latter item is changed to a _ and then one of them is renamed with a 2 at the end ("p_d" and "p_d2").  In 10.5 you now get a warning and an error and the workflow stops. I've attached a sample workflow.

I'm all for bugs getting fixed and the improvements not always being backwards compatible, but I struggle with some of these when I can't reference a detailed change log. For some context, I've also attached a change log from some other software I used in a previous life. Anytime that a change in coding could affect past results, there was a note in the change log to identify these changes to the end user.

Within the select tool when you have hilighted a set of rows it would be NICE to be able to RIGHT-CLICK for OPTIONS rather than have to move the cursor up to the options to get to choices.

Thanks,

Mark

One of the common things that we need to do, is to take a delta-copy of a file or a DB table into the staging area of the analytical database.

This always looks very similar - so it would be useful to make this a wizard based process so that teams can easily build these very quickly rather than having to hand wrap:

Process:

- Check which primary keys exist - fill the gaps where they don't

- Are there any rows that update over time (or is this insert-only) - if they update over time, which column is the "updated date" column so that we can spot updates - if there is no update date; then we need to do a column by column check of some kind (like a hash or a checksum)

- Do you want to sync deletes?

- Do you want to keep updates?

Outputs:

- Target table in staging area which is now updated compared to the source

- Logging done (similar to what Kimball recommends in the ETL Handbook) with the run date/time; summary stats; and any errors

- Errors table for any errors that arose with row numbers

- Tables in target created (with history table if requested)

Currently, the default location for autosaved files is "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Alteryx\Autosave".  It would be nice to be able to customize, the same way you can for the working directory.

The Input Data tool has a "Field Length" option for CSV files. The default is 254 characters. In most cases, this is woefully inadequate. I tend to add several zeroes to the end to prevent truncation. When I don't remember to do this, I get flooded with conversion errors:

"Input Data (2) The field "hours" was truncated in record #38"

I want to set a global default, that I can override per tool, for length so I don't have to do this every time.

I hope that there will be a radio button or a check box where Auto Save on Run can be disabled.  Auto Save on Run is a bad idea.  I often go into workflows and only need one report - so I break a bunch of connections to other reports, maybe I make some other small adhoc or one-off type changes and then Run the workflow.  I get my one, maybe modified, report and close without saving.  So the next time I open the workflow it's as it should be. 

With Auto Save on Run - I'd have to undo everything I changed.  What if it's not my workflow to be changing?  If there is no option to turn it off:  I'd have to make a copy of the workflow, open and make changes, then run, then close, then delete the workflow.

In general, you should never be saving unless it is a deliberate act performed by the user.

When opening an App in Designer - you are generally opening it to work on.  It should not open as an App but rather it should open as a Workflow.  Maybe make it so if you hold down the Ctrl or Shift key and opens the App - it opens as an App and you can test it out.

When reading in multiple files/tabs with different field schema, there will be an error. It can be done by using macro. It would be great if there is a tool to read in all.

Would really love there to be a way to store environment related config variables without requiring the use of an external config 'file' that you need to bring in in every workflow.

Functionality should be similar to how the Alias manager works (although allowing aliasing of more than just DB connections)

The sort of things that would typically be included as such a variable would be:

• contact email address for workflow failure/completion
• other external log file location
• environment name
• environment specific messaging

If this could be set for different subscriptions or collections it would be fantastic. If not, at the server level would suffice.

I love that Alteryx lends itself to good workflow documentation, but I'd really like to be able to add a bit of basic formatting within my comment boxes. I tend to have one large (read: verbose) box at the top/beginning of the workflow describing the purpose of the workflow and quirks of the datasource to watch out for, and it would be easier to read these if I had some simple options like Bold, Italic, Underline, numbered list, bullet list. You know, the sorts of things you can do in basic HTML email? Those. I want them!

Sometimes I want to copy just the Name and Type fields from the metadata in the Results window. Even when selecting this option, however, all 5 available fields still get copied and pasted. I would like to see this change to work as expected and only copy those cells selected.

Copy only the first two columns

All of them get pasted

Cc @DultonM 

the SQL Editing screen has recently been changed (thank you @JPoz  and team!) - and now has syntax indenting and keyword coloring.

Could I ask that you make a minor change in the indenting, where the on part is indented underneath the Join?

Select

    Field1,

    Field2,

    field3

from

    Table1

    inner join table2

        On Table1.key = table2.key

        and table1.keyb = table2.keyb

    inner join table3

        on table3.key = table1.key

        and table3.date = table1.date

Often we run into two pretty common situations:

• You want to move a Select, Formula, or Filter to a different point in your workflow
• You want to remove a tool entirely, without affecting the workflow in any other way.

In both cases, I would prefer that I can set the default behaviour of ctrl-x or delete like the way 'Delete and connect around' behaves.

Thanks,

Ruud

My use case is simple. I place an explorer tool on the canvas pointed to a local htm file. During the workflow run, I update the htm file and want to update the canvas to display the results.

Cheers,
Mark

Feature: If an instance of Alteryx is already running then on double clicking a *.yxmd file in Windows Explorer it should open in a New Tab of existing instance instead of launching another instance of Alteryx.

Issue: Each new instance of Alteryx puts load on the system memory due to an additional AlteryxGui.exe process.

Workaround: Currently we can drag & drop the *.yxmd file from Windows Explorer onto the running Alteryx instance to open in a new tab of the current instance but the same behaviour on double clicking the *.yxmd would be highly appreciated. 

The Python tool has been a tremendous boon in being able to add capability that is not yet available in the Alteryx platform.

It would make the Python Tool much more usable and useful if you can define the inputs explicitly rather than just relying on the good behaviour of both the user; and also the python code that reads the inbound data (Alteryx.Read('#1'))

This is not something that the Jupyter notebook code-interface may handle directly (because the Jupyter notebook has no priveledged knowledge of the workflow outside it); so this may be best handled by the container itself.

The key here is that if my python app requires 2 inputs - it should be possible to define these explicitly so that we can test; and also so that we can prevent errors and make this more bullet-proof.

The same would apply on the outbound nodes for the Python tool.

Presto is a in-memory SQL query engine on hadoop and having Alteryx connecting to Presto will vastly improve performance. Appreciate if you could introduce a Presto connector.