Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Consider, for a moment, Standard Macros as old-school Subroutines in which you would have a library of Subroutines that could be invoked from numerous code sets.  Each Subroutine could have any number of arguments, and when the Subroutine is invoked, the calling code provides the arguments and their values to the Subroutine.

You can do this in Alteryx - but with a very large but.  The source field names being passed to the Standard Macro have to be the same field names the Standard Macro is expecting.  To make the Standard Macros more "library friendly" - allow the calling workflow to alias fields in the dataset for the sole purpose of sending them to the Macro.

Example:  Standard Macro that returns a Vendor ID based on a Location and Item Number.

Macro Input: Location ID, Item Number

Calling Workflow has: Purchase Location and Item Code

The Macro on the calling workflow would have a mapping:

I have tried to search for this Idea but not located one that is same or similar. 

When searching for tools to use rather than having to click in the search bar at the top, it would be nice just to click on a blank part of the canvas and start typing for the tool that you need, then a suggest tool list pops up and you just click on the one you want to it appear. 

Thanks

Providing access to the Oracle Cloud for OTM would allow users to connect to the API's to deliver data sets from the Cloud and use it for workflow and other data management activities.

The data view of any anchor is searchable. I want to search the metadata view please.

Adding "Lightning Bolt" connectors to the standard workflow tools to allow dynamic automation of the settings would be a game changer. I believe that this would enable us to create universally dynamic and adaptive workflows which could be used as drop in solutions for most datasets. This would turn the standard tools into a dynamic ones and dramatically reduce the tool count to accomplish dynamic tasks, and make complex workflows much easier to internalize. Making standard workflow tools more dynamic would allow us to easily dynamically incorporate conditional tests / values / fieldname selections / bypass / etc into tools like detour / filter / formula / unique / transpose / crosstab / summarize / Outputs / etc. I would also like to see the ability to utilize a bool field to bypass any given tool in a workflow. That way we could do things like conditionally bypass an entire formula tool which would dramatically simplify complex formula construction, turn on and off inputs / outputs, simplify error avoidance, etc.

In order to build complex dynamic conditional workflows with the current tool capabilities, most of us are forced to use custom macros (often a multitude of workflow specific ones as well), constantly add and remove formula created fields for message relay, and create complex multi-routings / tests / unions in a standard workflow with large numbers of tools and containers. This hides many of our tasks within short-term use fields / custom macros and it makes the rest of our workflows voluminous and less intuitive.

On the User Interface side, I recommend a simple approach. Next to the standard tool setting there should be a dynamic input option which allows you to select the source field in the lightning bolt connector. Next to that, there should be an icon that can be clicked on to pop up a short text description and a basic screen shot of data in the correct format for dynamic input. I would also like to see a check box at the bottom for manual tool "bypass" which can also be dynamically controlled. (This would especially be helpful on outputs, but it would also be helpful to allow formulas and filters to be kept in place for future use even when they should not currently be used) Turned off tools could be highlighted in a red background or something.

This would be useful for anyone creating dynamic and adaptive workflows, but it would especially expand Alteryx Designer's capability to attract more custom software developers like me.  It would dramatically reduce the need for a large number of complex workflow specific macros that clutter our systems. Users that find the traditional workflow tool approach easier for them could easily use the tools as normal by simply using the standard manual settings. Advanced users could simplify the creation of universally dynamic and self adaptive workflows.

The most difficult part about quickly sharing Community Questions and Solutions is constructing representative "Dummy" data values as static Text Inputs that can be packaged in a workflow. Most of us are almost exclusively working with sensitive client and company data that cannot be shared. It would be great to have a tool that converted values over to dummy values based on the type of data in that field. Kind of like a dynamic find and replace that randomizes values, replaces occurrences with similar dummy values, or scrambles string values in an indecipherable way.

The tool output could directly update a connected "Create Text Input" tool, or it could be connected to a browse tool that could quickly be converted to a Text Input.

It would be really great to have Dynamic Detour tool where you could specify the detour direction as an input to the tool rather than an imbedded control.

This would allow workflow branching.

Using a filter for this passes a dataset with no rows in it which causes dynamic in-db or dynamic input tools to error.

This is purely aesthetic but it would be great to have a button to auto format tools positions on the canvas. The idea would be similar to a feature many IDE's come with to auto format code so that the indentation is corrected and duplicate return characters are removed.

We currently have the Align and Distribute capabilities which is great. This could be expanded to the entire workflow so that the canvas could look at which tools connect to which and structure their positioning around that. I think it would be a great clean up feature after finishing a workflow. 

Hi Team,

As a Low vision person, I am able to work on Dark Background and White foreground (Dark theme).

I won't find the feature, kindly upgrade for the same. I tried the suggestions in google as work with Palette option,

in my case that's not much help. and also kindly make Alteryx as much as accessible.

Thanks & Regards

Rameshchandra 

If an Output Data tool fails, there are frequently other processes within the workflow that depend on the status (success|failure) of the output. I find myself having to build a macro or some other overengineered method to validate the status of the Output Data tool. Instead, please put an output anchor on the tool. Then, if there's an error, no downstream process will run and this will greatly simplify error handling. Thank you.

If you have 2 containers  A, B and both are not connected through any tool, now you need to run A container first then after completion of running A container then you want to start B container process because B container uses A container output. 

For this we have Chained Apps but what if we want to run both containers in same workflow. This feature will be helpful for so many people.

It would be very helpful if there was a tool that could stop the workflow without throwing an error. Currently, you can use the message tool to throw an error on a certain condition, and then enable the "Cancel Running Workflow on Error" option in the Runtime settings, but when the workflow is stopped in this way, many other tools don't function such as the Output Data and Email tools. Simply adding a tool that stops the workflow without erroring that also allows the other tools to finish their job would be great. 

Would it be possible to have alteryx create the IAM user + password? If that's possible, we can create an IAM role that would allow you to assume this role.

Can alteryx create this type of user and assume our role?

To enable a check mark kind of option to lock or edit the configuration window of each tool.

It could be very useful to keep safe the settings in the configuration window.

Alteryx Gods,

Following a discussion with a person with whom I spend way too much time, @Jeff_Neklason , we were wondering would it be possible to allow users to drag and drop the position of the actual sections at the top of the designer?

Some users find they use the Developer section more than the Parse section, for example, and it would be beneficial if they could move the Developer section to the left to be more easily accessible.

Thank you Alteryx Gods.

I love you.

Kisses.

xxx

This is Ganesh from Guidelines. 

One of the task in my process is to convert the Pdf to excel sheet for all content. 

Pdf content will all depend upon the number details available. 

Pdf contain table format detail. 

We would like see all the pages of pdf should be in excel sheet with proper format including Table provided in pdf.  

I tried multiple ways but unable to find easiest way of handing the auto fit the all the column in final output. If we have already could you please help me with the solution. 

if not - can we create one additional tool which auto fit and align the data type accordingly. 

2 issue is about post I bifurcate the excel sheet data with multiple workbook data type doesn't show proper. for example Main file contain string and numeric value. post the bifurcate all the number still shows string value only due to every cell has green tick mark. 

Hi 

In a toold like select it would be nice to place curser in Field - and type the first letter of the fields you want to browse through.:
By pressing F here I would just across fields that starts with F.

Sometimes you want to preserve the field order from the sorce, and if you have many fields it takes a while.

Or beeing able to filter - just like in excel:

Same goes for formula box:

Beeing able to click D as an example and click though coloumns starting with D.

Hello Alteryx Dev Gurus - 

We are migrating and some workflows that used to successfully update a datasource are now giving a useless error message, "An unknown error occurred".  

Back in my coding days, we could configure the ORM to be highly verbose at database interaction time to the point where you could tell it to give you every sql statement it was trying to execute, and this was extremely useful at debug time.  Somewhere down the pipe Alteryx is generating a sql statement to perform an update, so why not have something on the Runtime tab that says, 'Show all SQL statements for Output tools'?  Or allow it on an Output tool by Output tool basis?  If this was possible by changing a log4j properties file 15 years ago, I'm pretty sure it can be done today.  

Thank you for attending my TED talk on how allowing for detailed sql statements to bubble back up to the user would be a useful feature improvement.