Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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(add the ability to Pin Favorite Workflows)

The Pinned workflows will persist at the top of your recent files each time you open your Alteryx Designer Application.

See this community link for context:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/There-is-no-option-to-clear-the-In-...

tl;dr: 

An option to clear the In-DB File History is not available in the Designer's GUI. If this feature is required, it's recommended to open an Idea on the Alteryx Community to submit an enhancement request.

Please implement this as an idea; I need to clear some In-DB connections that are no longer valid and in a managed environment, accessing the registry is laughable.

Thank you!

Hi,

I know that @MarqueeCrew had an idea for Auto-UNC which was "Not Planned" last year, https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Auto-UNC-when-saving/idi-p/194681, but what about a simple flag/pop-up to let users know when they hit "save" or "save as" that there are relative paths being used in the workflow (Perhaps even indicate any/all tools that they appear) and closes out the upload without closing out the workflow.

I don't see a solution out there for this, but if it exists and I am just a bonehead, please feel free to delete this thread.  🙂

Thanks

Dan

I've recently developed a complex Standard Macro which gets called from a workflow. It has multiple input tools and output tools where the output tools create an excel file on a drive location.

Every time I try making changes to my macro, I want to test certain aspects of the macro and would not want any output file generated. The way I am doing that now is by placing each output tool in a separate container and manually disabling each container. This involves unnecessary extra containers, is quite time consuming and I risk missing disabling an output causing an unwanted file creation.

It would be nice if I could have an option to disable all Output tools in one go - perhaps an extra setting can be offered in the Canvas to do this. A "debug" mode could also be explored where, much like VBA and possibly other coding languages, Alteryx runs a workflow / macro from Point A to Point B only, or runs the entire workflow and skips the output portion unless specified.

This may be a bit of a pipe dream but having an interface that would automatically and efficiently implement quantum computing functionality against different back ends would position Alteryx to be a user friendly interface to the quantum computing realm. My feeling is that, at the end of the day, most people will know quantum programming about as well as they currently know GPU programming, which is to say not at all. They'll need an easy-to-use tool to translate their wants to some form of quantum speed-up. Q#, Qiskit, Cirq and Bra-ket are neat, but suppose Alteryx had a "quantum solver" tool that would handle a lot of the dirty work of setting up, say, a quantum Grover Search, where the user just describes what they need.

I know some of the heavy hitters are already trying to simplify the interface to the quantum realm (e.g. as of 1/1/2021: Google Cirq, Microsoft Q#, IBM Aqua, AWS Braket all moving beyond basic enablement into realms of user friendliness.)

Just a thought!

Submitting this idea from a different category as I couldn't find an appropriate category.

I think that it is important to have an offline documentation in either PDF or HTML format (or both) with each major release (or minor release where new features are introduced, such as Alteryx Designer 2025.1.2) for at least the on-prem products (such as Designer and Server) for the use cases or scenarios where either internet connectivity might be limited or non-existent or the user might want to access a part of the documentation quickly (especially in PDF format though searching from the index, where one wouldn't have to navigate between web pages).

You've built a workflow, but you want GIS to bring it into a systems-based report structure. Alteryx provides the blueprint, but GIS has to now take and translate each step into code.

Rather than have a developer spending valuable time interpreting and recoding the work you have already completed, what if Alteryx had a tool or ready-made output feature that translates your entire workflow into your code of choice (e.g. SQL, Python, VBA, other) that you could just send to GIS and they implement? Kind of like the Macro recording feature in Excel that translates steps into VBA. This would provide a near immediate solution, reducing the days, weeks or even months of additional development work and capacity for an already under pressure GIS.

Ah, but you say there's a catch to this idea. Let's say you need an enhancement to the workflow that has been hardcoded in system. You would need to now submit a ticket to GIS for them to develop and update the code, right?

No, just adjust and iterate in workflow, rerun and submit the updated code to GIS.

When building join operations in Alteryx, it can be time-consuming to manually scroll through long lists of fields to find the right one to join on, especially when working with large datasets or unfamiliar schemas.

It would be great to have a search-as-you-type filter in the Join tool’s field selection interface. Similar to the existing field selector search, this feature would allow users to start typing a field name and instantly see a filtered list of partial matches. This would significantly speed up the process of identifying and selecting the correct join fields and reduce the risk of selecting incorrect fields due to visual clutter.

In complex Alteryx workflows, it can be hard to navigate between different tool containers - especially when there are dozens spread across in a large canvas.

I would love a feature where users could create a 'table of contents' using clickable text or bookmarks at the top of the workflow. For example, Clicking on a text label named 'Output Calculation' would automatically scroll to view to the Tool Container named 'Output Calculation'.

Suggested Implementation ideas : 

• Text boxes or Comment Tools support clickable links that scroll the canvas to a specific container or tool.
• Add a new 'Bookmark' or 'Jump To' action tied to container names or Tool IDs.
• Right click on a text label or container and choose 'Link to' or 'Scroll to this container'.
• Use CTRL + Click or ALT + Click behavior on a text comment to jump.

This would massively improve usability and workflow navigation, especially for large teams or workflows that are shared across departments.

Inspiration : 

Tools like POWER BI and TABLEAU allow similar dashboard or bookmark style navigation . Implementing this in Alteryx designer would be a game changer.

Currently the simulation sampling tool doesn't accept model objects from time series tools as a model input. It would be beneficial if it could so one could run simulations from Time series output (or a new tool is built to offer this functionality) 

I would like a function to be added that pulls the weekending date of an entered date.

For example, the week ending date for today, 2025-06-10 would be 2025-06-14.

It could be called DateTimeWeekEnd and look like DateTimeWeekEnd("2025-06-10","Saturday")

The value entered first would be a date or field with an optional parameter to choose Saturday or Sunday for the week ending date. I would think Saturday would be the default week ending date but I am not sure.

I've seen a few older threads on this but wanted to bring it up again.

I have numerous workflows in which I have built in "fail safes" to prevent passing bad data out to downstream databases/reports.  I have Message tools that provide a specific message on whether the fail safe was triggered or the new/refreshed data was passed through.  The problem with the Message tool is that it is very easy for the message to get lost in the myriad log results so you don't automatically see it.  The same is true for using the Browse tool to view a dynamic and more easy-to-read message/result, you still have to make the overt decision to click the Browse tool to review the result/message.  

Admittingly, on their own, these "issues" seem minor.  However, when running multiple workflows as part of a group or on a regular basis, some of which can be very large and complex, its easy for these "minor issues" to become major inconveniences to utilize as they are intended or they just get lost in the static of everything that happens when a workflow runs.

Having something similar to a Report Text tool that can render an image and formula-driven text/conditions (font and background color controls) directly and conspicuously on the canvas would be AWESOME and go a long way to providing immediate/easy-to-see information regarding the results of the workflow.

I ask/encourage the Alteryx team to explore providing this capability.

It would be nice to track changes. The function would need to have an on and off switch. Some workflows are large and you want to go back to the changes you've made. My team has 2 identical workflows one for production and one for validation. Tracked changes would help manage changes between both workflows. The tracked changes could be something like highlighting the tools red once changed, and after the function is turned on. I have attached a sample image for your reference. Thank you.

Hi,

I would like to see an option within the 'Find Nearest Tool' (and maybe other Tools like it) to exclude from results when a particular Target field equals a particular Universe field.  This could be added right under the 'Ignore 0 Distance Matches' in config window.  You could have drop-downs (like a filter tool) to pick the fields etc.  Example of what I'm doing:  One Address may have multiple accounts and it's in Target and Universe.  Ignoring 0 Distance would drop all the other Accounts at the same address.  I only want it to ignore the Universe Address if it has the same Account Number and the Target Account Number.  That is a little deeper drill than just ignore 0 Distance but not too hard to add.

As it stands, I don't ignore 0 Distance.  I have a formula after the 'Find Nearest' to drop  Target Acct Nbr = Universe Acct Nbr.   Then a 'Multi-Row Formula' tool to fix the find nearest order.  This works, but I thought it might be nice to have it in the tool.

1. Image Processing Tool functionality should be available in Reporting tools.

2. Image Output Location should allow for a temp file location

3. Image Processing should allow lock of aspect ratio when Cropping (like Scale)

4. Image Processing should allow for fieldname selection for Crop, Scale ...etc to allow for custom calculations.  Being able to generate custom values for width and height based upon the values generated in from image profile would be useful

I want to have the ability to share workflows with non-Alteryx users so they can see what steps were followed within my workflows in order to create the output(s). Without a read-only viewer Alteryx users are forced to screenshot and write out the steps they followed in the workflows to document what they did which can be extremely laborious and time consuming when workflows get into the 50+ tool range. A read-only viewer would save Alteryx users time and give non-Alteryx users a sneak peak into how Alteryx works as well. It could peak the interest of non-Alteryx users to learn more about Alteryx and possibly convince them to download a trial and eventually purchase a license, so it could improve documentation methods as well as be an asset for marketing to non-Alteryx users. For reference, Tableau offers a similar solution called Reader.

It would be great to be able to use keyboard shortcuts to be able to switch between the different tools in the canvas, or use the keyboard shortcut to select different tools from the Tool Pallette (similar to Excel).

It will be very useful if there will be tool that will be actually a template of a batch macro and one for iterative macro.

In this way the person can drop the tool to the canvas and connect it to his flow, so there is no need each time to build one.

Obviously if there is 1 macro input, a control parameter and macro output as default, then the person can adjust as needed, but at least there will be a ready template to go.

For tools that have 2 input or output anchors, the ability to right-click the tool and select "swap connections" to swap the connections coming out of the 2 input or output anchors. Let's say, with 5 connections coming out of the Unique's U Anchor and 3 coming out of the D anchor, we need to disconnect and reconnect connections 8 times in order to switch everything between U and D. Even if the tool has 1 connection per anchor, this would still be faster than removing + connecting each connection manually. Tool examples include Append data, Join, Unique, Macros with 2 inputs or outputs, etc.