Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi there

My idea is to have an option to copy and paste a tools configuration to a different tool of the same type somewhere else on the canvas.

Example:

Say I have four summarise tools dealing with four different data streams, I envision a 'Copy Tool Configuration' option after right clicking on a tool and then a 'Paste Tool Configuration" which can be applied across the multiple instances of the summarise tool by overwriting. This would preserve the tools anchors incoming and outgoing connections.

Benefit:

This would increase the speed of developing workflows. Naturally this would be significantly quicker than copy and pasting tools, and then re-wiring anchors. Additionally, this would potentially reduce human error when iteratively developing workflows.

Regards - Rhys Cooper

Data Connections and Workflow Credentials are key part of migration process for workflows to Gallery.

They are provisioned for each user upon request.

When a developer leaves the organization, there is no easy way to identify all the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials assigned to that user.

Current options in the Gallery is for the Admin to browse through each Data Connection and Workflow Credential, navigate the Users tab and identify the list users. 

For a large organization with many Data Connections and Workflow Credentials it will hard to manage this since.

1. If the workflows change ownership, the new owner has to be given access to the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials.

2. Remove user access to the Data Connections and Workflow Credentials.

A Gallery page in Admin should include all Assets a user owns/has access to which includes the following. By selecting a user, the list should populate.

1. Workflows
2. Schedules
3. Collections
4. Data Connections
5. Workflow Credentials

We have implemented a solution to capture this information by getting the details from MongoDB. Also an automated process where the list goes to the manager when a developer leaves the organization so that he can manage the assets by identifying a new owner for the assets.

In the new version, we have an easy way to change ownership of a workflow in Gallery. In the same manner other Assets also should be taken care.

Most tools do not result in record changes: Select Tool, Data Cleansing, Record ID, Formula, Auto Field, Multi Field/Row, etc.  It would be nice to be able to tell Alteryx which tools to display the Connection Progress; specifically the Record Counts.  It would reduce the clutter/noise and allow the Record Counts to only display for the tools that matter to the analyst/user.  Right now it displays for all tools regardless of whether the records changed or not.  My hope would be to tell Alteryx to only display the Record Counts for tools like: Input, Output, Filter, Join, Summarize, Crosstab, Unique, etc. and ignore all other tools.

The current approach gives me both Record Counts and Total Record Size in KB, but I don't need or want the KB.

The option I am requesting does not currently exist.  It would remove the KB and leave you with just the Record Counts.  KB is useless to me.  I only care about Record Counts.  This option would help reduce the noise/clutter of the KBs.

To increase Performance on some old Buissness Logic, i am trying to switch an existing system to In-DB tools. This has given me a lot of headache because there is no Multi-Field Formular Tool in the In-DB section. It is a very tedious job to run through every workflow to manually set the same regex for a table with more than 20 Fields. 

I have had the idea to implement such a tool myself but i think this could be helpful for other developers in Alteryx Desktop too, so i am bringing this up here.

The Idea is to have a similar approach to the new Multi-Formular Tool like the other already existing Tool in Preperation. 

Hello,

Unless you're lucky, your input dataset can have fields with the wrong types. That can lead to several issues such as :
-performance (a string is waaaaaaaay slower than let's say a boolean)
-compliance with master data management
-functional understanding (e.g : if i have a field called "modified" typed as string, I don't know if it contains the modification date, an information about the modification, etc... while if it's is typed as date, I already know it's a date)
-ability to do some type-specific operations (you can't multiply a string or extract a week from a string)

right now, the existing tools have been focused on strings but I think we can do better.

Here a proposition :

entry : a dataframe
configuration :
-selection of fields
or
-selection of field types
-ability to do it on a sample (optional)

Algo :

The output would be something like that

Best regards,

Simon

Hello,

A lot of time, when you have a dataset, you want to know if there is a group of fields that works together. That can help to normalize (like de-joining) your data model for dataviz, performance issue or simplify your analysis.

Exemple

order_id item_id label model_id length color amount

Here, we could split the table in three :
-order

order_id item_id model_id amount

-model

model_id length color

-item

item_id label

The tool would take :
-a dataframe in entry
-configuration : ability to select fields.
-output : a table with the recap of groups

<style> </style>

field group field remaining fields

Very important : the non-selected fields (like here, amount), are in the result but all in the "remaining" group.

Algo steps:
1/pre-groups : count distinct of each fields. goal : optimization of algo, to avoid to calculate all pairs
fields that has the same count distinct than the number of rows are automatically excluded and sent to the remaining group
fields that have have the same count distinct are set in the same pre-group

2/ for each group, for each pair of fields,
let's do a distinct of value of the pair
like here

item_id label

if in this table, the count distinct of each field is equal to the number of rows, it's a "pair-group"

here, for the model, you will have
-model_id,length
-model_id,color
-length,color

3/Since a field can only belong to one group, it means model_id,length,color which would first (or second) group, then item_id and label

If a field does not belong to a group, he goes to "remaining group" at the end

in the remaining group, you can add a link to the other group since you don't know which field is the key.

<style> </style>

field group field remaining fields

Best regards,

Simon

PS : I have in mind an evolution with links between non-remaining table (like here, the model could be linked to the item as an option)

Hello,

As of today, DCM is great to store credentials. But once we want to dive deeper in technicity, like using macros or Applications, it's really bad. One of the things I hate is that we can't retrieve any informations from the DCM connection, just the id. Not good for logs, really bad for understanding and have some conditional logic related to connection type or name.

Here an example

Nice, I managed to retrieve an id but I have no idea of what it means : what kind of connection? what's name?

Best regards,

Simon

I would like the ability to configure a default naming convention for yxdb files created through the "Cache and Run Workflow" feature.  For example, the naming convention could be <YXMD filename>-<ToolID>-<CreatedDateTime>.yxdb.

This would make it easier and faster to identify and re-use yxdbs.

Dear Alteryx, 

One day, when I pass from this life to the next I'll get to see and know everything!  Loving data, one of my first forays into the infinite knowledge pool will be to quantify the time lost/mistakes made because excel defaults big numbers like customer identifiers to scientific notation.  My second foray will be to discover the time lost/mistakes made due to 

Unexpanded Mouse Wheel Drop Down Interaction

Riveting right?  What is this?  It's super simple, someone (not just Alteryx) had the brilliant idea that the mouse wheel should not just be used to scroll the page, but drop down menus as well.  What happens when both the page and the drop down menu exist, sometimes disaster but more often annoyance.  Case in point, configuring an input tool.

See the two scenarios below, my input is perfectly configured, I'll just flick my scroll wheel to see what row I decided to start loading from 

Happy Path, cursor not over drop down = I'll scroll down for you ↓

Sad Path, cursor happened to hover the dropdown sometimes on the way down from a legit scroll = what you didn't want Microsoft Excel Legacy format?

And you better believe Alteryx LOVES having it's input file format value changed in rapid succession., hold please...

Scroll wheels should scroll, but not for drop down menus unless the dropdown has been expanded.

Oh and +1 for mouse horizontal scrolling support please.

My idea is essentially to borrow the keybinding/command ethos of Vim for Alteryx. For those who are unfamiliar, Vim is a text editor from a time before the mouse and the GUI became dominant forms of interacting with PCs. I think the key ideas to take from Vim are the Modes, Commands, and Grammar.

Vim is mode based for its typing. You start out in Normal mode and enter other modes through key commands. For example, to enter Insert mode, you just type 'i'. This mode allows you to enter text into whatever file you have open at the moment. There's also the Visual mode which is for highlighting sections of text for processing with other commands. This means that key commands can take on a variety of meanings in different modes, adding depth in a limited key range.

The Grammar is another key aspect. Rather than hold an arcane combination of modifiers and letters, Vim uses an Operator-Count-Motion approach. The operator will be the primary action: y for yank/copy, d for delete, c for change, v for visual select. The Count is how many objects you want this operator to be applied to. The Motion is where and what you want to work with: w for a word, s for a sentence, p for a paragraph, ( for a set of parentheses, b for brackets. There are also options that extend this so you can have a series of commands like d2w (delete 2 words), di( (delete inside parentheses), yap (yank/copy all of a paragraph), etc. Below is a cheat sheet displaying a wider list of the possibilities with the motions.

The Command mode is the last piece of the puzzle. By typing ':' while in Normal mode, you bring up a command prompt. Here you can enter any of a number of commands including changing user settings via keywords. For example, :s/old/new/gc will search through my file and attempt to find and replace every old term with the new term, the c at the end means that Vim will ask for confirmation before each change. I could also do things like :set nohl which will turn off highlighting for items found during searches. It's easy to imagine using similar functionality to make configuration changes to a wide set of tools or simply to selectively delete tools without using the mouse or scrolling to them.

To take it a step further, current menu functions could be turned into commands, imagine typing v6t to select the next 6 tools on the canvas. You could follow this by typing :Contain %V to wrap the selected tools in a container, perhaps with extra arguments a specific color palette could be applied as well! I say all this to say that the way forward for shortcuts in Alteryx is to break away from the one-handed modifier heavy paradigm that so many programs follow today. By creating commands that can duplicate the actions found in drop down and right click menus, as well as providing a means of navigating the canvas without a mouse, Alteryx can go to the next level in terms of efficiency and ergonomics.

Let me know what you think, if you need more concrete ideas on what this might look like in practice, I can add that. Thanks!

P.S. If you work on side projects outside of Alteryx, consider giving NeoVim a try, it adds a lot of extensibility and customization to classic Vim

Hello

Cartesian product is a common issue when joining dataset with a bad key. What I suggest is an option to check if there will be a cartesian product on the join tool.

-there is a label "Cartesian product (non join key uniqueness) detection"
-under it a drop down menu with three choices
-do nothing
-fail
-warning

Algo :
if do nothing==> well... do nothing more than actual behaviour.
if "fail" or "warning" : count distinct of join key versus count row on each side of the join. If none is unique, display a warning or an error message.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello,

This is a feature I haven't seen in any data prepation/etl. The core feature is to detect the unique key in a dataframe. More than often, you have to deal with a dataset without knowing what's make a row unique. This can lead to misinterpret the data, cartesian product at join and other funny stuff.

How do I imagine that ?

a specific tool in the Data Investigation category

Entry; one dataframe, ability to select fields or check all, ability to specify a max number of field for combination (empty or 0=no max).
Algo : it tests the count distinct every combination of field versus the count of rows

Result : one row by field combination that works. If no result : "no field combination is unique. check for duplicate or need for aggregation upstream".

ex :

order_id line_id amount customer site

The user will select every field but excluding Amount (he knows that Amount would have no sense in key)

The algo will test the following key
-each separate field
-each combination of two fields
-each combination of three fields
-each combination of four fields

to match the number of row (7)
And gives something like that

choice number of fields field combination

Best regards,

Simon

Cache function is very useful when executing very long db request.

I'd like to see a checkbox option (in workflow runtime settings for example) to enable/disable automatic caching of first execution for all inputs tools.

Whenever I overwrite an Excel sheet with data of the same format just different values (e.g. Q2 data versus Q1 data) all of my Pivot Tables break and I have to manually recreate them even though the schema didn't change.  Somehow the Table is being deleted/removed and replaced with a completely different Table which is what causes the Pivot Tables to break.  The only way to avoid this is to manually set the Cell Range, but who has time for that?  The only solution I have found is to manually copy all values and paste them over the existing data which is very inefficient the more sheets you are working with.

I used to use a software before (LabVIEW) and it had the capability to exchange code via snippets or as part of png images. I think this will impact not only community, but also facilitate the code exchange

Requesting a reduced-cost, read-only license to allow for additional users in our organization be directly review workflows for UAT and control testing.  Currently, the only individuals who can see the detail of Alteryx workflows directly are those with a full designer license or temporary trial license.  In our Alteryx control structure, we have additional reviewers confirming the workflow who do not have licenses, which requires copious amounts of screenshots and/or direct meetings with our licensed designers to walkthrough the flows step-by-step.  It would be much more efficient to provide a license that would allow folks to click through the integrations themselves, potentially allowing for comments and annotations, but without the ability to make direct changes.  This would be much more cost efficient for our organization and allow for better workflow review and control.

Include a tool specific configuration to allow for the ability to turn off annotations on that specific tool instead of the global setting to turn them all off.

This would especially be useful for the SORT tool.

I find myself wasting multiple clicks in order to eliminate the annotations every time I insert a sort tool into my process flow, since it is rare when I actually need to include an annotation.

I find it extremely annoying having to individually disable/enable control containers in a workflow.  It would be nice if there was a way to select all control containers that I want to disable/enable and then be able to right click and do it quickly in one motion.  This would save me a lot of time when working with 10+ control containers.