Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Vanilla Alteryx Chained Apps can only progress linearly, which means developers could not let users skip few applications ( or ) reach the last app in the chain ( or ) let the user select which specific app to trigger based on the requirement.

 

This can be bypassed by using a render tool with output as PCXML and HTML link of the Application you can trying to divert to, which does not affect the existing workflow in any way.

By using the below set of tools on any workflow/chained app you can either branch the flow of apps ( or ) you can skip a few apps in the chain.

1. A excel or csv file which has the links of the apps -  the reason for keeping the hyperlinks in an external file is so that we can update the link if the server link changes/updates - refer Image 1
2. A filter tool to specify which application to move to ( can be changed using a radio button/drop down to app 2/3/4/5 etc.)
3. A text tool ( This is where the magic is ) - configure it to pick the server link from the incoming data from the filter tool as hyperlink and generate a output preview, as shown below - refer Image 2
4. Use a render tool as output and write to any PCXML file ex: "File.pcxml" - refer Image 3

Image 1 - Input Configuration with the flow that can be part of any existing application

 

Image 2 - Text Tool Configuration

Image 3 - Render tool Configuration

POC in action

• Let assume our 3rd application is located in www.alteryx.com - if the user selects 3rd app in the radio button

• Which would generate an Output Preview like below

Now If clicked on App 1, it would divert me to www.Alteryx.com

Keywords : Chained Applications, Chained Apps, Application Sequence, Skip Application Sequence, Branch Application Sequence, Application Order, Controlled Order, Trigger Next Application

Regards,

Maithreyan S

I know y'all are working on data lineage for some future offering and it is very much needed. For highest quality results, please make logs a primary source of lineage information. Being able to use dynamic naming with some tools and macros makes the names in the workflows simple foobar placeholders and do not reflect what actually happened. Today Connect doesn't use logs and leaves many lineage gaps because of this

Please move this to a more appropriate category if needed. This future feature work is not part of Connect.

I pull data from APIs frequently in my workflow, which has some potential for error if the API is unavailable.  I would love to be able to develop the workflow without having to add in some text box place holders or record count feature to allow the remainder of the workflow to run without error and potentially be able to try the API again so if "Invalid authentication" route to a section that will regenerate an authentication and retry the data call.  I have currently worked out some hacks to be able to work through the issue but it makes the workflow very messy.  A tool like the Detour tour that goes if value contains 400 go this way.  If value contains 200 then close off this container and continue on the other one.   Maybe the request is to allow the detour tool to be set to a specific value and maybe have multiple route options  if A then do connection one,  if B then do connection two or If C then do connection three.

Github support. push/pull your workflow code directly to/from a repo. I posit this is the single biggest feature misisng form Alteryx -and I'm be happy to blab on and on to the product team about how not having this is a huge miss.

Hi is it possible to look at alteryx workflows being run when a file has been dropped into a file or somehting along those lines? I.e an external activty has taken place

There should be a quick way to delete all unwanted tools for specific output/browse tool in workflow. This would be useful when we have huge multiple cross connect workflow. By deleting all not requited tools, it would make it easy and faster to test as segregated.

Currently, the "SQL editor" window only contain a box for typing text in, we could not see the schema and table on it's side as a reference, we need to jump back and force between "Visual Query Builder" and "SQL Editor" search for table and column names. If we could see the database schema and table in the SQL Editor interface, it will save us a lot of time.

When I import an Excel file in to Alteryx I get an error: “shared strings root=x:sst” and Alteryx cannot read the file.

I can work around this by manually opening and saving the excel before importing it into Alteryx but this is not ideal, especially considering the automation implications.

I believe this may be happening because the XLSX generated by the source of the report has a prefix “x:” in all the tags in the Shared String XML embedded in Excel. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/open-xml/working-with-the-shared-string-table 

Essentially, it would appear Alteryx is not able to read generated Excel sheets which has the prefix "x:" (e.g. from a bot). The second file which has been opened and saved in Excel manually can be read by Alteryx correctly.

Example of file as exported from ”BOT”:

How the same file looks once it is manually opened and saved:

Ideally Alteryx would read the file as is, i.e. with the "X:SST" tag seen above as having to manually open and save the excel before it can be read is rather clunky.

Thanks!

Hi there,

When you connect to a DB using a connection string or an alias - this shows up in the Workflow Dependancies in a way that is very useful to allow you to identify impacts if a DB is moved or migrated.

However - in 2023.1, if you use DCM then the database dependancies just show up as .\ which makes dependancy management much more difficult.

Please could you add the capability to view the DCM dependancies correctly in the dependancy window?

BTW - this workflow Dependancy Window would be a great place to build a simple process to move existing DB connections to a DCM connection!

CC: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

When you start using DCM - you may have existing canvasses which use regular old connection strings which you want to migrate to DCM.

Currently (in 2023.1.1.123) - when you select "Use Data Connection Manager" - it shreds the configuration of your input tool which makes it difficult to just convert these from an existing connection to a DCM connection

The only way to then make sure that you don't lose any configuration on the tool then is to use the XML editing functionality of the tools and copy across your old configuration.

Could you please add the capability to keep my current tool configuration, but just change from using a regular old connection string to using DCM?

Many thanks 

Sean

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

Hi there,

When connecting to data sources using DCM - could we please add the ability to make JDBC connections?

see:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Add-the-ability-to-connect-to-data-s...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works/JDBC-Connections-in-Alteryx/ba-p/968782

As mentioned in these threads - JDBC is very common in large enterprises - and in many cases is better supported by the technology teams / developer community and so is much easier to make a connection.    Added to this - there are many databases (e.g. DB2) where JDBC connections are just much easier 

Please could you add JDBC connections to the DCM tooling?

Thank you

Sean

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

I would like to see Designer offer me the ability to chain workflows together where once Workflow A completes, Workflow B will automatically start.  There are times when linear processing is required in order to avoid dependency issues and/or for making it easier to organize complex processes. It would require outputting results to static files and it would take longer to process than the standard approach, but that is an expected trade-off.  Offering a GUI drag-drop "orchestrator" to tell Designer the order of operation would be even better than having to manually open each workflow and tell it which workflow to kick off next.

Hello All,

I am not sure whether my idea makes sense or not. 

In today's advanced analytics world, we used RPA for various automation, process simplification, etc. There are CO-BOTs that are designed to run the Alteryx flow as well. Through RPA we are able to log in to the system and tools like Cognos, Oracle, TM1, and so on.

So, I am thinking, if Alteryx developed RPA as a tool in the Alteryx Designer like other tools such as Join, Transform, ML, Computer Vision, Interface, etc. 

I believe the implementation of RPA in Alteryx will prove an Asset, and make Alteryx.com more powerful.

Thanks,

Mayank

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.

Hello Alteryx Community,

If like me, you've been developing in Alteryx for a few years, or if you find yourself as a new developer creating solutions for your organization - chances are you'll need to create some form of support procedure or automation configuration file at some point. In my experience, the foundation of these files is typically explaining to users what each tool in the workflow is doing, and what transformations to the data are being made. These are typically laborious to create and often created in a non-standardized way.

The proposal: Create Alteryx Designer native functionality to parse a workflow's XML and translate the tool configurations into a step by step word document of a given workflow.

Although the expectation is that after something like this is complete a user may need to add contextual details around the logic created, this proposal should eliminate a lot of the upfront work in creating these documents.

Understand some workflow may be very complex but for a simple workflow like the below, a proposed output could be like the below, and if annotations are provided at the tool level, the output could pick those up as well:

Workflow Name: Sample

1) Text Input tool (1) - contains 1 row with data across columns test and test1. This tool connects to Select Tool (2).

2) Select Tool (2) - deselects "Unknown" field and changes the data type of field test1 to a Double. This tool connects to Output (3).

3) Output (3) - creates .xlsx output called test.xlsx 

The more python and R development I do the more I want to use the shortcutes [CTRL] + [ENTER] to run my workflow,

Is it possible to add this as a second way to run the workflow? 

I'm thinking its going to have to have a new shortcut anyways with cloud as [CTRL] + [R] would refresh the page! :D

Asking for a friend :D

Hi Team,

This is very helpful if you add the run and stop option in scheduled workflow for Alteryx designer desktop automation. There is no option of pausing the workflow. this idea should be implemented that will make life easy who are running n- number of workflows.

Thanks,

Kaustubh

FILE==>Open Recent==>

(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.

Passing data to the next app running in a chain from the gallery varies from challenging to impossible. An impossible situation I've found is when the same user needs to run multiple instances of the app simultaneously. Very difficult is just allowing two different users to run simultaneously without risk of passed data mixing between the two.

This idea would add the capability to pass values from one app in the chain into user variables in the next app in the chain.