Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Using the Download Tool, when doing a PUT operation, the tool adds a header "Transfer-Encoding: chunked".  The tool adds this silently in the background.

This caused me a huge headaches, as the PUT was a file transfer to Azure Blob Storage, which was not chunked.  At time of writing Azure BS does not support chunked transfer.  Effectively, my file transfer was erroring, but it appeared that I had configured the request correctly.  I only found the problem by downloading Fiddler and sniffing the HTTPS traffic.

Azure can use SharedKey authorization.  This is similar to OAuth1, in that the client (Alteryx) has to encrypt the message and the headers sent, so that the Server can perform the same encryption on receipt, and confirm that the message was not tampered with.  Alteryx is effectively "tampering with the message" (benignly) by adding headers.  To my mind, the Download tool should not add any headers unless it is clear it is doing so.

If the tool adds any headers automatically, I would suggest that they are declared somewhere.  They could either be included in the headers tab, so that they could be over-written, or they could have an "auto-headers" tab to themselves.  I think showing them in the Headers tab would be preferable, from the users viewpoint, as the user could immediately see it with other headers, and over-ride it by blanking it if they need to.

I love the example workflows.  If I've already added a tool to the canvas that I need to reconfigure, however, it would be easier to simply right click the tool that's already there rather than finding the tool on the ribbon at the top to open the example workflow.  Please add the ability to launch the example workflow for each tool on the right click menu.

Wondering why  I have to change 100s of my workflows every time password changes . system should read the latest password like Tableau can do embedded passwords on data sources automatically from active directory 

IMO, Alteryx should bring new hot keys into newer version:

1. Search for tools, help, and resources

2. Search for Result windows: This is extremely wanted coz I always have to check, recheck results so it's so annoying to non-stop moving the mouse cursor to different positions

Alteryx Admin Designer
Version: 2019.2.10.64688

Use case: Improved accessibility of Designer functionality via Keyboard and UI Menus

Hello Alteryx Team. I am very new to the Alteryx world. As I continue to learn and go through training and tutorials, one thought occurred to me. Using Alteryx requires a great deal of mouse dexterity - especially as workflows grow in complexity. This could be extra-challenging or frustrating for users with limited mobility.

As a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, I found the Find Tool (CTRL+F) to be very handy when locating and selecting tools without the mouse. And the View Possible Connections feature enables the ability to link anchors without a mouse. Excellent! However, this handy feature seems only accessible by right-clicking a tool with the mouse. I'm unable to find an entry for this feature in any of Designer's menus, nor does it appear when using the Menu key on the keyboard (which brings up the Context Menu, aka Right-Click).

Perhaps this has been addressed in other versions of Designer. Or it might be a UI oversight. But in terms of accessibility, I feel it would be very useful.

Please let me know your thoughts or show me how to find it outside of right-clicking.

Many thanks,

James

For the split to rows function on text to columns, can we have an option in the configuration to warn/error on too many records being generated just like the append fields tool but replace the words appends with splits?

As a Left-hander I use my Mouse in my Left hand and use my Right hand for keyboard short cuts.

In many windows products that means I can use the CTRL-INSERT, SHIFT+INSERT, SHIFT+DEL for copy, paste, and cut.

In Meta-info windows in Alteryx I can do this, but in the workflow windows I can not.  I'd like the functionality added.

Creation of a Multi Append Fields tool instead of having to use Multiple Append Fields to join man different columns.

It would be nice if we could right click on a Tool from the canvas and add it to Favorites from there.

For the purpose of debugging a workflow, I often filter just one customerID or any other ID to analyse the workflow.

With the Browse tool (ctrl-shift-B) you can just double click a cell and copy the value of it. This is not possible in the result tool, it would be nice if that would become possible.

Thanks,

Hans

It would be great to get a random x number of records or x % of records for every grouped field in the sample tool.

Right now, the sample tool is lacking the random % feature and the random % tool is lacking the group by feature.

When reading and writing large data frames to/from a python script in Alteryx it seems that there are limitations to the SQLite component of the tool. Given that this selection is recommended only when the user is having issues in the python tool why is the option selected by default? A colleague and I spent a couple of hours trying to work through an issue with importing a data frame larger than 1000x1000 and once we found this option (SQLite override) and unchecked it the data was written back to Alteryx without any problems.

Hint provided by the tool, "This changes the intermediate data format between Alteryx and Jupyter from yxdb to SQLite. Use only if running into issues. See help for more details."

SQLite override is default selection

Error message provided by the tool

After unchecking the option the workflow ran without any errors.

Recommendation: the python tool should default to SQLite override unchecked

I'd appreciate the ability to use the Find and Replace tool and "Find" on multiple fields as if it were a join. Currently, in order to flag clients (who are repeated across the data set) with some records that I've already isolated that meet certain criteria, I have to create a compound key for the client and the flag and then use Find/Replace on the compound key. I'd rather use a Find/Replace where multiple columns match (ex: Client, Product, Month, Shipping Depot A, etc.) and skip the compound key step if possible.

Is there a possibility of changing the behavior of Event or the email tool itself to not use anonymous relays?

Our Security team does not want to white list desktops, and a lot of our customers don't use server.  Our server IPs have been whitelisted and a couple of desktops, but that's it. So looking to see if an enhancement can be considered for the Email tool and the Event set up.

Here is what we received from Alteryx Support:

Alteryx sends anonymous email, and there is no way to tie (or spoof) a separate IP address to the email to let the server know where it's coming from, or to make it "non-anonymous." The email tool is a very basic SMTP client that currently does not support SSL or authentication. As such if the SMTP server you are connecting to requires SSL or authentication to relay messages the tool will fail to send the intended message(s). If the server IP hasn't been blocked to send anonymous email, you can test in Designer on the server to see if you receive the same error. If it works on the server, you should be able to send emails from workflow scheduled on gallery. Since the IP of the machine itself is blocked from sending anonymous email, there is nothing we can do on our end to resolve the issue for each individual Alteryx user. IT will have to white-list any IP that wishes to send anonymous email. 

Thanks so much!!
Diana

We extensively use the AWESOME functionality of SharePoint List Input and SharePoint List Output tools.  They're great!  BUT... they require valid credentials to pull back the valid list and view values.  Not normally an issue until you go to share your workflow.  If you strip out your credentials from Alteryx the List and view fields go blank, do it from the xml and when the person you share it with opens it up the fields go blank and you have to count on that user selecting the proper list and view.  

I propose to have these tools load valid lists and views only upon pressing a button or running the macro in initial configuration state.  

Found this https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/SharePoint-Passwords/td-p/17182

and we could use a macro tool but every implementation still requires storing a valid username and password to avoid the error and the list id which I imagine the sharepoint API requires and which is why the tool behaves the way it does is not easily obvious to most ppl.

I am currently building workflows on unfamiliar data and using the filter tool on text fields regularly on a large excel file.

As there is no dropdown on the right hand side of the filter tool I find myself needing to open excel and use it's dropdown functionality to find the right text to filter on. I know I could use the summarise tool but each time I run the workflow it takes many seconds to complete before it is populated. It is quicker to use Excel. I am surprised this has not been requested before.

When I perform data type conversions I sometimes receive conversion errors. There is not a slick way to programmatically handle these that I am aware of. Instead, I have to manage them with half a dozen tools or really unsightly expressions in formula tools. As an example, I have a string field with a value "two" and I want to convert to a decimal or int. I receive a conversion error and the value is either "0.000" or "0". This is clearly wrong and I want to have a NULL value instead. I want to use a function to attempt the conversion in the formula tool so i can nest it inside conditionals in a cleaner fashion.

Here is a reference to the try_cast doc:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/try-cast-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017

When using the latest version of PublishtoPowerBI and attempting to publish on the gallery the password encryption appears to be specific to the machine where the workflow resides.

It only works when the workflow is published from Designer on the Worker server. This is currently a limitation of the tool as confirmed by Alteryx on INC Case # 00261086.

Alteryx support also flagged that Refresh Token authentication type does not work on a Gallery. Authenication type Persist credentials should be used when publishing on the Gallery.

Could you please implement a solution so that we can use this tool when publishing to gallery?