Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Feature: If an instance of Alteryx is already running then on double clicking a *.yxmd file in Windows Explorer it should open in a New Tab of existing instance instead of launching another instance of Alteryx.

Issue: Each new instance of Alteryx puts load on the system memory due to an additional AlteryxGui.exe process.

Workaround: Currently we can drag & drop the *.yxmd file from Windows Explorer onto the running Alteryx instance to open in a new tab of the current instance but the same behaviour on double clicking the *.yxmd would be highly appreciated. 

Can we have an option to save a workflow in a prior version for backward compatibility? I think Tableau offers this functionality.

Example:

If I have 2019.4.8 and a colleague has 2019.1.x, I cannot share my workflows because my colleague will receive a notice that the workflow was built in a newer version. I want to be able to save my workflow in 2019.1.x and send to my colleague.

This is predicated on the workflow not containing any tools/features not present in the older version. In that case, give me a warning about the specific tools/features that are not backward compatible. Thank you.

Alteryx should support horizontal scrolling!!!! urgently

My PC has Windows Precision touchpad (which might be a standard today), I can use 2 fingers to scroll up/down but moving left/right in Alteryx is another story, it's just impossible. That's extremely annoying when the licence cost for a user is so high. 

Hi Dev team,

As well as this much needed UI feature to scroll through workflows https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Scrolling-functionality-added-to-Workflow-sh...

Could you please change the order of workflow names in the 'Active Documents' button to be ordered in the same order as the workflow tabs and not alphabetically as it currently is?

When you have more than 5 workflows open (or less if they have long names) it's so tricky to quickly and easily cycle through them to find the ones you need. This is especially important when demoing, training and presenting to others!

Thanks,

Joe

A simple, very simple idea that can save a few clicks for everyone and that costs less than 1 hour of development :

Just display all the tool categories on a fresh install. There is not need at all to display only a few and that's the first thing I have to do on every fresh install.

I've got six workflows up on my screen now and must reboot. I would like the option to save the workspace and reopen all flows at once.

Cheers,
Mark

I think it would be extremely beneficial to have the customization option to rearrange tools within their panels in the tool palette.

This would allow the user to group frequently used tools in their desired order, which would make navigation of these tools easier.

As an example, having the ability to place Data Input as the first tool in the palette would make a lot of sense to me, as its usually where I start building a new workflow.

Hi there,

Apologies if Alteryx already does this - but I'd be curious to see if it would be possible to automatically add items to your favourites bar based on usage.

To test this, I've been doing a lot of macro work over the last few days, and given the frequency of using the Macro input and Macro output, I'd expect that they would have elected themselves onto my favourites list.

Again, apologies if the designer already does this

Sean

It would be helpful to differentiate between annotations that have been automatically generated, vs those that have been manually entered. This would help speed up "reading" workflows, and reduce any confusion that occurs when annotations have been manually amended - but might look like auto-annotations.

E.g. auto-annotations appear Grey, whilst manually edited annotations appearing Black? 

The desginer autosave feature is fantastic when you need it. However, it's pretty annoying when you don't need it as it seems like it:

• Autosaves blank workflows
• Autosaves workflows that are saved and haven't had any changes made to them

Hopefully all of the above can be filtered out from Autosave: 

The only workflow from the screenshot above that I'd want Autosaved would be the Parse Directory workflow as this is the only one which I made changes to:

- New Workflow1 - Completely blank

- PureGym Log In - Saved and no changes made

- New Workflow2 - Completely blank (however, I had dragged a tool onto canvas and deleted it, so something had changed)

However, Alteryx brings up all of the workflows:

I love the new right click and duplicate workflow feature, but I think the duplicated workflow that opens, should open next to the original workflow and not at the end of all of your already open workflow tabs...

cc: @jpoz @jeffv 

We have a need to be able to trace the lineage of fields being processed through Alteryx - and it has to be done at a field level to satisfy our regulator.   In essence, we have to be able to show exactly where a particular field came from, and demonstrate that we can trust this field.   NOTE: If we could do this - then we could also use this information to make EVERY canvas faster, by checking for unused fields and making suggestions to remove these unused fields early in the flow.

In order to do this - it would be great if there were an option to force explicit field names in the Alteryx XML so that we can trace a specific field.

• Alteryx currently only makes a note of a field name if it is changing that field which is very economical - but it makes tracing fields impossible.
• Desire is for every tool to write the field list to the XML definition for every field that it knows about (just like it looks in the UI)

cc: @AdamR_AYX @jpoz @Claje 

Example:

Here's a simple canvas:

- 3 fields coming in from an input

- Select tool with these 3

- output of three fields into a file

These three fields are not mentioned anywhere in the XML

The new Paste Before/After feature is awesome, as is the Cut & Connect Around.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Paste-Before-After/idc-p/510292#M12071

What would be even better is to allow the combination of the two. E.G. It is not currently possible to copy or cut multiple tools and paste before/after, as this functionality only works for a single tool that's copied.

Thanks,

Joe

I see many posts where users want to view numeric or string data as monetary values. I think that it would be friendly to have a masking option (like excel) where you could choose a format or customize one for display.  The next step is to apply the formatting to the workflow so that folks who want to export the data can do so. 

cheers,

mark

Allowing the containers to be manipulated in size much like the explorer box tool - it feels like sometimes the containers stretch to far and cover to much blank space - allowing for a cleaner looking workflow.    

Hello!

When you left click + drag across the canvas you can select multiple tools. When you hold control and do this twice, the first selection gets deselected. The suggestion is to combine these selections into one. Much like when single selecting tools and holding down control, but for multi-selecting. Just a small QoL issue. 

Selection of blue box should be added to the already selected tools

Cheers,

Marco

I have a dual monitor setup. My canvas lives on the left monitor, and I combine tool config and results on the right monitor. I've noticed that it's incredibly difficult to resize the config vs results window size. This is because you have to hover over EXACTLY the right part of the divider until the resize icon appears, as below:

The difficulty arises because the target zone, over which the cursor changes from an arrow to the resize tool, is only 1 pixel wide. If you have a high resolution screen, or a slightly fiddly mouse, it's almost impossible to successfully hover over the correct place. Please consider increasing the width of the hover zone to facilitate window resizing. I hope I've explained this adequately, please let me know if I need to amend. Thanks!

I have often thought it would be nice to have a 'predicted run time' for a module calculated.

An adequate prediction might be the complete run time last time the module ran.  Then, in combination with a counter of how long a module has been running so far, we’d be well armed to estimate whether to go get a cup of coffee or not.