Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Part of the joy of using Alteryx is watching connections progress, tools turn green, and messages flow to the results window. As workflows are running, the messages provide crucial information for the developers/executors in real time. This UX is absent when running on the Gallery. It would be lovely to run a workflow on the Gallery and let it stream all those messages, and possibly even the canvas, to my Designer window in real time. I could even catch issues/problems and stop the workflow instead of waiting for it to finish on the Gallery and then diving into the log. Is it possible to have the same experience in Designer regardless of executing the workflow locally or in Gallery?

Because this is a desired feature in Designer, I decided to post in Designer Ideas rather than Server Ideas.

On the Reporting palette, the Map Legend Builder tool has an extra "the" in the tooltip. I have enclosed an image below. Full disclosure: it isn't a bug, it doesn't affect functionality, and it's trivial. This is version 2018.3.4.51585.

When attempting to save from Designer to Gallery the last step of the save is the validation step.  The validation step, as I understand it, checks to make sure there's a valid license on Gallery.  This counts as one of the processing "threads".  If your organization is constrained by the throughput on Gallery, this can cause delays. 

Our business only has the 2-thread service level for Alteryx Gallery.  Consequently, if someone is running long, drawn out workflows on Gallery, this can create delays in saving the file from Designer to Gallery.  It can also cause delays if there's a long "line" of workflows waiting to run.  I presume that the save attempt is put in line along with the other jobs on Gallery that have to run.  If this is the case, it could take a long time to complete the validation--tens of minutes or longer.  

That window being open keeps the user from being able to use Designer at all.  Very inefficient.  There should be a requirement that the user has both valid licenses on Designer and on Gallery before they can run anything on Gallery.  However, the validation of both of those is already accomplished by virtue of the fact that Designer checks for a license whenever the program loads.  Also, if Gallery checks for the license anytime the workflow runs, then the second half of this check is already accomplished and, therefore, renders the check when saving to Gallery unnecessary.  Please correct me if i'm wrong on this. 

Change #1) Please the validation of Gallery license when saving from Designer to Gallery.

Change #2) Please adjust Designer such that you can continue to edit workflows on the same session while other files are being saved to Gallery.

Change #3) If we can't get #1 or #2, please change the queueing process to put attempts to save to Gallery in the front of the line because they should take <1 second to validate the license while other workflows could take many minutes.

*This is an idea from @sayuri  from the Portuguese Community*

• Create a button to add any tool to all output anchors of selected tools (similar to “Add All Browses”)

It should be made more clear when a container is just closed versus inactive/deactivated. Maybe highlight the container header in pink or light red if it's just closed and not deactivated. I've seen others in my group make the mistake of assuming the container is inactive if they simply close it. The current switch is kind of subtle. 

When a user adds a column in the Formula tool, show the data type directly underneath the column name, not below the expression. It's important for the user to set the data type and then build the expression. Otherwise, the user neglects to and then minutes or hours later sees strange behaviour as a result of having the default V_WString. Make the data type prominent because it is important and part of the metadata.

Do you have self diagnosed OCD?  Do you know why 59 could be a magic number in Alteryx?  After long bellyaching in these forums about distribute evenly (+1) and auto layout, and the clean my workflow features I suddenly realized, why not just snap to grid and make my grid size the size of an Alteryx tool?  Voila! only ...no.  Setting the grid size to 59 and snapping only intermittently works. There seem to be varying reference points used for the snap depending on the existence of containers, etc.  So my idea, maintain a single reference point for workflow snapping that should ensure everything snaps based on that point (aligns to the grid).

For those of you still wondering what I'm on about... note how the append tool is shifted.  Yes I know I can click and move it to align with the grid, but it gets cumbersome when dealing with many items in many containers.  One grid to rule them all.

Line UP!

Hi All,

I think it would be good to have the ability to pick a connection and drag and reconnect that to another tool.

Following are some of the areas where it might come handy

1) In case a tool is there which is having good number of connections and we want to move all connections to a new tool.
In current scenario, I end up deleting my existing connections and then re-establishing those to the new tool.

2) In case there is an existing connection which is separated by a good distance on the canvas and we need to move one side of the connection to a tool near to the existing tool.

At the moment, I am making use of select tool to save me some effort for above cases, in case of scenarios calling for reconnection, I generally put a dummy select tool and reconnect existing connections to select and then delete the existing connection from tool(to select tool) and repoint connection from new tool to the select.

Thanks,
Rohit

Currently, the results window returns varying column widths, not related to the width of the data.  We are able to select an individual column and double click the edge to auto fit the column to the data.  It would be helpful to have all columns automatically fit, and allow us to select multiple columns to adjust at the same time.

I use large workflows with multiple comments and tool containers to document and organize the different sections of the workflow. The issue I continue to run into is whenever I have to move or edit a comment box/tool container or a tool within a comment box/tool container my AlteryX freezes up and becomes unresponsive for a period of time. This issue seems to happen more frequently if you are sharing your screen. Has anyone else experienced this lag? Are there any work arounds to minimize the down time when using comment boxes or tool containers?

Sometime you have two or more workflows open in one instance of Alteryx and you want to easily be able to compare and/or  copy/paste.

Not a big need, but it would be handy to either be able drag the tab to the desktop to take that workflow into a new instance of Alteryx or to right click on the tab to open in a new instance of Alteryx. 

Please create a hotkey to close a container. I have to scroll over and up to close a container and it wastes a lot of time.

I would like the ability to scroll up in the workflow pane. 

You can scroll down or to the side indefinitely. 

Ran into situation where I had a complex workflow and had to add more pathway near the top of a workflow. 

I was running out of room near the top. My solution was to drag tools far to the right instead. 

Currently you can just give a name to a connection:

But I would like to see the ability to apply additional formatting to a connection, most importantly color. 

Currently you can click on an individual tool and the incoming and outgoing connections will be color coded, but when working in a complicated workflow color coding would make understanding the connections easier, without the need to click on individual tools.

Just like the ability the right click on a tool and say "Make (incoming / outgoing) connections wireless" you should be able to right click on a tool and specify the formatting of all  incoming or outgoing connections.

I spoke to an Alteryx Product Manager, Alex Polly and pitched an idea about having workflows bookmarked for weekly or monthly runs. 

I run weekly workflows together one after the one, from different folders and I have to open file location every single time. So here's a thought, how about if we can bookmark workflows as a set/folder itself and one click and all workflows open up. 

Chrome has this feature storing the links in a bookmark folder. 

Please find the link for your reference. 

https://lifehacker.com/save-sets-of-multiple-tabs-to-launch-later-in-the-bookm-1453967463

Thanks, 

Jai Katariya

Typically I drag tools from the tool pallet to my workflow.  Sometimes, when I need to insert a tool into my workflow, I will right click to get the Insert tool dialog to find the tool I want to insert between two existing tools.  With the new UI, it is hard to see the tool categories as these were redesigned for the darker back ground. The preparation category is sandwiched between 3 other categories that start with "P" and I typically lean on the color/shape of the tool icon to find what I'm looking for.  Now I have to read the text to really know for sure. 

Perhaps you could lightly shade the middle of the tool category icons to make them easier to see or perhaps make the background behind the tool categories match the new toolbar color.  

Tool categories icons are hard to distinguish since they are now just light colored outlines on a light background.

When my workflow is done running, this box pops up:

Previous to 2018.4, the space bar would select ok and the box would go away. Now the space bar selects the checkbox.

Please change it back so that the space bar selects ok.

Having the ability to minimize the toolbar would allow more screen space.  Once minimized, the tools should display when you hover over the tool category tab.