Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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.

You know how when you pull a new tool onto a canvas where you already have a workflow it wants to auto connect to the closest tool where it lands? While this can be useful it causes major issues when it moves the entire workflow you had in place. What makes this more frustrating is when it does this and you can't undo everything it did. Sometimes I spenda lot of of time fixing what it messed up. On top of which the tool it connected too was wrong!

Like I said it can be useful, but the adjustment of the entire workflow is HIGHLY unneccesary.

Could you PLEASE adjust this feature to auto connect without moving the entire module?!

Thank you 🙂

I'm a long time user of Photoshop and it would be great to get some similar zooming and panning functionality into Alteryx.  Such as:

- hold down the "space bar" see a hand and pan across the canvas.
- hold down "CTRL" or "ALT and zoom on the canvas
- use the mouse scroll to zoom on the canvas

While Alteryx is processing it displays information in the module with record/file infromatoin.  Once processing is complete this information is gone, except for in the output window.  Could you add a key combination or button toggle to redisplay this info from the prior run.  It would be very helpful for debugging.

My client today asked if Alteryx could be configured to build/run horizontally from right to left.  Thought I'd post the idea. 

I love the new global search option for introducing new users to functionality and seeing related community posts, but I also primarily use the search bar to grab tools and drag them onto the canvas.  The global search can slow down this functionality by waiting for search results to load and covering up the canvas.  This is particularly problematic if I have another window up side-by-side with Alteryx (e.g. SQL developer, Excel, Tableau, etc.) to view results or debug.  

We can see in this instance in 11 that I have a very small sliver of canvas visible.

Whereas in 10, there was still plenty of canvas during the search operation.

Granted the menu goes away once you start to click and drag, but having half of my canvas covered is still not ideal.  I also seem to have issues with the list refreshing and not being able to grab a tool at times.  

Another great enhancement would be to keep the global search in place for the search bar and add customizable keyboard shortcuts for tools similar to AutoCAD aliases.  This would keep the full search with help functionality in the bar, while providing users who have less of a need for help documentation with a means to add tools without clicking through toolbars.

Hi Team,

Version: 2019.3

Issue:

As what title said, it was hard to see the records display when the records is too large.

I have to adjust the Config Window to see the records. It is pain when checking a workflow with Join.

Suggestion:

1. Used fraction:   100,000/1,000,000 Records Displayed

2. Change based on the size it have, minimum will be 1,000,000 Records. Partial displayed will show if it expand.

3. Reduce the space for Search Bar, only Expand if selected.

4. Use another line. 

Appendix

10 Records (no Issue)

1 Million Records

1 Miillion Records (Issue to see the records)

10 Records

The Connected Tools submenu of a tool configuration is useful for navigating rapidly. One can double-click an Incoming or Outgoing line and jump to that connected tool. It gets tricky when a tool has multiple in/out anchors, like Append or Join. In those cases, it isn't possible to tell which tools are connected to which anchors. In the case of a Join tool, please change Incoming: to Incoming L: and Incoming R: and do the same for Outgoing. Please do this for all tools with multiple in/out anchors. Thank you.

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.

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

Hi Alteryx team,

Not sure if this is a Designer or Connect idea but the idea is to allow more options when searching in Connect from the Designer interface. As of now, it seems that it is only possible to search for tables and views, or generally those objects which can be added as an input data tool.

I believe that search directly from Designer is a great feature and at least our clients use it more and more. Would it be also possible to find workflows within Connect catalogue and open these workflows in Designer?

This could also apply to other data assets within the Data sources section like APIs, procedures etc.

Thank you

Michal

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

During the Inspire APAC conference, I dragged and dropped a tool over another tool with the intention for it to replace the tool that was on the canvas. I didnt realise that it had not replaced the tool. I kept getting errors and did not know why. The error was because the original tool was still hiding behind my new tool.

Can we add functionality where we can replace a tool on the canvas with another tool by either:

1. dragging a tool from the tool palette over another tool and it replaces that tool with the tool from the palette (the tool being replaced will turn grey whilst you hover to indicate that you are about to replace the tool. 

2. Right-click an existing tool and similar to insert after context menu, a replace tool context menu appears to select the tool that will replace the existing tool.

Also, if you can include in user options, an enable/disable checkbox for this function as I am not sure whether everybody may want this but this is a productivity hack when you change your mind later in the type of tool you want connected. Drag and Replace is very intuitive action which is used in other design software platforms. The only reason I can think of where you would drag and drop a tool directly over another tool is to replace it. Say you have the join tool on the canvas and you really want a union. Or you want to replace the predictive model being run without having to delete and then drag and drop the right tool. These are 2 examples among others where you reduce the number of actions taken to replace the tool currently on the canvas.

Happy to elaborate with more examples if the above does not make sense.

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

Hi - I miss the functionality in 9.5 of being able to set a default tool in a tab and then drag in tools from the tab. This seems to be gone in 10. Is there any possibility of it coming back?

Many thanks - Nathalie

Hello,

While working with Predictive models, I got confronted with this situation: 

The highlighted traces are linked to the box even though you click on an anchor.

It'd be much simpler to trace this spaghetti if, when we select an anchor, only what is connected to it stay highlighted.

IDEA: Click on the box, keep all output visible in blue, click on an anchor, anchor's output is visible in blue, the rest remains in black.

Like this:

(Drafted with powerpoint, not the best representation)

This is the most minor of annoyances, but it would be great if I could copy and paste color hex values between containers, comments, etc. The system color dialog doesn't have that, so maybe if the color boxes in the configuration pane were directly editable, or something like that. If I'm changing the colors for multiple containers, it's kind of a pain that I have to select the R, G, and B values manually.