Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When I am working with 2 different versions of Alteryx (e.g., a current version and a beta version), I set different background colors for each version through user settings. This a great because I don't want to accidentally modify a current workflow when beta testing; the canvas color is a clear, but subtle indicator of which version I'm working in. 

Similarly, I'd like the option to set a custom canvas color for each workflow. Use case - I have two versions of a workflow, e.g., one production and one in development, both in the same version of Alteryx. I don't want to accidentally modify the production workflow instead of the dev workflow. My current workarounds are to open the workflow in two different windows on separate monitors or to add an obtrusive comment box making the dev version as in development. Neither is a great option. If I could set the canvas for the workflows to different colors, that would reduce the possibility of making this mistake.

My idea is to expand this the custom canvas-coloring functionality to allow users to set a custom canvas color for each workflow. 

In python, there is this monthrange function which is very useful to find out the days in particular month and also particular year (leap year)

In python we will only have to do this to get monthrange

 x[i] = calendar.monthrange(Year_S, Month_S)[1]

whereas in Alteryx, we will have to do this

datetimeday(DateTimeTrim(DateTimeParse([START_DATE],'%Y-%m-%d'),'lastofmonth'))

The different are enormous and I can see that Alteryx team was able to add in this in a jiffy.

I was hoping we can simplify the code so that users wont have to go and dig around to find a way to get thru.

This will be helpful in doing calculations like insurance/interest premium, where we need to find the remaining days of in the month.

I think it would be a great idea where the system admin can control the logs and the location of the logs for all the alteryx designer users within an organization. This ensures that no data is being transferred outside the organization. 

Of course the workflow file name could include a version history, but it would also be neat to have a field within the workflow itself.

In complex Alteryx workflows, it can be hard to navigate between different tool containers - especially when there are dozens spread across in a large canvas.

I would love a feature where users could create a 'table of contents' using clickable text or bookmarks at the top of the workflow. For example, Clicking on a text label named 'Output Calculation' would automatically scroll to view to the Tool Container named 'Output Calculation'.

Suggested Implementation ideas : 

• Text boxes or Comment Tools support clickable links that scroll the canvas to a specific container or tool.
• Add a new 'Bookmark' or 'Jump To' action tied to container names or Tool IDs.
• Right click on a text label or container and choose 'Link to' or 'Scroll to this container'.
• Use CTRL + Click or ALT + Click behavior on a text comment to jump.

This would massively improve usability and workflow navigation, especially for large teams or workflows that are shared across departments.

Inspiration : 

Tools like POWER BI and TABLEAU allow similar dashboard or bookmark style navigation . Implementing this in Alteryx designer would be a game changer.

When running a job in the gallery, a file output has to be chosen every time, even if there is no other option. I propose that under "My Profile >> Workflow Defaults" users be able to choose a preferred default file format for outputs. If it is available then the gallery will automatically choose that, otherwise the user can pick. 

Cache function is very useful when executing very long db request.

I'd like to see a checkbox option (in workflow runtime settings for example) to enable/disable automatic caching of first execution for all inputs tools.

I'd like to suggest that Alteryx make annotations able to be hidden or visible by right clicking or hovering over a little highlighted corner similar to comments/notes in Excel.  Have a highlighted corner of tools when there is an annotation. When hovering over the colored corner, user is able to view the annotation otherwise it is hidden and out of the way of the tool box. 

Please allow disable or ignore conversion errors in SharePoint List Input. 

In SharePoint List Input I see the same conversion error about 10 times. Then....

"Conversion Error Limit Reached".

Can you simply show the error once or allow users to choose to ignore the error? (Union Tool allows users to ignore errors).

I am not using that SP column in my workflow. Meanwhile I have to show my workflow to a 3rd party within the company. SO annoying to see errors that do not apply to my workflow being shown.

This is a general request for uniform methods of connecting to data sources. The management of data connections is currently varied, and configurations/updates are completely different across connections. 

Hi!

Under User Settings, if you could add options to change what Alteryx shows in the tool configuration window. Currently, it shows Field, Type, Size, Rename, Description. I've been using Alteryx for almost 20 years, I've never used the Description field for anything. If Alteryx provided the option to remove it from the view for users who never use it, then the Rename field would no longer get truncated, which is a field I think is more widely utilized.

When a macro that is not "installed" is inserted to a workflow (from a folder), its dependency can also be modified (including the macro inputs, if there are any) from the Workflow Dependencies settings.

I would like to suggest that the macro tools and the relevant files have separate buttons for dependency configurations.

One use case for this would be when a user saves a workflow in a specific location after configuring the paths as All Relative and moving the workflow to an entirely different folder afterwards, making it difficult to find the original location of the macro used in the workflow, also introducing the chance of breaking the workflow when opened and saved with the undefined (question mark sign) macro tool if the underlying workflow XML is not examined by a text editor.

There are currently many encoding options (see also: Input Tool Has Limited Varieties of Code Pages) that are available for use with Alteryx Designer (https://help.alteryx.com/2018.2/CodePages.htm), however only a certain number of them can be directly accessed from the interface. Providing the user an option to enable all possible encoding options (from User Settings) for the applicable tools could eliminate the need for building an analytic app just to pass the output encoding parameter to i.e. the Input/Output/Run Command tools.

One case this could be useful is when there are file/folder names with non-English characters and a Run Command tool is used to execute an operation regarding moving something from/to the folder, where the only option is to use an OEM encoding to be able to correctly pass the file/folder name information, otherwise the characters are not read correctly by CMD.

I would like to Alteyx making a New Warning（Int type）

If a decimal point occurs during division of Int type data, the digits are truncated.

example
1/3 = 0.333333, but
If it is of type Int, it will be displayed as 0.

I know that the Int type is defined as an integer, but
I would like to Alteryx making a warning if the operation does not result in an integer.

Then we should be able to detect errors.

Thanks！

Hi Team,

Hope you are well. I am currently tasked with downloading the contracts from SAP for my analysis.

Is it possible to develop an app or automation which can go to SAP asks for user/Pwd and download the contracts/PDFs to a specific folder?

Please let me know your thoughts,

Thanks,

Sri

Salesforce Connector:

I just want to see what credentials I have used. I do not want to change them. A link to "view the data" and not only "Change Credentials"  would be helpful.

Also, when replacing connectors (due to a version change), it makes sense not to reassign the objects and fields and keep the old settings.

We are experiencing performance issues with fetching schema/table/columns info on Alteryx Designer when using Vertica DB.

From the troubleshoot with Alteryx support, the query hitting "odbc_columns" is contributing to the performance issue. Vertica DBA suggests to use "columns" instead of "odbc_columns". Submitting this request to change the query.

Refer to case 00551930 for more info.

It would be nice if the fields which are selected for the Unique tool can be easily visible. (by way of grouping selected fields etc)

The issue is that if a few out of many fields are selected to be considered for Unique, it is hard to review/check which are the fields that have been selected in the Unique Tool configuration.

Here's an example. It is difficult to see all the fields which have been selected. (There are 7 fields selected in this example.)

This is not exactly a new feature but I didn't know where else to send it.
I just received an email from Alteryx and I noticed that the footer is an image and not dynamic.

And there you see that the year is still 2021. A good idea would be to insert a code that would grab the year automatically from the actual date.