Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I love the macro indicator. It is not obtrusive and over the top. Can I have something similar for tools that are available to be cached? I don't want to hunt and right-click on tools to see if the cache option is greyed out of the context menu. Please just put a wedge or some other shape on the tools that can be cached.

In older versions, I could delete the text of an annotation. It didn't matter if I wrote it or if it was autogenerated. Now, I cannot remove the text of the annotation. Yes, I know that I can hide the annotation of that tool. I want to delete the text. I have to select all the text and replace it with a space. I don't know why this functionality changed. Please change it back.

Experts - 

While developing code in the formula tool (and perhaps elsewhere) it would be helpful to have the "parenthesis highlighting" function found in database software such as SSMS, DBeaver, SQL Developer etc.  I.e. put the cursor next to a closing paren and the corresponding opening paren gets highlighted (or vice versa) - conversely if there is no corresponding paren nothing gets highlighted and you instantly know you've got a bug to fix (and where to fix it)!

Hi all,

I think it would be great if Alteryx could send calendar invites in Outlook (and perhaps other calendaring systems) like it sends emails.

Currently the only way to accomplish this is to send it as an attached ICS file on a regular email.  

In my use case, rather than auto-populating a Shared Mailbox/calendar, someone has to go into the inbox, the email has to be opened then the ICS has to be clicked on to interact with.  

There are ways in Outlook to send an item like this but have it appear automatically without the end user ever seeing the actual invite.  (Our Company adds holidays and other important dates in this manner)

So basically I want this functionality available in Alteryx to do the same.  I have posted about it before in the discussions threads, but basically right now we enter our time in HR system, then have to manually enter the same info on our personal calendar in Outlook and any team calendar whether it be a SharePoint calendar, a group calendar in Outlook etc.

If Alteryx had the ability to send these types of invites, employees could enter the info in our HR system then Alteryx can get the data feed and automatically populate the other calendar (whichever type it may be).

Hopefully this gets some likes.  

It would be great if you could fix the Interactive Trainings - great idea to have them, but they are constantly down (at the moment Apps does not work, then went to Predictive Grouping, which also does not work). Not quite sure why this is so complicated, maybe the whole thing could be moved to youtube (if you have server limitations) and then have the test questions separately on the alteryx website.

Really demotivating that whenever I have an hour to learn  during the day, it is a lottery, whether the interactive trainings will work or not.

Before new ideas, we should also be conscious of getting the basics right.

Thanks

One of the common issues when you build macros is the error "the schema of macro output XXX has changed between iterations"

So the next step that we commonly follow is to put a select tool into the flow just before the macro output - and convert all the fields to a specific type; untick the "unknown" field; and then sometimes have to go into the XML to add the "Forced = true" flag into the XML so that it doesn't change over time:

Please could you add an option under the "Options" tab to force / lock down the type of every field with one click?     That would eliminate dozens of clicks on every creation of a macro.

Thank you 

Sean

Hello!
I recently build a couple of workflows where i needed to union many parts of my data together. 

Take for instance, the following:

I appreciate this is an unrealistic workflow - but if i am splitting data, at any points, and doing different processes, i am going to need to union that data back together.

Now without my fix - the solution is to put a union tool onto the canvas, and drag each connection to the union tool. This is fine on a small scale, but when its 5+ connections this can become tedious.

My proposed solution, is similar to the 'cache and run' functionality, in that you can select many tools with Ctrl + Click, and at the bottom you have the option for 'Union Outputs':

And when clicked, a union is added to the canvas, following the furthest most right tool (or last clicked), and have a union setup, with all connections made:

Hope this makes sense!
TheOC

Hello!
I have recently come across something within Alteryx that caught me by surprise. Currently when you are within the configuration window of a tool (in this example, the browse tool) and use ctrl + backspace (shortcut for deleting a previous full word), a blank character is instead added.

Please see example:

Currently in the Browse tool configuration

Go to change the Name of the tool - and naturally to clear it, use ctrl + backspace:

[] is added to the end. From what i can gather, this is a 'control character' , used when an application does not support ctrl+backspace.

Ctrl + Delete however, is supported.

I am proposing for this character/functionality to be supported. I believe the configuration window is the main - and potentially only, i couldn't find any other examples - place this is not supported.

Hope this makes sense!
TheOC

I tend to use a lot of the 'Names' for the connections. 
If you're not familiar with this option, or the above makes little sense, when you select a connector (line) on the canvas, within the configuration window, you can enter a 'Name' (or just some text) in the box, that will then appear on the canvas. 

I'd like this option to be expanded on. 

Rather than just putting in some text, I'd like the ability to have the text centred on the line between the tools. Maybe have the text a different colour. One definite option I'd like is for 'Wrap-Text'.

I tend to use this option to make notes on my workflow, as I find that it looks better than a comment box or tool annotation. It's useful if your workflow has multiple streams and you want to note what one stream does. 

As an example of how I use it: 

To be able to have this 'Wrapped' would make it so much neater. 

Only a 'small' change I guess(?)

It will be helpful if we can set the Importance (Normal/High/Low) of an Email sent by ALteryx. 

A new option can be added in the existing Emailer event (see attached)

Best Regards!!!

Alteryx to develop for the people who are Disable under American with Disability Act.

Taking inspiration how you work with Jupyter notebooks and use the notebook to show your workings,  wouldn't it be great if you could document your workflows directly on the canvas more in a notebook style.

I think this essentially can be summarised down into two features:

1) Markdown functionality in the comment tool

2) Ability to import results from IRG and  / or browse tool directly into the canvas.

I have mocked up a version of what this could look like in the screenshot below.

Overall I think it would improve the experience of documenting workflows as you can show your workings in-line while building the workflow. Plus it solves the debate around team vertical vs team horizontal as you build using both! 

Currently if I drag a tool onto the canvas and it has multiple input anchors, Alteryx will try to connect to the first input anchor from the output of the nearest tool I am hovering near.

However the improvement I would like to see is where there are specific tools which are required to go into each input that it 'intelligently' connects to the correct input, for example on the gif below I have a PDF input and PDF template tool (pre-computer vision), and when I bring the image to text tool in, it will try and connect the output of the template tool into the D input anchor, when the correct input is the T anchor. What this leads to is me having to delete a connection and then re-wiring which slows down the development time.

Often (like, a surprising amount of the time), we will be on a working session with a customer and I'll notice they will break a data stream connection in order to prevent downstream tools from running.  Of course, I always coach them to add a tool container to the downstream tools, then disable it but they continue to choose not to.  

I'd love to see a feature where we can right-click on a data stream, then select "disable downstream tools", which then auto adds (and disables) a tool container. 

Gif of current behavior I too often see below, thank you!

It would be awesome if we could edit annotations while the workflow is running.

I love annotating all my tools, and I'm often sitting there looking at my canvas right after hitting run and thinking, "I should annotate that!" and then moving on and forgetting after it's run.  I'm not sure if that's feasible or not, but I think it would be neat.  

Olá, não sei se classifiquei a ideia na caixa correta, mas eu gostaria de ver uma ferramenta, provavelmente na aba "Transformar", e que traria o subtotal e total de um conjunto de linhas, sem ter que construir um fluxo somente para isso. Acredito que com uma ferramenta, apenas, o problema possa ser resolvido, como no exemplo anexo, o que é bem fácil de fazer no Excel, por exemplo.

It would be easy if there is an alteryx tool or in the input tool a configuration  to put an excel password and it opens the file to use it on a workflow.

Adding "Lightning Bolt" connectors to the standard workflow tools to allow dynamic automation of the settings would be a game changer. I believe that this would enable us to create universally dynamic and adaptive workflows which could be used as drop in solutions for most datasets. This would turn the standard tools into a dynamic ones and dramatically reduce the tool count to accomplish dynamic tasks, and make complex workflows much easier to internalize. Making standard workflow tools more dynamic would allow us to easily dynamically incorporate conditional tests / values / fieldname selections / bypass / etc into tools like detour / filter / formula / unique / transpose / crosstab / summarize / Outputs / etc. I would also like to see the ability to utilize a bool field to bypass any given tool in a workflow. That way we could do things like conditionally bypass an entire formula tool which would dramatically simplify complex formula construction, turn on and off inputs / outputs, simplify error avoidance, etc.

In order to build complex dynamic conditional workflows with the current tool capabilities, most of us are forced to use custom macros (often a multitude of workflow specific ones as well), constantly add and remove formula created fields for message relay, and create complex multi-routings / tests / unions in a standard workflow with large numbers of tools and containers. This hides many of our tasks within short-term use fields / custom macros and it makes the rest of our workflows voluminous and less intuitive.

On the User Interface side, I recommend a simple approach. Next to the standard tool setting there should be a dynamic input option which allows you to select the source field in the lightning bolt connector. Next to that, there should be an icon that can be clicked on to pop up a short text description and a basic screen shot of data in the correct format for dynamic input. I would also like to see a check box at the bottom for manual tool "bypass" which can also be dynamically controlled. (This would especially be helpful on outputs, but it would also be helpful to allow formulas and filters to be kept in place for future use even when they should not currently be used) Turned off tools could be highlighted in a red background or something.

This would be useful for anyone creating dynamic and adaptive workflows, but it would especially expand Alteryx Designer's capability to attract more custom software developers like me.  It would dramatically reduce the need for a large number of complex workflow specific macros that clutter our systems. Users that find the traditional workflow tool approach easier for them could easily use the tools as normal by simply using the standard manual settings. Advanced users could simplify the creation of universally dynamic and self adaptive workflows.

Hi Team,

I have searched through the ideas board but couldn't find one relating to my current request so here's hoping that this can be implemented in future releases.

I have been playing around with Knime and find one feature very useful that you could build in.  Knime use the concept of a metanode, where you can collapse a bunch of tools (nodes in Knimespeak) into one single node and I believe that this can be a very useful feature.  For example, in some of my workflows, where I text mine using regex, (depending on the circumstance), I will have a bunch of regex tools to parse one string (see screen grab below).  In such instances, it would be great if all the regex tools can be collapsed into one meta-tool.