Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Today, the behaviour of batch macro can be strange.

If I refer to https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Batch-Macro-not-looping-after-running-...

we can have big behaviour differences between :

-wf and app

-designer and scheduler

Example here with a batch macro running for all lines in designer and only for line in scheduler

Designer works fineScheduler only runs the first line!!

I know the turnaroud (just use a message box) but it's not natural and I think

-at least the same behaviour is needed in any use case
-if you want to do some optimization, ok, but make it an option!!

The Transpose In-db stands in the "Laboraty" for years now. I understand Alteryx invested some time and money to develop that but sadly we still can't use that tool for sensitive workflows. Did you get some bugs on it? Can you please correct it and make this tool an "official" tool?

Thanks

I would like a way to disable all containers within a workflow with a single click.  It could be simply disable / enable all or a series of check boxes, one for each container, where you can choose to disable / enable all or a chosen selection. 

In large workflows, with many containers, if you want to run a single container while testing it can take a while to scroll up and down the workflow disabling each container in turn.  

Hello Alteryx Devs - 

When I got to write some scripting in the formula tool, my data stream properties should be the first to be suggested once a user starts typing a letter, not the last. 

uppercase(Ad -> gives me:

DateTimeAdd

FileAddPaths

PadLeft

PadRight

ReadRegistryString

[Address]

I think we would need a dedicated R macro to ascertain the chances anyone in is going to need [ReadRegistryString] before they need a column of their own data that starts with [Ad...]

Easy fix.  Makes a big difference.  

Thanks.

There is no tool that exists that outputs all records that are duplicates (those sharing the selected values with at least one other record) and also outputs the records that are not duplicates (those not sharing the selected values with at least one other record).

The Unique Tool is not sufficient.  It only provides the first record of a unique duplicate group along with any non-duplicates and then provides a secondary output that only contains the additional records of a duplicate group.  Sometimes you only care about the duplicates and want to quickly see what differs between the unique groups.

For example, if there are 4 records with the City of Austin and I am looking for duplicates on City I want to see all 4 records with Austin in the output so I can quickly compare additional fields to see what might differ, or if they are all indeed truly duplicates.

Hello all,

Big picture : on Hadoop, a table can be

-internal (it's managed by Hive or Impala, and act like any other database)
-external (it's managed by hadoop, can be shared among the different hadoop db such as hive and impala and you can't delete it by default when dropping the table

for info, about suppression on external table :

https://docs.cloudera.com/HDPDocuments/HDP3/HDP-3.1.4/using-hiveql/content/hive_drop_external_table_...

Alteryx only creates internal tables while it would be nice to have the ability to create external tables that we can query with several tools (Hive, Impala, etc).

It must be implemented

-by default for connection
-by tool if we want to override the default

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

We all love pretty much the in-memory multi-row formula tool. Easy to use, etc. However, the indb counterpart does not exist.

I see that as a wizard that would generate windowing functions like LEAD or LAG
https://mode.com/sql-tutorial/sql-window-functions/

Best regards,

Simon

Issue

Whenever a Summarize tool is used, it renames the output field (e.g., sales becomes SUM_sales or AVG_sales).  

Proposal

I think a reasonable compromise is to by default not rename fields in the Summarize Tool, but to include an option (in the tool, or in global settings) to allow for renaming.

Rationale

I have yet to come across a use case where automatic renaming of aggregated fields is desirable. What I have come across is the annoyance to rename the fields back to what they were with a Dynamic Rename tool, and sometimes having to do this multiple times (e.g., converting back a SUM_SUM_SUM_sales back to sales). Additionally, automatic field renaming causes workflow errors when workflows are later modified by adding/removing a Summarize tool (e.g., if you later add a Summarize tool, all downstream steps will expect the "sales" field and not know to use the "Sum_sales field). 

Automatic Renaming feels very much like historic Excel with Pivot Tables field renaming and not reflective of modern code-based workflow best practices.

I appreciate you considering this improvement.

Hi there,

Adam ( @AdamR_AYX ), Mark ( @MarqueeCrew) and many others have done a great job in putting together super helpful add-in macros in the CREW pack - and James ( @jdunkerley79 ) has really done an incredible job of filling in some gaps in a very useful way in the formula tools.

Would be possible to include a subset of these in the core product as part of the next release?

I'm thinking of (but others will chime in here to vote for their favourite):

- Unique only tool (CReW)

- Field Sort (CReW)

- Wildcard XLSX input (CReW) - this would eliminate a whole category of user queries on the discussion boards

- Runner (CReW - although this may have issues with licensing since many people don't have command line permission - Alteryx does really need the ability to do chained dependancy flows in a more smooth way.

- Date Utils (JDunkerly) - all of James's Date utils - again, these would immediately solve many of the support questions asked on the discussion forum

I think that these would really add richness & functionality to the core product, and at the same time get ahead of many of the more common queries raised by users.   I guess the only question is whether the authors would have any objection?

Thank you

Sean

Please enhance the input tool to have a feature you could select to test if the file is there and another to allow the workflow to pause for a definable period if the input file is locked by another user, then retry opening.  The pause time-frame would be definable for N seconds and the number of iterations it would cycle through should be definable so you can limit how many attempts to open a file it would try.

File presence should be something we could use to control workflow processing.  

A use case would be a process that runs periodically and looks to see if a file is there and if so opens and processes it.  But if the file is not there then goes to sleep for a definable period before trying again or simply ends processing of the workflow without attempting to work any downstream tools that might otherwise result in "errors" trying to process a null stream.

An extension of this idea and the use case would be to have a separate tool that could evaluate a condition like a null stream or field content or file not found condition and terminate the process without causing an error indicator, or perhaps be configurable so you could cause an error to occur or choose not to cause an error to occur.

Using this latter idea we have an enhanced input tool that can pass a value downstream or generate a null data stream to the next tool, then this next tool can evaluate a condition, like a filter tool, which may be a null stream or file not found indicator or other condition and terminate processing per the configuration, either without a failure indicated or with a failure indicated, according to the wishes of the user.  I have had times when a file was not there and I just want the workflow to stop without throwing errors, other times I may want it to error out to cause me to investigate, other scenarios or while processing my data goes through a filter or two and the result is no data passes the last filter and downstream tools still run and generally cause a failure as they have no data to act on and I don't want that, it may be perfectly valid that on a Sunday or holiday no data passes the filters.

Having meandered through this I sum up with the ideal being to enhance the input tool to be able to test file presence and pass that info on to another tool that can evaluate that and control the workflow run accordingly, but as a separate tool it could be applied to a wider variety of scenarios and test a broader scope of conditions to decide if to proceed or term the workflow.

This functionality would allow the user to select (through a highlight box, or ctrl+click), only the tools in a workflow they would want to run, and the tools that are not selected would be skipped. The idea is similar to the new "add selected tools to a new tool container", but it would run them instead. 

I know the conventional wisdom it to either put everything you don't want run into a tool container and disable it, or to just copy/paste the tools you want run into a blank workflow. However, for very large workflows, it is very time consuming to disable a dozen or more containers, only to re-enable them shortly afterwards, especially if those containers have to be created to isolate the tools that need to be run. Overall, this would be a quality of life improvement that could save the user some time, especially with large or cumbersome workflows.

Hi Alteryx community,

It would be really nice to have v_string/v_wstring and max character size as a standard for text columns.

it is countless how many times I found that the error was related to a string truncation due to string size limit from the text input.

Thumbs-up those who lost their minds after discovering that the error was that! 😄

The following idea might not be as valuable as some of @SeanAdams posts, but it would save this user precious fractions of time.   When I leave the canvas with my mouse (point A) to go up to the pallet I select and drag the tool down to the canvas.  Sometimes I do right-click and go through the menus to add the next tool, but generally I go through that labor only when I'm inserting in-stream the tool.  So here is my idea:

Double-Click your NEXT tool and it "Alteryx-ly" appears on your canvas in proximity to the hi-lighted (last) tool.  Better yet, connect it!  Now I can move from the pallet to the configuration panel directly without having to move my mouse down to the canvas and then over to the configuration panel.

Hopefully, my friend @Hollingsworth will find this time-saving idea worthy of a star.  Speed demons like @NicoleJohnson and @BenMoss might not need this turbo boost, but at my age it is worth the ask.

Cheers,

Mark

When using the output data tool, it would save me and my cluttered organizational skills a lot of effort if the writing workflow was saved as part of the yxdb metadata. 

I've often had to search to find a workflow which created the yxdb. I tend to use naming conventions to help me,  but it would be easier if the file and or path was easily found. 

cheers,

 mark

When working in a large workflow wireless connections help to make it easier to work with. However sometimes you want to be able to see all your connections (when debugging). 

I'd like to see a toggle (button on the toolbar) which would display all the connections including wireless. Ideally the wireless connections would be a different color. You could then click the button again to make the the wireless connections invisible.

Reason:

The existing options to display are limited as you have to click on individual tools to see the connections. 

Hey there,

The performance profiling option on the "runtime" tab is very helpful to identify bottlenecks on a long-running workflow.   However this is missing (along with the entire "Runtime" tab) if I change this to a macro.

Given that the only way to build relatively complex dependant chain jobs is to wrap them in dummy batch macros (using a macro like a sub-procedure with flow-of-control on the master-canvas) - most of our work is done in Macros - so it would be helpful to be able to performance profile them during testing.

Maybe it was a lack of planning, but I've had a need to rename a variable within a workflow and would like to (outside of the XML view) be able to rename the variable so that downstream tools don't have to be reconfigured (e.g. formula, join, union).  

Presently when mapping an Excel file to an input tool the tool only recognizes sheets it does not recognize named tables (ranges) as possible inputs. When using PowerBI to read Excel inputs I can select either sheets or named ranges as input. Alteryx input tool should do the same.