Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello!

Currently when using the formula tool, you can create a string using the two following methods:

With speech marks, or an apostrophe being used respectively.

I would expect both of these methods to behave the exact same way, however what is interesting is that if you type within the apostrophes anything that would prompt a formula, this is still prompted:

This is not the case within the speech marks:

This can cause mistakes with autocompletion when typing within the field. I propose a small QoL change that the formula tool will recognise a string is being written when within two apostrophes. I believe the logic is already built for that, given that it behaves in every other way the same, and highlights green too. 

Cheers,
TheOC

Currently Alteryx does not support writing to SharePoint document libraries.

However there are success sometimes but not at other times.

Please see attachment where we ran into an issue.

See this link for additional information.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Connect-to-and-Publish-Back-to-SharePoint-Online/m-p/4...

We need official support for reading and writing to SharePoint document libraries.

It's an important Output target, and will becoming more so, as Alteryx enhances its reporting capabilities.

Hello,

SQLite is :

-free

-open source

-easy to use
-widely used

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQLite

It also works well with Alteryx input or output tool. 🙂

However, I think a InDB SQLite would be great, especially for learning purpose : you don't have to install anything, so it's really easy to implement.

Best regards,

Simon

Data Cleansing Tool:   There should be a sub-category on the "Punctuation" cleansing.  Ideally to have an option to "Include Only" or conversely "Exclude these characters" which would allow you for example to remove all characters except   "." from a dollar formatted field .  There are times when you need to clean almost everything except a certain punctuation or not. 

Please update the Render tool to allow users to name the Excel sheet for the output. Alteryx currently errors when using same naming convention that works in normal Output tool.

Please add either or both

1. "CustomFile/Database", similar to the TREE tool to the Text Box interface tool
2. An option to make TREE Tool "silent" or passive when using the "CustomFile/Database" option

The purpose is to provide a better way to pass data, and thus allow "Action" tool to be used, from interface responses in a previous App chained to the current App.

Use Case:

We had a workflow with 8 TREE tools and 3 of them had significant number of rows associated.  This caused frequent failures where the queries getting the multiple layers of data for the TREE would time out.

Through trial and experiment we determined this was the issue by removing TREE tools until we had consistent function.

Most if not all the TREEs and all of the 3 offending TREEs were used to modify FILTER tools, in this case each of those 3 TREEs 3 or 4 Actions driving the same number of FILTERs

So we had to find a way to break up the operation.  Ultimately I separated the 3 large volume TREE tools into a separate workflow to run first and then CHAIN to the original flow with modifications to read the responses passed from the new 1st workflow in the chain and replaced the FILTER with JOINs, effectively filtering by JOIN.

This worked but was extra work and it made me think of the many other situations where I would like to take input from an external source and affect a FORMULA or FILTER or a few other tools where an ACTION is best/only way to modify tool configuration at run time.

I think this lack of a way to use an ACTION tool with a "Non-Interface" data source has probably limited the opportunities of Applications.

Given the division of labor in an APP,

1. run all Interface tools first and modify config of other tools
2. then run the rest of the tools on the canvas

there is no way to make a run time ACTION tool as it must do its job before the core job runs. 

This adaptation of the TREE tool, which is my preference, or the adaptation of the Text Box tool, offer good solutions that should be fairly simple to code and roll out the the user base.

From Wikipedia :

In a database, a view is the result set of a stored query on the data, which the database users can query just as they would in a persistent database collection object. This pre-established query command is kept in the database dictionary. Unlike ordinary base tables in a relational database, a view does not form part of the physical schema: as a result set, it is a virtual table computed or collated dynamically from data in the database when access to that view is requested. Changes applied to the data in a relevant underlying table are reflected in the data shown in subsequent invocations of the view. In some NoSQL databases, views are the only way to query data.

Views can provide advantages over tables:

    Views can represent a subset of the data contained in a table. Consequently, a view can limit the degree of exposure of the underlying tables to the outer world: a given user may have permission to query the view, while denied access to the rest of the base table.
    Views can join and simplify multiple tables into a single virtual table.
    Views can act as aggregated tables, where the database engine aggregates data (sum, average, etc.) and presents the calculated results as part of the data.
    Views can hide the complexity of data. For example, a view could appear as Sales2000 or Sales2001, transparently partitioning the actual underlying table.
    Views take very little space to store; the database contains only the definition of a view, not a copy of all the data that it presents.
    Depending on the SQL engine used, views can provide extra security.

I would like to create a view instead of a table.

I personally think it would work better to tab from 'Select Column' to 'Enter Expression Here' and not the 'Functions' List as probably people who are tabbing would immediately like to start typing the formula rather than going through functions, fields, etc.

Hello there!

Currently the email tool has the following configuration:

It is a fairly easy tool to use - however one part that I would like to be improved is testing the SMTP settings - similar to how it is done on the Alteryx Server. It would be awesome to have a button as part of this page, that would send a test email, and return true/display to the user that the email sent correctly. This would stop the need to setup dummy data and a dummy output to test a connection before rolling the email tool out into a live environment/use-case.

I imagine something along these lines for this functionality:

Clicking test (and passing):

Clicking test (and failing):

Thanks,
TheOC

If you forget to put a name on a new column in the formula tool - the error message is 

The field "" is not contained in the record. (Expression #1)

Please could you replace this with a user-friendly message which is self descriptive like:

"Please provide a name for the new column created in expression 1"?

When I use the Comment Tool its difficult to select the tools inside it, but when I use the Container Tool the Container Text doesn't support Font Sizes, and doesn't support multiple lines of text so I end up moving the Comment into the Container, but still have problems selecting a group of tools.

So a combined Comment and Container Tools would be wonderful!

Bonus: If the Comment Tool could support Multiple Font Sizes.

Currently, when a new version of Alteryx Designer is released, you get a banner at the top of your Designer to upgrade. You can manually select to disable this for up to 30 days. 

However, this is really causing issues with Server compatibility. Users get notified to upgrade, thinking it's from the Server owners and upgrade then is no longer compatible with Server. Alternatively, it causes differences between users, etc. 

It would be ideal that it would be disabled in general but also controlled when software is pushed to machines through IT policies.

Would love to see an option to disable a specific Output tool (rather than the global "Disable All Tools that Write Output" option). I'm envisioning the inverse of the Email tool, where there is a checkbox to enable Email... rather, the Output tool could have a check box that would disable that output (and ONLY that output), similar/consistent with the "Disable All Tools" function. A "Disable This Output" check box. The benefits would be a quick way to make sure not to overwrite something in one output (but still getting all the good content in all the other outputs) rather than having to go through the multiple clicks of adding to a container and then disabling the container. Could have benefits for connecting with Action tools/interface toggles as well. It would likely need to contain the same/similar formatting in Designer to indicate it has been disabled, though maybe a slightly different color so you could tell it was disabled differently? 

(On a similar vein, would love to take this opportunity to bring up my favorite idea-that-has-not-been-implemented-yet-that-would-love-your-vote-and-attention, implementing a Warning that outputs are disabled when posting to Gallery...)

Cheers!

NJ

Hello all,

Change Data Capture ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_data_capture ) is an effective way to deal with changes in a database, allowing streaming or delta functionning. Several technos, more or less intrusive, can be applied (and combined). Ex : logs reading.

Qlik  : https://www.qlik.com/us/streaming-data/data-streaming-cdc

Talend : https://www.talend.com/resources/change-data-capture/

Best regards,

Simon

Ever tried to copy a field rename from one select tool to another, or from one summarize tool from another.

Have you noticed that it doesn't work?

I think it should. 🙂

i.e., if you click on the rename box ("Total") and enter ctrl-c, when you enter ctrl-v in the other tool, it pastes this:

Field2 Sum Total

not just the name "Total"

Instead of just the renamed field "Category", the select tool pastes this:

True Field1 String 1 Category

When a user wants to use the find nearest to say find the nearest within 200 miles the dropdown stops at 100.

Similar if they want a number in between IE 15 the interface is not intuitive.

While you can just type the number in the interface doesn't look like you are able to.

Simply adding a "Custom" selection at the bottom would make this much more intuitive.

Hey all,

The join tool currently does not allow case-insensitive joins, but the find/replace tool does.    Additionally- even if both sides are identical, the join tool will not join "Sean's house" to "Sean's house" because of the non-letter character in the middle.    Finally - if one side is a string(2), and the other is a vString(200) - even if you have a single identical character on both sides you get uncertain outcomes unless you force the type

Please could you consider amending the join tool to include 3 new options or capabilities:

- Case insensitive join

- Allow full Unicode character set in join

- Full match across text types (irrespective of string size) - this would allow a string(2) value to match to a string(100) value as long as the string(100) value only has the same 2 characters in it as the string(2) value

That would remove a load of work from every text-join that's being done on every canvas we do.

Thank you 

Sean

Hi,

Would be helpful to have an Input and Output Tool for ProjectOnline like the SharePoint and OneDrive Tools.

This way we can read the projects in a tabular form and automate our project management tasks.

Thank you.

Using the Output tool to send data to a formatted spreadsheet apparently doesn't preserve formatting if the entire column is formatted.  I'd love this changed to keep the formatting when its applied to an entire column.  See this thread in Designer Discussions.