Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I found a great use for the visual Layout Tool which solved the formatting issues I was running into. Unfortunately it doesn't pass through additional columns from the source. This means that I am unable to use the batch rendering (the "group data into separate reports" functionality in the render tool). See images below.

 

Image 1: Layout keeps columns in output 🙂

 

 

 

Image 2: Visual Layout drops columns in output

 

 Cheers

With the version 2019.4 an option to open all autosaved workflows has been created. I liked it. It would be really helpful if I can open multiple workflows from gallery.

thanks

I realize a true "In-DB" version of the SharePoint tool may not be possible due to the complexity and layers to get to an actual SharePoint Database. However, would it be possible to add some parameters for pre-filtering? O365 version of SharePoint has some timeout limitations that cause the SharePoint tool to fail randomly. If I could specify parameters (such as a date minus some number of days or hours on a particular date field) to filter the dataset. Or specify record ID ranges to pull records in batches, this would allow users to work around this issue.

I have recently been building some reports and have some suggestions for later releases of Alteryx.
 
1.       Map tool – have option to put border around map within the properties window.  Currently, I have to use a layout tool to put a border on a map.
2.       Map tool – Same thing with legend (especially when legend is output as a separate field
3.       All tools – be able to put a browse tool after the tool using the Properties window.  I was thinking right above the “Apply” button (check mark bottom left corner)
 
Just some thoughts that would make life better.

Like many of you, I have a lot of modules and macros ... and growing. I keep them fairly organized in different folders and subfolders but sometimes I can't find that particular module I was working on weeks ago.... and I need to get it now. Now I end up doing an advanced search in windows explorer by date and maybe looking for certain keywords.
It would be nice to keep track of them in alteryx - add tags, customer names. depts to modules (meta info tab)?
Maybe a special container/gui with time line would read the meta info tab so you can more easily find that one module/macro

Also, another gui containing tool name tags so you can easily find all module that use that one tool you're looking for

This might be an edge case, but it would be nice to be able to parse a file using a Regex in the Text to Columns Tool, or specifying a delimiter as a Regex:

Consider the following pandas code where one can easily pull in a file with a bad delimiter

In Alteryx, you would be forced to read in the file with no delimiter, and set the field length to be extremely long, and parse out the contents manually.

 

filename = "http://daniels-pull.universityofdenv.netdna-cdn.com/assets/GeneralOccurrencesAll.csv"

df = pd.read_csv(filename, sep=r',(?!\s)')

 

Hi Alteryx Team,

 

Would love to see alteryx incorporate Risk Modeling techniques under its umbrella. Mainly cover topics like Basel Norms, LGD, Default at Risk etc.

Hi Support,

 

Please consider this Idea in your future release of Alteryx based on the following details:

 

• Once an In-DB Write action is processed, process is only based on internal table (creation of a temporary table within Hive / Warehouse depository, load data inpath…, then rename & move this table at specified location within « Table Name » option).
• Customer requirement is to have this process available on external table along with available options similar to available one within In-Memory tool.
• Proposed work-around from your side is only satisfactory as a temporary solution:
  • write to a table in the write in-db tool;
  • stream out 1 record from that table;
  • write that to a "fake" temporary table in the regular output tool;
  • and then use a post SQL statement to create the external table and move the data from the table created with write in-db to the external table.

Thanks & Regards,

 

YRA

 

 

 

 

In continental Europe, decimals and comma are used differently.  The number 1,345,678.99 would be written in some countries as 1.345.678,99

As a suggested enhancement request, it would be good in the Alteryx user settings to be able to select a country style setting to be applied to numbers throughout the software, such as in a browse, table, report etc. so they are displayed correctly for that user.

A way to filter multiple fields by the same variable.

 

For Example. If I have multiple columns that have Names, email addresses, etc. I want to filter all fields so that each field Does Not Contain = "Test"

 

If this already exist, my apologies. Just point me in the right direction 😉

I haven't seen this idea posted exactly this way...

Right now the browse results are only available while a workflow is open. It would be great if they could be saved until the next run, because sometimes I have to do things in stages, saving and closing a workflow, then continuing on it another time. I would love to have the browse results fromt the last run still be there until I re-run it.

I have have the topic similar to this suggestion found here Export to Visio. However I came to the community to stick my neck out an suggest Alteryx provide a new product offering.

 

I believe it wouldn't be a big jump for Alteryx to provide a platform to process design, similar to Visio. Coming from a BA background, I didn't come up with a technical background. When I first viewed it, I rationalised the software as a process design program which was more than pictures it, it actually manipulated the data. The look and feel is already setup, just adding some swimlanes and some icons which don't do anything would be all that is required.

 

This could be offered as a add-on, a stand alone, or something else - I'd leave that to the marketers. I just know if I could wrap up a data work flow, and potentially a business process designed in the one platform - it would be an advantage.

 

 

As a Left-hander I use my Mouse in my Left hand and use my Right hand for keyboard short cuts.

 

In many windows products that means I can use the CTRL-INSERT, SHIFT+INSERT, SHIFT+DEL for copy, paste, and cut.

 

In Meta-info windows in Alteryx I can do this, but in the workflow windows I can not.  I'd like the functionality added.

Currently I am able to apply smart tile to only one field. If it could be applied to multiple fields at the same time it would optimize the workflow.

 

Thanks,

Keerthana

Generate an output to a database store.  Tell it you want to have a custom mapping.  You cannot resize the box.  If you have verbose column names, you wind up scrolling a lot.  I've done all of this super amazing work to aggregate data from N datasets, work I never would have thought to try to code, and at the last inch am resorting to scrolling back and forth like a chump!  

 

This is an easy, easy, easy fix.  

 

/endrant

my company utilizes a lot of power pivot, but I am not seeing this as an available data source. Could this be implemented so that we could seamlessly incorporate our existing power pivot tools into ALteryx workflows?

I'm a brand new user to Alteryx. I have Designer + Scheduler. I had read about the advantages of MongoDB. I went into the Scheduler System Settings and changed it to MongoDB to find that the service didn't start, among other issues. 

 

Come to find out, MongoDB is not supported for Scheduler-only installs/licenses. 

 

Therefore, I believe that the option to change the db storage for scheduler-only installs should be disabled. 

Please let me know if I've overlooked a suggestion and I'll be glad to upvote that post.  

 

Just as we're able to right click a input and turn it into a macro imput for example, it would be helpful to turn formula into In-Db formula and the same goes for all the other tools that are available both inside and outside In-Db.

 

I created several fields inside a formula tool and later on, I had to do the same but In-Db, the field names and rules were the same, if I could I would just turn the one I already had into an In-Db tool.

 

Thanks.

TLDR: Add a parameter repeat (rep) to the Neural Network configuration panel, and probably other Predictive tools. This would make the tool return only the best trained model out of #rep.

 

I have done some research by comparing the R neuralnet function (from Neuralnet package) and the Alteryx Neural Network tool. I thought that the XOR example was a good one to evaluate a neural network system since it is one of the most basic non-linear tables.

 

• R Neuralnet function

The neuralnet function is able to train and predict the 4 configurations of a XOR table (see page 3 of https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/neuralnet/neuralnet.pdf for the test script).

 

However several attempts must be made. This is why the parameter

rep=5

is important, followed with

plot(net.xor, rep="best")

This way, instead of 1, 5 sets of initial parameters are randomly generated and 5 neural networks are trained independently. When plotting, only the neural network with the lowest error is plotted (I got 3% error). For XOR, around 5 tries seem to be enough to find a set of parameter that guesses the 4 situations of the table correctly.

 

Another parameter of the function is stepmax:

"The maximum steps for the training of the neural network. Reaching this maximum leads to a stop of the neural network’s training process."

This rules the max number of iteration for each single attempt viewed previously.

 

If one writes stepmax = 100 instead of rep = 5, the only resulting Neural Network usually does not have an average error below 5% (actually I get 49,7%).

 

• Alteryx Neural Network

The Neural Network tool in Alteryx has a parameter documented as follow

"The maximum number of iterations for model estimation: This value controls the number of attempts the algorithm can make in attempting to find improvements in the set of model weights relative to the previous set of weights. If no improvements are found in the weights prior to the maximum number of iterations, the algorithm will terminate and return the best set of weights. This option defaults to 100 iterations. In general, given the behavior of the algorithm, it is likely to make sense to increase this value if needed, at the cost of lengthening the runtime for model creation."

 

I tried this workflow with this parameter set to default value 100, and even greater values, and I cannot get an average error below 5% (I get stuck around 50%).

 

After reading carefully these pieces of documentation and testing, I can guess that this last parameter is the equivalent of stepmax. 

 

If this is right, then it would be practical to add an equivalent for the parameter rep to the configuration panel. This parameter seems more useful than rep to me. Maybe there is already a way to simulate this parameter; if that is so, please let me know, otherwise I am going to include an R script to my workflow.