Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The Record ID tool can take a custom starting value other than the default of 1. I sometimes have a case in which I want the starting value to begin with 1 + the max of another field. I can either do this with a macro or with Append and Formula tools. This is just one example. If I have the ability to use an expression as the Starting Value, then I can do the 1 + max or something else cool and useful.

It would be nice if we could cancel out of the interactive chart tool without saving the changes we made. It would make it easier than trying to recall how we had it before it was opened, especially when you're making small tweaks to formats & dimensions of things to make them look a little different.

 

A client has requested that we provide the ability to have the two digit year begin a date string.  Currently, we have the following:

yyyy-MM-dd
yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss
yyyy*MM*dd
yyyyMMdd

In addition, they have requested that we have the ability to convert from a date field to another date field.  Currently, we can only convert to/from a string to date and vice versa, but not date to date (which would be helpful in a date format).

Countless times I've been asked by management how long a process will take to run and I really can't say beyond an educated guess (using input file size and complexity of workflow). Yet, when downloading files off the internet or moving files around in a network, Microsoft will give an estimated time of completion (e.g. 10 minutes remaining till files are downloaded). It would be so great if Alteryx would show something similar with regard to how long a workflow will take to finish running. Not sure if you can create an algoithm based on the nubmer of tools, import file size, network connection etc. to give a ETA on when a workflow may finish running but it would be super helpful for me when working on high priortity project so I can communicate with the business side.

 

Thanks!

In the great workaround In-Database Sorting, the author explain how to distribute the sorting in ot the database.

 

Unfortunately, the Percent option is not available for a Hive Connection (I'm using Simba Hive ODBC driver v2.1 connection).

 

This is a behavior that my user would like to use in order to reduce the duration of the workflow (so they do not need to stream datas in and out).

 

We are using Alteryx 10.6 x64.

 

What do you think about my need ?

 

You know how when you pull a new tool onto a canvas where you already have a workflow it wants to auto connect to the closest tool where it lands? While this can be useful it causes major issues when it moves the entire workflow you had in place. What makes this more frustrating is when it does this and you can't undo everything it did. Sometimes I spenda lot of of time fixing what it messed up. On top of which the tool it connected too was wrong!

 

Like I said it can be useful, but the adjustment of the entire workflow is HIGHLY unneccesary.

 

Could you PLEASE adjust this feature to auto connect without moving the entire module?!

 

Thank you 🙂

Hi,

 

Two things:

Can there either be more space between the Active Documents button (where all open modules are listed out) and the Close Document button (I'm not a fan of this, I use the close button next to module name) or make the Active Documents button a lot bigger (same size as Close Document button)? I've closed a few modules accidently trying to get to module list.

 

Also, there was a switch and now the Active Documents shows in alphabetical order, instead of the order they fall in on the canvas, which makes it hard to find modules that have your generic New Workflow#. Can you either switch Active Documents back to show display order or switch the canvas display order to rearrange itself into alphabetical order, that way the order they fall in on the canvas is the same order they show in in Active Documents (making it easier for people like me that remember order over name)? 

 

If you can't do any of these, could you at least add a Left & Right button so a user can just click thru open modules regardless of the module name (like you have on the toolbox)? 

 

Thanks!

The macros included in the CReW macro pack are excellent. However, having to install them each time and hope that your users have the macros installed can be a pain. 

Suggest adding them as default tools in the next version of alteryx.

I have not found this function or a workaround, only as "recent connections" which normally, are not saved on Virtual Machines.

This would save the time it takes to find the path/folder where Calgary DBs are saved.

 

if this has been proposed or fixed already, please delete this idea! 

When connecting to a database (Oracle or other) with an Input tool, Alteryx gives you the ability to select a table from a list of available tables in the database. The Output tool has you type the table name in. What if you want to write to an existing table but type the name wrong by mistake? You could unintentionally write to a table that doesn't exist or write to the wrong table . I think it would be valuable for the Output and Write Data In-DB tools to have the option to pick from a list of available tables in the database just like the Input tool.

 

Extension: It would be great if Alteryx could compare the meta data of the data stream coming into the Output tool and the meta data of the database table itself to see if the data that will be written to the database table misaligns with the configuration of the database table. In other words to prevent the following from occurring: I was replacing the .yxdb output of a large process to output to an existing Oracle table instead. Alteryx successfully deleted the entire contents of the Oracle table, but when it began to write records, it errored because the field lengths of the Oracle table were not long enough. This wouldn't be a big deal except that the workflow takes 20 minutes to run and the database tables were wiped before the error was fully realized! I've heard that other ETL tools warn you against data that may violate the configuration of the database table that you're trying to write to.

 

Thank you for listening!

The current (version 7.0.x) Google Analytics connector in the Analytics Gallery is not very robust. I had issues maintaining credentials and was forced to frequently reconnect and reconfigure the GA tools in my flow.  I ended up resorting to other means of downloading the data from GA.

 

It would be helpful if Alteryx created a "first-class" data connector as exists for other cloud-based data sources such as Salesforce. 

 

 

I find it a little strange that we need to utilize a different set of tools (the In-DB tools) in order to achieve push-down optimization. This is not the case, for instance (as far as I know), in SPSS, perhaps others.

 

My request is to automatically push logic to the database layer if and when it's possible to do so.

 

In order to maintain operation similar to existing, it could be implemented as an overall workflow setting (on or off) such that leaving it turned off would result in tools continuing to behave as they do today.  Turning it on simply enacts a process of combining as many tools as possible into SQL that is pushed to the database server, and assumes whatever permissions are necessary to make that happen; (e.g. ability to write temp tables or etc...)

 

Thanks!

 

Hi,

I'm not sure if it's just my computers (I've tried on a desktop & laptop), but Alteryx doesn't seem to have the "select all" ability in the input/output windows. Meaning if there is text already in the output window, the user should be able to click once to drop the cursor, click twice to select the whole word, and click three times to select the whole line. Currently, it just goes does the first two.

 

Since I usually have long file paths, I can't see the whole path, so instead of just clicking 3 times to select everything, I have to click once to get the cursor there, then hit the Home button, then hold down Shift and hit the End button, then do my copy/paste. I think having the 3 click select all basic function would be very useful. Have a great day!

It will be a really nice feature if we can sum up values horizontally (row by row), as what we can do in Excel. This will give us more flexibility and hot to have to transpose data first in order to do the sum, especially when data set is really large. It is very time consuming to do all the preparation work to set data ready.

It'd be nice if there was a way to add an autofill function.  Say I was using a text tool and got tired of always typing the full name in (lazy, I know) or just didn't know the correct spelling.  It'd be nice if there was a check box where the app creator could allow for autofill or autoselect.  As the user typed in the text a drop down list would show changing as he user typed until the user saw what they were going to fully type.  They would then select that text from the drop down list.  Be a nice little feature.

Alteryx started as a geospatial application. The "y" and "x" in Alteryx stand for the geospatial origin of the application. So why doesn't every tool in the Spatial Category have a One Tool Example? As of version 2019.2.7, there is only one One Tool Example in the Spatial Category. It is for the Distance Tool.

 

Please make One Tool Examples for every Spatial tool. Thank you.

A multifilter tool would match excel capabilities and make users more comfortable making leap to Alteryx from excel/.

 

I pull alot of excel and text files through Alteryx; the files always have empty rows that make viewing the files through Alteryx unwieldy.  It is easy to filter one at a time but that is laborious,.  I put a post out to the community and others encountered same issue.  There was a macro built to bring this capability to Alteryx; it really should be a native feature.  I would rather not have to use a macro

 

Users in excel do sumifs, countifs where multiple fields are pulled into the formula.  The current filter tool in Alteryx only considers one column.  To match excel, the ability to bring multiple columns into the filter tool at once would match this capability.

 

Thanks,

 

Stan Grabish

(404) 925-3013

 

 

 

 

I know a ton of users who have noticed that the Select tool no longer shows the entire Column name anymore. It used to automatically show the majority of all column names (unless they were really really long) but now it only shows about the first 9-10 characters? Why is this? Can we go back to old format? I noticed that the Field part of the display now shows the entire name (V_String, etc), but this is really not needed as you can tell the field types usually by the first 3-4 characters, why did that get enlarged and the column name part got shrunk?

 

Also, why is Description even there, how many people actually use that field on a regular basis. Why can't that be shortened or taken away entirely and the extra space be given back to the Column name area? Also, why when I go thru and adjust the width manually of the display, does it revert back to the compact view the next time I click on the very same tool? We should at least have options to keep it the way it was, having to constantly drag out the name field every time I click on a Select tool, or Spatial Match tool, or any other tool with the select tool interface is really annoying and time consuming, it was much better/easier the way it used to be.

 

Does Alteryx have something similar to change.org, where we can petition for a review on that update?

When reading and writing large data frames to/from a python script in Alteryx it seems that there are limitations to the SQLite component of the tool. Given that this selection is recommended only when the user is having issues in the python tool why is the option selected by default? A colleague and I spent a couple of hours trying to work through an issue with importing a data frame larger than 1000x1000 and once we found this option (SQLite override) and unchecked it the data was written back to Alteryx without any problems.

 

Hint provided by the tool, "This changes the intermediate data format between Alteryx and Jupyter from yxdb to SQLite. Use only if running into issues. See help for more details."

 

SQLite override is default selection

Error message provided by the tool

After unchecking the option the workflow ran without any errors.

 

Recommendation: the python tool should default to SQLite override unchecked