Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Integrate matchit SQL with Alteryx

http://matchitsql.com/

I just noticed in a workflow I'm looking at, that I derived a column but after a bit of developing, forgot about it, so there it sat, unused.  It doesn't hurt anything, but it would be useful if that sort of thing would automatically generate a soft warning on the tool in question: e.g. any item not referenced downstream automatically generates an "Unused variable" warning.

Sometimes I need to replace the last instance of something, such as change the last comma to an ampersand ("A, B, C, D" becomes "A, B, C & D").

Currently I do

ReverseString(ReplaceFirst(ReverseString([Subtypes]), ",", " &"))

One function to do this would be helpful.

Currently I am unable to use Alteryx's spatial calculations in completing required reporting for CMS.  Its unfortunate, because in my mind Alteryx is a superior approach allowing for customization and seamless integration with varied data sources used within our company.

You might ask, why don't you just use actual driving distance?  The datasets that we are measuring are enormous. +60M member files are being compared to 70K providers.  Alteryx is missing a huge opportunity to get into this market.

Reference

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Prescription-Drug-Coverage/PrescriptionDrugCovContra/downloads/hsd_meth...

Travel Distance to Providers and Facilities

The second component of the review process tests the percentage of beneficiaries resident in a given county with access to a particular specialty type within the maximum travel distance. For a given county and specialty type, CMS uses the geographic coordinates for the associated providers or facilities and the geographic coordinates for the beneficiaries resident in the county and calculates the travel distance between them. The travel distance is calculated using a formula to determine the estimated driving distance (miles) between the latitude and longitude coordinates and provides an average for the total beneficiaries in the given county

I am currently building workflows on unfamiliar data and using the filter tool on text fields regularly on a large excel file.

As there is no dropdown on the right hand side of the filter tool I find myself needing to open excel and use it's dropdown functionality to find the right text to filter on. I know I could use the summarise tool but each time I run the workflow it takes many seconds to complete before it is populated. It is quicker to use Excel. I am surprised this has not been requested before.

User Story:  As a data analyst, I want to be able to easily edit my data's meta-data, so that down-stream actions can easily consume and export my data. 

Currently, you can do a bulk edit of your data's metadata, however, this has to be done using the Multi-Field formula. However, this solution is non-intuitive, and seems to run counter to the solution design of Alteryx, where each and every step is it's own module. 

A single module handling bulk and single column/attribute metadata transformations and editing would be (a) much more intuitive and (b) save analysts time of hand editing meta-data. 

cheers! 

Posting this idea after searching the community postings and then submitting a question to confirm:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Function-to-convert-to-from-HEX-encode...

I could invest the time into creating a macro to do what I need, or per @MichaelF suggestion a custom formula. However, the functionality already exists in the Blob Convert tool, so I'm suggesting that Alteryx provides that existing functionality to customers in a Formula.

I checked the Conversion formulas:

https://help.alteryx.com/2019.1/Reference/Functions.htm

And found other users talking about making a macro to do this:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Hex-to-ASCII-Conversion/m-p/344126

Could Alteryx add a new Conversion formula to convert a field to/from HEX/Base64 formats similar to the current Code Page conversion functions?

Thanks,

Cameron

It is nice that there is a sample node option for In-DB, however it isn't a random sample.  It isn't always feasible for me to stream out and use the random sample % option.  In fact on numerous occasions when I use the Data Stream Out option in DB I often times have workflows crash because it can't handle the number of records I am trying to stream out.

An independent volume control would be helpful when testing workflows and you keep getting errors it can be annoying and distracting to neighbors if they keep hearing the error PING. You may need to keep your master volume up to be able to hear incoming emails, etc.

I have many aggregation in the same workflow which product one or two different column each, total could be xx different columns. Wouldn't it be nice to have a multiple append tool that could take connections from many other tools? At the moment I would have to use many separate append fields tools and then one transpose, or multiple transposes and union. Either way you have to attach something to each tool. 

I want my Save Setting to stick on the Browse tool when I save output.  I almost always save to Excel.  The default is to save the output as an Alteryx .yxdb.  That is useless unless I going to further slice and dice in Alteryx - which I'm not - which it why it being output to Excel to go to the end user.  Once a file type is chosen - let that file type stick for future exports as most people save there output in the same file type each time.  I find myself inadvertently saving .yxdb and then needing to resave in .xlsx.

Although we can write a temporary file with all the parameters used it would be very helpful to pass simple parameters (or go all the way) between the Apps. I imagine any parameter created using Interface Tools should be available throughout the whole Chained App. 

When selecting a colour for a container I would like to be able to click randomize and let Alteryx pick the colour, however I would like the option to click 'random new colour' so it picks a colour not already used in a container on the current workflow  I should then be able to customize the transparency as per normal.

My client today asked if Alteryx could be configured to build/run horizontally from right to left.  Thought I'd post the idea. 

Please evaluate the opportunity to export Alteryx workflows as xml based GraphML format in order to be able to import them in yED, the free graph editor. (https://www.yworks.com/products/yed)

Thank you.

Regards,
Cristian

Please evaluate the opportunity to export Alteryx workflows in .dot format, the same file format used by graphviz (http://www.graphviz.org)

Thank you.

Regards,

Cristian

for the past 8 months I have been using alteryx and mostly working with the connect in db components , there are many issues which I am facing and i this this can be improved 

1. there is no such  flexibility of creating a table with the keys defined which is the most important pillar in database, also the options provided are limited , i.e. to create a new table , delete and append, drop table and recreate, 

now, there are many times where in we  need to update the tables based on the keys, which i find missing. Also how the option is defined is create a new table, next time if the job is run it states that the table is already created, for which we need to manually change the option in the next run.

2.which switching between in db and alteryx , if the records are more the alteryx lags completely and the job keeps running for hours , how can we achieve the flexibility  of alteryx designer if there is such bottleneck.

3.the flexibility that is provided with alteryx designer should also be given to in db components.

4.the parameters defined in the workflow can not be accessed in the in db  formula tools but can be used in the designer formula tools. this reduces the flexibility.

please look into the same

Lets say we have data for 3 different regions coming from input file/DB. Asia, LA and EMEA region data are all in one file.

After the transformation, checks which were needed, now I want to output my results per region. 

Due to user access to data, we have designed 3 different folders - one for each region.

So, Asia region output should go to --> ASIA Folder, and similarly for rest of the regions. 

Currently, there is no option to dynamically select and change the output folder path in output tool. 

It would be great to have a way to be able to choose output folder based on a field value.

how to share Custom Tool Palette (along with Macros) with other users. 

For eg, I have created a custom tool palette named "Adhoc Analysis" with few macros; something like attached.

Now, how to make sure that all my user base can have same palette in their local alteryx designer. 

After some research, I did found that I could share macros with them by putting all relevant macros on Alteryx Server, and users could then pick the macros from there. 

Although, I wanted to suggest this as an Idea for future releases, it would be great to have an option or way, on how to share this with users in their local designer without much hassle.

Not sure, if this is something worth exploring from Alteryx development team side. But thought of suggesting to community if this could help others.   

Thanks for your help. 

Ravi Sharma