Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I'd like to hold CTRL, click on a tool and drag it to somewhere else on the canvas to copy it. 

This is functionality common in other software (e.g. Tableau, MS Office). 

Currently I have to either:

right click > Copy, right click > Paste, or

Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V. 

As each version of Alteryx is rolled out, it would be much easier for our users and admin team to validate the new version, if Alteryx allowed parallel installs of many different versions of the software.

So - our team is currently on 11.3 - if we could roll out 11.5 in parallel then we could very easily allow users to revert to 11.3 if there are issues, or else remove 11.3 after 2-3 weeks if no issues.

The same goes for versions which are in BETA.

This would be a huge help!

cc: @avinashbonu ; @Deeksha ; @revathi

Hi 

The wording of the tool tip displayed in results window cells with long strings is misleading.  The current wording is "This cell has truncated characters".   

New users tend to infer that this means that the data value has been truncated somewhere upstream.  See here, here and here.   Changing this message to something like "Only a portion of long strings is displayed" will help reduce the confusion immensely.

Dan  

Hi all,

The SalesForce Input tool is great.. but has some really bad limitations when it comes to report. 

I think there are 2 main limitations :

A - It can only consume 2000 rows due to the rest api limitation. There plenty of articles about it in the community.

B - Long string such as text comment are cutout after a certain number of characters. 

Thanks to this great article : https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Salesforce-Input-Tool-amp-Going-Beyond... , I had the idea of going through a csv file export to then import the data into Alteryx. 

I've done it using two consequent download tool. The first download is used to get the session id and the second to export a report into a csv in the temp folder. This temp file can then be read using a dynamic input workflow. 

Long story short, I think Alteryx should upgrade the Salesforce connector to make it more robust and usable. Using the export to csv feature, this should enable Alteryx to be fully compatible with Salesforce report.

Regards,

Hello all,

DuckDB is a new project of embeddable database by the team behind MonetDB. From what I understand, it's like a SQLite database but for analytics (columnar-vectorized query execution engine on a single file). And of course it's open-source and free.

More info on their website : https://duckdb.org/

Best regards,

Simon

when you render out to an excel file, the excel file is created as a new file.  You cannot render to an existing excel file.

I'd like to see this functionality.  I have a client who has a workbook with multiple formatted sheets and they'd like to render an addiitional sheet of formatted data out from Alteryx into the existing workbook.

It would be helpful to be able to filter within the results window of a Browse tool for all "Not OK" records (records with leading/trailing spaces, embedded newlines, etc.) I can already filter for null and empty values, but this would be helpful for cleaning up data. I want to see the "dirty" data before taking out leading/trailing spaces or embedded new lines to see if there is something I'm missing in the data that needs to be further parsed or modified.

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

Right now, if the dynamic input tool skips a file (which it often does!) it just appears as a warning and continues processing. Whilst this is still useful to continue processing, could it be built as an option in the tool to select a 'error if files are skipped'? 

Right now it is either easy to miss this is happening, or in production / on server you may want this process to be stopped.

Thanks,

Andy 

Hi there,

When you use DB connection aliases that are saved in Alteryx, it's currently not easy to edit them when you move a database to a different location.

Can we do something simliar to the "Edit Password" function, but which allows the user to also edit the database or server, so that this applies to all workflows using this alias?

When writing an expression in a Formula tool, I love that you can just type an open bracket and suggestions pop up that allow you to auto-fill the rest of the variable name. What I find frustrating, however, is that once you type the open bracket, the highlighted field automatically moves to the one where your mouse is pointing, regardless of if you have moved your mouse or not. I think it makes more sense to always highlight the first field in the list and only take mouse position into account once it has actually moved.

It is hard to describe in just a picture as opposed to a video but essentially I had my mouse below where I was typing in the screenshot below then when I typed the open bracket, the 3rd field listed automatically got selected even though I never moved my mouse.

Cc: @Hollingsworth 

I rarely use the Group By tab on batch macros, but it's unfortunately always the first tab that pops up. When I have a questions tab on a batch macro, it would be great if it appeared first (ie I should see the questions tab when I click on my batch macro.) Thanks!

Currently when creating a table in Oracle in Alteryx there is a lot of "magic" that happens under the hood in converting Alteryx data types to Oracle data types.

For example fixed decimal creates NUMBER, String created CHAR and V_String created VARCHAR.

It would be great to have an option to review the Oracle data types in the Output Data Tool when writing to Oracle. This would improve efficiency when using Alteryx to create Oracle tables. 

See picture for example of what would display in output configuration. 

. 

With an increasing number of different projects, involving different machine learning models, it's becoming difficult to manage different package versions across workflows. Currently, the Python tool has a single virtual environment, so we need to develop models in different projects always using the same Python and package versions as the Python tool venv. While this doesn't bother the code itself too much, it becomes a problem as soon as we store and load pickled models, which are sensitive to even minor changes in packages.

This is even more so a problem when we are working on the Alteryx server, where different teams might use different packages. Currently, there is only the server admin who can install packages on the server and there can only be one version per package.

So, a more robust venv management in the Python tool would be much appreciated!

We build some pretty robust maps with multiple connections and it would be great to copy the map tool and paste it with all of the connections when we want to tweak the map slightly but keep our original map.  It is a regular occurrence for us to have a very detailed map grouping by trade area name and then may want to have an overview map with all of the same connections but slightly different layout.  Tracking down the connections, reconnecting them and naming them accordingly takes a substantial amount of time even in the most organized of workflows.  This function would be a huge time-saver.  It would also be of value with joins and unions - anywhere you have multiple streams coming in.

Hi,

The current way to label or annotate a tool is that we need to double click the tool to bring up configuration window, then click on the annotation icon, then click on the annotation textbox.

My suggestion is when a tool is selected, simply press the Enter/Return key, then start typing the annotation right there (inline editing). Save a couple of clicks.

Thanks.

I recently came to know that Alteryx doesn't support Denodo Data sources. We at our company are using Denodo as a data virtualization tool and also Alteryx is used for data blending. The request is for Alteryx to start supporting Denodo as a data source so that our company can reach out to Alteryx for any support related issues with Denodo.

I reported this to the support team but was told it was by design and to post here.

In-DB Inefficient SQL

I would like to report that the In-DB tools are generating horribly inefficient SQL code for simple operations.  It seems no matter what tools you use every statement is starting with a nested 'Select * From'.

Example Simple workflow:

This is a simple Select and Group by but the SQL Generated is:

SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit"

FROM (SELECT * FROM "_SYS_BIC"."shell.app.gsap.FL000_LSC.FL002_CTS.INT.RPT/CA_CTS_RPT_MAIN_001") AS "a"

GROUP BY "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name"

This is taking a very long time to execute:

Statement 'SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit" FROM ...'

successfully executed in 15.752 seconds  (server processing time: 15.699 seconds)

Whereas if I take the same query and remove the nested Select *:

SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit"

FROM "_SYS_BIC"."shell.app.gsap.FL000_LSC.FL002_CTS.INT.RPT/CA_CTS_RPT_MAIN_001" AS "a"

GROUP BY "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name"

It is very quick:

Statement 'SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit" FROM ...'

successfully executed in 1.211 seconds  (server processing time: 1.157 seconds)

So Alteryx is generating queries up to x13 slower than they should be thereby defeating the point of using In-DB.  As you can imagine in a workflow where we have multiple Connect In-DB tools this is a really substantial amount of time.  Example used above is from SAP HANA DB has 1.9m rows and ~90 columns but we have much bigger tables/views than this.

If you look you will see its same behaviour for all In-DB tools where each tool creates another nested Select with its particular operator.

MY SUGGESTION:

So my suggestion is that Alteryx should combine the SQL of the first few tools and avoid using SELECT * completely unless no Select tools have been used.  So it should combine:

- Connect In-DB + Select

- Connect In-DB + Filter

- Connect In-DB + Summarise

Preferably it should combine/flatten everything up until the first join or union.  But Select + Filter are a must!

Note it seems some DB's can cope OK with un-nesting these big nested queries in the query plans for some Tables but normally not for Views.  But some cannot cope at all and so the In-DB tools cannot even be used to Browse 100 records (due to select *).

Scenario:

Upstream tools end in a Summarize Tool that has set of records with the following fields:  EmailAddress, AttachmentUNCPath.  So you get a bunch of recipients with various attachments.  Each recipient can have different attachments, and this will change each time it's run.  In other words, it's fully dynamic.  

If the same recipient has multiple attachments, then it would be nice to group the recipient and just separate the attachments with a semi-colon (or whatever) in the same field.  Essentially creating one record per recipient, and therefore one email per recipient, and having the Email Tool attach each file.  In other words, mbarone@paychex.com gets one email with 5 attachments.  And next week maybe only 3 attachments, and so on.  

Currently the only way I see to accomplish this is with a batch macro.  

Would be infinitely more convenient to just have the Email Tool by default accept multiple attachments in a field as long as they are separated by a semi-colon, much like occurs in the "to" field.

Tableau allows users to do three very useful things to make data more usable for end users, but this functionality is not available with the Publish To Tableau Server tool.

Foldering of dimensions/measures

Creating hierarchies out of dimensions

Adding custom comments to fields that are visible to users when they hover

This functionality allows subject matter experts to create data sources that can be easily understood by everyone within their organizations.  

Please "star" this idea if you would like to see functionality in Alteryx that would enable you to create a metadata layer in the "Publish to Tableau Server" tool or in an accompanying tool.