Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

There are currently two different types of select tools. The dynamic select tool and the normal select tool. In my opinion there should only be 1 tool and it should be a mix of these two tools.

First the select tool is great because I can select the exact fields that I want, and I can pass new fields through using the "unknown" field. The dynamic select tool is also great because I can write formulas that dynamically select fields. Why not have one tool that does both?

In my mind, it would just look like the select tool, but then on the "unknown" field, I can click on it and configure it. It would basically just open the dynamic select tool interface where I can write formula's etc that select the unknown fields that I am willing to pass through.

For example.. clients add new fields to our data integrations all the time. A lot of the time I dont want these new fields to pass through automatically. But we also do reporting, and reporting could include column headers that are dates (ie sales may 18, sales june 18, etc). As new months appear in our sales data, new columns are added to our reports. I should have the capability to hardcode the fields I want to pass through and then write a formula for the remaining "unknown" fields. In this example I would check mark the fields I know I want, then write a formula that says if the unknown field starts with "sales" then pass it through.

Yes there are workarounds for this type of functionality (such as I could do a dynamic select tool and use the formula function to type in the name of EVERY field that I want to "hardcode"), but that would take a long time if I am trying to pass 10+ fields through.

We extensively use the AWESOME functionality of SharePoint List Input and SharePoint List Output tools.  They're great!  BUT... they require valid credentials to pull back the valid list and view values.  Not normally an issue until you go to share your workflow.  If you strip out your credentials from Alteryx the List and view fields go blank, do it from the xml and when the person you share it with opens it up the fields go blank and you have to count on that user selecting the proper list and view.  

I propose to have these tools load valid lists and views only upon pressing a button or running the macro in initial configuration state.  

Found this https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/SharePoint-Passwords/td-p/17182

and we could use a macro tool but every implementation still requires storing a valid username and password to avoid the error and the list id which I imagine the sharepoint API requires and which is why the tool behaves the way it does is not easily obvious to most ppl.

Idea:

In forecasting and in commercial/sme risk scoring there is a need for trying vast number of algebraic equations which is a very cumbersome prosess. Let's add symbolic regression as a new competitive capability.

Rationale:

Summations, ratios, power transforms and all combinations of a like are needed to be tested as new variables for a forecasting or prediction model. Doing this by hand manually is a though and long business... And there is always a possibility for one to skip a valuable combination.

Symbolic regression is a novel techinique for automatically generating algebraic equations with use of genetic programming, 
In every evolution a variable is selected checked if the equation is discriminatitive of the target variable at hand. In every next step frequently observed variables will be selected more likely.

SR comparison with linear regression neural nets and random forests

Benefit for clients:

This method produces variables mainly with nonlinear relationships. It is a technique that will help in corporate/commercial/sme risk modelling, such that powerful risk models are generated from a hort list of B/S and P/L based algebraic equations.
There is potential use cases in algorithmic trading as well...

There are 3 very interesting world problems solved with symbolic regression here.

A very relevant thesis by sean Wouter is attached as a pdf document for your reading pleasure...

R side of things:

I've found Rgp package for genetic programming, here is a link.

Competition:

I haven't seen something similar in SAS, SPSS but there is this; http://www.nutonian.com/products/eureqa/

Also there is Bruce Ratner's page

Is it possible to add some color coding to the InDB tool.  I am building out models InDB and I end up with a sea of navy blue icons.  Maybe they could generally correspond to the other tools.   For example the summary would be orange.  Etc  Formula Lime Green.

My proposal is to create a new support at Alteryx team level according to provided picture with Alteryx toolbox logo for example in the same philosophy

Move the location of missing fields in the select tool to the top to alert user that field names may have changed in the import source.

The Find Tool (View>Find or Ctrl+F) does a great job of finding text in a workflow.  The window displayed by the Find Tool includes each tool # and the Name from each tool's Annotation tab.

Please consider displaying this additional data in the window of the Find Tool:

- Annotation text for tools

- Caption for containers  (like the right-click Zoom functionality has)

Since Containers don't have a "Name" field like tools do, displaying the Caption for a container would be helpful.

See this thread: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Change-Serch-Results/m-p/388604

Integrate matchit SQL with Alteryx

http://matchitsql.com/

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.

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 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.

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.

We are running into errors on our scheduler if we have multipe workflows with the Publish to Tableau server macro running at the same time. The macro writes to a local yxdb file with a fixed naming convention and is locked if another workflow is using it at the same time.  We like to see if the cached filename TableauServer.Selection.ServerSite.yxdb can be made somehow unique.  

Error experience: 

Talking with support this is a known issue and needs Macro enhancement.

There may only be two of us, but there are at least more than one 🙂 I noticed someone else also was running into difficulty getting Alteryx to produce a csv or flat file with the header names excluded. There's a workaround to use the dynamic rename to and pull the first row of data into the header field, but it would be simpler if there were an option not to export field names.

Thanks!

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

It might be useful to have an option in the drivetime setup to have an option to exclude toll roads.