Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I would be great to have a json-stat parser. There are probably ways of doing it with the JSON parser but it is appears to be a little bit tricky.
Also, it would be nice to be able to use a json-file as input in a simple manner.

When I setup an In-DB connection I need a way to select only the tables I want to see. Basically a way to favorite the most frequenently used tables and also the ability to add a description of the information that resides in that table. Use Case: Because we have so many irrelevant tables with no data dictionary in some of our databases this would save a ton of time to narrow down the tables I can select right off the bat.

If a macro or tool is missing in a workflow, all configuration and connections of said tool is broken, and if you save, all previous configurations and connections are lost.

 

I am proposing all connections and configurations of these tools are instead 'frozen'; all connections and configuration are saved but not editable (with the exception of deleting them). This would allow collaboration with users who do not have the tool/macro.

 

Additionally, functionality to be able to manually point towards another tool and maintain the connections/configurations (in case you have the same macro versioned or named differently) would be nice.

One of those small little annoyances that can add some extra time to development is how when you browse for a file (either with the Input Tool or Output Tool) it always defaults to the most recent location of where you either picked up a file or output a file.

Many times I have existing Input Tools or Output Tools that I simply need to repoint (meaning they already have a file location mapped to either read or write to.)  For these, it would be great if, when the user clicked to File Browse, the initial folder location displayed was the same folder where the current file is mapped to. 

Perhaps displaying the most recent folder in the file browse interface may be best suited for when a file has not been mapped yet.

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.

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/

I have a user who has a batch macro set up for processing customer records as they relate to stores. The macro loops based on the storeID. In some cases, some stores do not have customers and the user would like to have an "Exit" button so that the rest of the tools downstream won't run if no records are present and the batch macro will start over automatically with the next store.

Can you add an ExceptionHandler to the Tile Tool? The tool crashed on a large dataset.  I got an Error: Tile (1): No values found before GetMean() on the tile tool. I selected Smart Tile option on the ‘unique_zips_count’ field and grouped by ‘ID’.
To track the problem down, I had to use the sample tool to grab x number of recs and see if it would run through the Tile tool. I had to keep skipping and selecting first N recs until I narrowed the problem down to 20 records. As it turned out. all values were 0 in a specific group. I found a workaround by pulling all recs per group with a value of 0 and bypassing these with the Tile tool. Instead of doing that - could you add an ExceptionHandler and specify which RecNo it crashed on?

Can you also add option to use 1, 2, or 3 std dev in addition to smart? This way all my groups will be uniform.
  

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 think there should be a tool that allows you to produce grand totals for any numeric field you want. In the tool, you should be able to check off the fields you wish to be totaled at the bottom. I prefer this over having to use the summary tool and then using the union tool to produce totals at the bottom of my output. 

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.

Hi, I've seen some requests lately where the users are requesting maps in  EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format, which is an

Adobe Illustrator file type. If this could be added as a Report Render output type, along with BMP, it would make the tool even more useful. Thanks!