Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I dont know if it is asking too much, but here it is 😅

A lot of times when i develop Analytic Apps for business users, they ask me if they can run the app locally without Alteryx Designer installed. For business users it seems to make sense that the developer need to have Alteryx Designer licensed and installed, but also that after the app is developed, it would make sense and be great to be able to be able to run it without Alteryx Designer installed. And i agree with them!

I know that using the Server is the way to go in these situations, but not every company has this possibility. So, the idea is to have some non paid way to let business users from a company that already have Alteryx Designer licenses to be able to run just Analytic Apps locally, without Alteryx Designer installed on their local machines/and if the company does not have Alteryx Server yet.

Here are some previous discussions corroborating with this doubt/necessity:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Analytic-Apps-for-a-Nonuser/td-p/78152...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/App-Design-for-External-Users/td-p/340...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Best-way-to-share-Alteryx-workflow-wit...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/How-can-I-share-a-workflow-to-a-non-Al...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/General-Discussions/Where-to-save-an-analytics-app-for-non-alteryx-...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Does-everybody-that-use-my-Alteryx-App...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Running-a-workflow-locally-via-develop...

Thanks!

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.

When saving an alteryx module (yxmd, yxmc, yxwz, yxzp), can we have a simple "SAVE AS" function that allows us to choose the version number?  Conversely, could we open a newer version module with a warning message rather than an error?

In either case there would be the logical CAVEAT that certain functions or features may not be compatible with the save/open function.

Thanks,

Mark

The only thing I have ever found that Excel can do that Alteryx can't is creating a pivot table that allows the user to drill up and down levels of aggregation by collapsing or expanding levels in the data hierarchy. (like this). 

Can you add an interactive table to the new interactive charting tool that can provide this level of functionality? It's embarrassing to have to tell Excel users they can't do this in Alteyrx, and likely leads many of them to stick to Excel--and miss out on all the other great things Alteryx can do.

Thank you! 

Could you expose a link to the Keyboard Shortcuts (which is here: https://help.alteryx.com/2019.4/HotKeys_Shortcuts.htm?Highlight=keyboard%20shortcuts) on the primary help menu (screenshot below)

This will allow people to get quicker in Alteryx by exposing these shortcuts to more users.

I think it would be nice to be able to more easily reorder fields that you're joining by in the Join tool.

For example, I have already joined by CASS_Address and CASS_City. After I did this, I realized I wanted to go back and join on Name, too, and I want that to be first. How the tool is configured now, if I want Name to be first, I must redo all of the drop downs. I would like to be able to add Name to the next set of open drop downs then use some arrow buttons to be able to move them up in the order (similar to the Summarize tool).

As of Version 10.6, Alteryx supports connecting to ESRI File GeoDatabases from the input tool but it doesnt support writing to a geodatabase.  This is something we would really like to see implemented in a future version of Alteryx.  Those of us working with ESRI products and/or any of the ESRI online mapping systems can do our processing in Alteryx and store large files as YXDBs, but ultimately need our outputs for display in ArcOnline to be in shapefile or geodatabase feature class format. Shapefile have a size limit of 2 GBs and limitation on field name sizes. Many of the files we are working with are much larger than this and require geodatabases for storage which are not limited by size (GDB size is unlimited, 1 TB max per feature class) and have larger field name widths (160 chars).  Right now, we have to write to one (or many) shapefile(s) from Alteryx, then import them into a GDB using ArcMap or ArcPy.  This can be an arduous process when working with large amounts of data or multiple files.

The latest ESRI API allows both read and write access to GDBs -- is there a way we can add this to the list of valid output formats in Alteryx?

This idea is an extension of an older idea:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/ESRI-File-Geodatabase/idi-p/1424

Hello,

My issue is very easy to solve. I want to use the generic ODBC In database for a specific base (monetdb here but it isn't important).

The connexion works just fine. However, I cannot create table because the data types are changed and does not even exist. Here is my data with some Date type :

And here the error in my data stream in give me this very interesting message  :

Error: Entrée du flux de données (2): Erreur lors de la création de la table "formation.temp1" : [MonetDB][ODBC Driver 11.31.11]Type (datetime) unknown in: "create  table "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID"
syntax error, unexpected IDENT in: ""Freight""

CREATE  TABLE "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID" float,"BusinessEntityID" float,"Comment
" float,"CreditCardApprovalCode" varchar(255),"CreditCardID" float,"CurrencyRateID" float,"CustomerID" float,"DueDate" datetime,"Freight" real,"OnlineOrderFlag" float,"OrderDate" datetime,"OrderDate_Month" varchar(255),"OrderDate_Year" float,"PurchaseOrderNumber" varchar(255),"RevisionNumber" float,"SalesOrderID" float,"SalesOrderNumber" varchar(255),"ShipDate" datetime,"ShipMethodID" float,"ShipToAddressID" float,"Status" float,"SubTotal" float,"TaxAmt" float,"TotalDue" float)

1/ My field is a date, why do you want to convert it in Datetime??

2/ Datetime is not even a usual field type in sql database (at least not supported by monetdb, vertica, postgresql, oracle, etc, etc...)... it should obviously be timestamp

Currently, this non-specific in database ODBC connexion cannot be used at all!

From Wikipedia

Druid is a column-oriented, open-source, distributed data store written in Java. Druid is designed to quickly ingest massive quantities of event data, and provide low-latency queries on top of the data.[1] The name Druid comes from the shapeshifting Druid class in many role-playing games, to reflect the fact that the architecture of the system can shift to solve different types of data problems.

Druid is commonly used in business intelligence/OLAP applications to analyze high volumes of real-time and historical data.[2] Druid is used in production by technology companies such as Alibaba,[2] Airbnb,[2] Cisco,[3] eBay,[4] Netflix,[5] Paypal,[2], Yahoo.[6] and Wikimedia Foundation [7] 

More and more companies are going from Hive to Druid for Dataviz needs, maybe it's time to look for Druid Integration with Alteryx?

At the moment if a part of your python code takes more than 30s to run, Jupyter times out and Alteryx cancels the workflow. This makes the Python Tool unusable for anything intensive and the timeout should be removed by default or be configurable per workflow.

I've made this idea as none of the solutions in these threads feel satisfactory:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-tool-NbConvertApp-Timeout/m-p/3...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-Tool-Timeouts-When-Running-Work...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-SDK-timeout-error-cell-executio...

Hi All,

Was very happy to see the Bulk Loader introduced for Snowflake during last release. This bulk loader is specifically available for Snowflake environments that are hosted on AWS, but does not provide functionality for those environments using Azure. As Snowflake continues to build momentum, I imagine this will be a common request. Is there something in the pipeline to add this functionality?

For an interim solution, we will be working toward developing some generic scripts/snowsql to mimic that bulk load, but ultimately we'd love to have this as part of the tool.

Best,

devKev

I think it would be incredibly helpful for Alteryx to include a "Fuzzy Join" operator, similar to what is described in this article: http://www.decisivedata.net/blog/alteryx-fuzzy-join-workflow/

Virtually every client/project I work on, there is a nead to clean up data.  Most of the time, that involved standardizing to some existing list of data.  However, as we all know, data from differnet systems or being manually collected will not match perfectly in all cases.  This is most often when I tend to use the Fuzzy Match tool.

However, I have to use a lot of weird steps to effectively create a "Fuzzy Join", which is something I've done using database functions in the past.  I think it would be great if a new tool were created that would do the following:

• Accept two inputs, one for the "raw" data and another for the "list" of data to match to.
• Perform a fuzzy join based on similar functionality to the fuzzy match, convert data to metaphone keys and then run Jaro/Levenstein matches.  By default, return only the highest matching result.
• Expand the pre-process functionality to include words to exclude from the analysis (beyond just "and", "the" and "in").  
• Match on the whole string.  No need to try and do joins based on partial words within a string.

This seems like a very common thing (I've created a macro for this anyway) that could be made to be simpler for everyday use.

Thanks!

As we do more work analyzng the canvasses that our folk are producing - it's becoming more and more necessary to have a well documented definition and schema for the XML that is used for Alteryx Canvasses.

Please could you publish the full XML definition and schema for Alteryx canvasses - this will allow groups to perform deeper analytics on how people are using Alteryx, automate quality checks; look for learning gaps; scan for dependencies etc?

Note: this relates to an idea from @dataprep here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Documentation-tool-list-fileformat/idi-p/184...

cc: @revathi @LizaNemchynova @ydmuley

I would like Alteryx to create an internship support program that provides a license similar to a trial but for an extended period, say 6 to 8 weeks, and tied to core certification. you could repackage much of the existing training into a curriculum aimed at educating new users sufficiently on the elements necessary to pass the Core certification within a short time frame.

Our organization just launched an internship program and had our first group of interns start 5 weeks ago.  I had to come up with a plan that provided the intern a valuable experience.  I decided to make Alteryx Core certification a key objective and put him on a spare license we had for the duration and worked with him to get his core. 

I think this could be a great marketing tool for Alteryx.  It would get more people entering the workforce educated about your product so that no matter where they end up they might already be a fan and suggest the tool as a solution in a new job that doesn’t currently know about you.   Conversely it gives interns a certification that shows they know more than the other applicants for a job where Alteryx is already a tool.  I am sure there are tax benefits to Alteryx as well for each license used.

This is kind of how we discovered Alteryx, we had issues with volume of data and technology limitations (Excel) and someone had used Alteryx at a prior company and suggested we try it out.  We purchased a couple licenses, then within a couple years we had 16 licenses.  You can’t sell someone who doesn’t know you exist…the internship type license is a good idea to expand the list of people in the workplace who know you exist.  Even better they will have have reached a level of knowledge, core certification, to have a basic appreciate your value.

Ok Alteryx, we totally love your product.  And I've got a super quick fix for you.  Why on earth would you Autocomplete the ubiquitous tick mark as "ReadRegistryString(Key, ValueName, DefaultValue='')"

?

I find myself in this situation constantly where, 'dummy' suddenly becomes 'dummyReadRegistryString('HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SRC\Alteryx\4.1', 'InstallDir')' the moment I strike the enter key.  

Pls help, I don't ask for much.

There is a need when visualizing in-Database workflows to be able to visualize sorted data. This sorting could be done 1 of 2 ways: In a browse tool, or as a stand-alone Sort tool. Either would address the need. Without such a tool being present, the only way to sort the data is to "Data Stream Out" and then visualize the data in Alteryx. However, this process violates the premise of the usefulness of the in-DB toolkit, which is to keep your data in-DB and process using the DB engine. Streaming out big data in order to add a sort is not efficient.

Granted, the in-DB processing doesn't care whether data is sorted or not. However, when attempting to find extreme values after an aggregation, or when trying to identify something as simple as whether null values are present in a field, then a sort becomes extremely useful, and a necessary tool for human consumption of data (regardless of the database's processing needs).

Thanks very much for hearing my idea!

Sometimes I want to set up a filter to compare the values in two fields in my data set. The basic filter option would be much more powerful and configuration would be quicker if this option allowed this.

For example, currently I must use a custom filter to check if Field1 and Field2 are equal:

I would love to have the option to either use a static value in the basic filter (as you can now) or select a field name from a dropdown:

It would be really helpful to have a bulk load 'output' tool to Snowflake.  This would be functionality similar to what is available with the Redshift bulk loader.

Currently it takes a reaaally long time to insert via ODBC or would require you to write a custom solution to get this to work.

This article explains the general steps but some of the manual steps outlined would have to be automated to arrive at a solution that is entirely encapsulated within a workflow.

http://insightsthroughdata.com/how-to-load-data-in-bulk-to-snowflake-with-alteryx/

I'd say that 95.437% of the Joins I do are straight Inner Joins.

So each of those times I have to remember to go down to the Select part of the Join tool and deselect all the fields I joined on the Right Side since they'll be duplicates.

I'd like a checkbox like below (defaulted to CHECKED)  to deselect all the joined fields from the right hand side. In the rare cases where there's a need I could uncheck it.

Deselect R join fields