Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I would like to suggest to contemplate the option to add a new SDK based on lua language.

Why Lua?

o is open source / MIT license

o is portable

o is fast

o is powerful and simple

o Lua has been used to extend programs written in C, C++, Java, C#, Smalltalk, Fortran, Ada, Erlang

Sometimes we have workflows that fail and it is a pain to reschedule them.  I wish there was a button on the bottom right corner of each workflows result just like Output.  

It would be really useful to have a Join function that updated an existing file (not a database, but a flat or yxdb file).

The rough SAS equivalent are the UPDATE and MODIFY Statements

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/basess/58133/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001329151.htm

The goal would be to have a join function that would allow you to update a master dataset's missing variables from a transaction database and, optionally, to overwrite values on the master data set with current ones, without duplicating records, based on a common key.

The use case is you have an original file, new information comes in and you want to fill in the data that was originally missing without overwriting the original data (if there is data on the transaction file for that variable). In this case only missing data is changed.

Or as a separate use case, you had original data which has now been updated and you do want to overwrite the original data. In this case any variable with new values is updated, and variables without new values is left unchanged.

Why this is needed: if you don't have a Oracle type database, it is difficult to do this task inside of Alteryx and information changes over time (customers buy new products, customers update profiles, you have a file that is missing some data, and want to merge with a file that has better data for missing values, but worse data for exisitng values (it is from a different time period (e.g. older)).  In theory you could do this with "IF isnull() Then replace" statements, but you'd have to build them for each variable and have a long data flow to capture the correct updates. Now is is much faster to do it in SAS and import the updated file back into Alteryx.

I think there should be the ability to turn on and off the “Browse Everywhere” function.  I have found that my temp drive is filling up faster than it did before this most recent addition and, while I think Browse Everywhere is fantastic for QA, I don’t necessarily need it working in every workflow I run.

The excel driver (.xlsx) converts these values to 0.  If you use the legacy excel driver (.xlsx) it brings in the #N/A values.  This issue was reported in the community and I am forwarding it to the New Idea as a problem that needs to be addressed on behalf of @JohnDoe.

Hello! Almost all statistical softwares allow for the analyst to use either a pairwise or a listwise option when applying clustering techinques. This option affects only how the inner distance matrix is built, and after that whichever algorithm you choose is peformed. However in Alteryx [K-Centroids] by default does listwise, classifying only those records where the selected variables have no nulls.

Please consider adding this option!

PS: the difference is pairwise will build the distance between 2 variables depending on those records that have no nulls on both variables, while listwise will run the distance matrix after it has checked for complete non null records in all variables of interest (not one at a time distance calculation).

Hi,

Can we have a functionality to see total number of rows without adding a browse or any other tool?

PFA (output from Alteryx 10.0)

Thanks,

Rajesh Chandak

Data Analyst - Walmart

It would be very helpful to have hidden/interactive labels that can be utilized for an Report Map that only appear when the user is hovering over a specific part of the map. For example they only want to see the sales numbers for California, but do want to change the map. It probably makes the most sense to have this available for the HTML Report Maps. This would allow the report map to not look too crowded with labels, but still have the labels available if the user is interested in a particular part of the map. Is this something that can eventually be added to the report map tool?

In case of system crash/ upgrade, transfer of Alteryx license from one system to another system or from one user to another. User should be able to surrender/ borrow/ transfer license from one machine to another. This helps for more flexible use of product.

SQL and Tableau both support a CASE function with the syntax

CASE

  WHEN Condition 1 THEN Result 1

  WHEN Condition 2 THEN Result 2 ...

  WHEN Condition N THEN Result N

ELSE Default Result

END

I'm thrilled that I can now use this with the In-DB tools, but I'd love to have this available in the regular function tools so I can stop nesting my IFs!

Our DAT file structure is as follows:

The first line of the .DAT file must be a header row identifying the field neames.

The .DAT file must use the following Concordance default delimiters:

Comma  ASCII character (020)

Quote    ASCII character (254)

Newline  ASCII character (174)

Thank you,

Pete Vara

When a workflow has run it has it's final message.

 Alteryx Product Ideas

It would be great to have a datetime stamp included in the file message. When running multiple jobs and editing multiple workflows it would be great to be able to check the last runtime so you know when each job had finished. As I often flip between multiple workflows during development and can working on up to 10 or more at any one time 

Hi,

I think that the sample tool should have a T or F port.

Lets say I want to keep first N records but would like to stream the rest of the data (the not sampled one) somewhere else in my workflow, its possible but it would be easier to have that in the sampler. 

Simon

Korem

I am trying to run batch regressions on a pretty sizable set of data.  About ~1M distinct groups of data, each wtih 30-500 x,y pairs.

A batch macro with a linear regression works ok - but it is really slow.  Started at about 2-3s per regression.  After stripping out bunch or reporting from the macro, I am down to ~2s.  This is still feels quite slow compared to something purpose built.

Has anyone experimented with higher speed versions that just dump out m,b, & r2?

Hi - I miss the functionality in 9.5 of being able to set a default tool in a tab and then drag in tools from the tab. This seems to be gone in 10. Is there any possibility of it coming back?

Many thanks - Nathalie

Currently only DateTime based functions are available, Time based functions should be introduced. like TimeAdd(), TimeDiff() etc.

This will help users a lot to calculate different aspects of time based calculations...

Ashok Bhatt

At the moment, we are not able to use input data field names and its values in Output tool, mainly in the Pre-SQL and Post-SQL statement. I see some discussions on this in the community and in many scenarios we require that. It will be great if we have this option.

There is a web hosted trial that anyone can have a hands on experiance with alteryx tutorials  without even downoading the tool.

That's awesome... http://goo.gl/dpSoe2

It may be a nice idea to;

1) either start seperate "Alteryx-kaggle" instances with data sets specific to each kaggle competition so that anyone want to try out may have a go with those well known examples thru the Alteryx site, 

2) Or even better have a partnership with kaggle so that anyone can just have it's own Alteryx trial per specific competition on the kaggle website...

I'm sure this will draw a lot of attention...

Rationale;

You'll immediately have a greater reach in Kaggle community, some data hobbiyists and cs, ie students and acedemics (which will eventually end up doing lot's of data blending when ther are going to be hired by top notch firms...

Idea:

As a method of deploying preprocessing and ML models it would be awesome to be able to convert a workflow to java... 

Rationale:

models are needed to be deployed into Complex event processes or decision systems. Even for SAS there is a need to implement the datastep algorithms and procs to run in JVM.

Quickwin:

It is possible to convert a workflow into a PMML file and then use JMML package to convert that to Java. Yet the full workflow with all preprocessing alternatives and a series of ML methods may not be captured fully.

Competitor example:

For SAS case here is a similar solution: http://www.dullesresearch.com/carolina-features/