Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello,

I think it would be extremely useful to have a switch connector available in Alteryx. What I mean by a switch connector is a connecting line with an on/off state that will block the data stream through it when off. Something like below:


Switch Connector in an "Off" state

This would be extremely useful when you only want data to flow down some of the paths. In the example above, I might turn the switch connector to off because I want to see the Summarize results without outputting to a document.

The current methods for having a path/set of tools present but unused are insufficient for my needs. The two methods I and Alteryx support were able to find were:

I have been using the outputs from Spline Regression to facillitate analysis of demographic data (specifically Department of Labor Quarterly Employment data).  I have data from 1992Q1 to 2014Q1 and use Spline Regression to get fitted values for each quarter with predictors being the year/quarter, Year/quarter multiplied by a dummy variable for each of the 4 US Presidents, and a dummy variable for each president. 
So I can compare results across various groupings by geographic, and other levels as well as the BLS aggregation level. I can analyze raw data or have the values to be fitted indexed to 1992Q1.
I use the default settings for Spline and it builds the best fit including where the node periods for each spline section.  To help interpret the results, though, I use the output to compare the actual vs. fitted values (e.g. employment Level) and then look at the changes by quarter. 
With the spline regression building the best model with optimal line segments, the results make it possible to see how employment progress or regress correletat with with presidential terms of office or specific impacts of economic recessions on employment data.

I can supply an example of the process, if anyone is interested.

I'd appreciate any comments and/or suggestions to improve the process or interpret the results.  

I'd love the ability to Input an already-formatted Print Layout area within an Excel document, or a .PDF document in an effort to standardize reports needed on a regular basis.

Our department doesn't create everything that rolls into these reports, but we'd love the ability to incorporate external documents and save our company hours.

Is it possible to format an input tool to only look at the Print Area? If not, that capability would be wonderful.

Thanks!

I'd like to see some added configuration in the Chart tool to allow more space for the chart legend so that the names of elements don't have to be truncated.  The only way to eliminate truncation right now is to decrease the font size and/or increase the width of the table which also in effect reduces the font size.  This is specifically an issue in "Stacked Column" or similar charts.

Issue: When I use any of the Multi-Field Formula tool, I lose the variable names in the field description. This is a problem when I'm working with demographic data because the name of the variable is often something like PCT0010005. The user friendly name is in the field description metadata.

Solution: Please have the Multi-Field Formula tool behave as the Formula tool does by persisting the field Description values.

Thanks!

John Hollingsworth

When creating an Annalytic App, in the Actions tab, when creating an action, have the window display the actions in numerical order.  

I would like the ability to adjust the sort order of the tools displayed in the actions tab when creating a Macro, or at least have it conform to some sort order that can be easily identified. I can't currently make sense of this sort order which makes it hard to find the tool I’m looking for.

Whenever I output the Count using the Summarize Tool I am unable to tell it to sort the results by Count and am forced to grab a sort tool.  It would be nice to offer a sort option from within the Summarize tool itself instead of requiring a subsequent sort tool or to use the Results window to manually sort it.

I was exploring how to make the Outlook 365 tool run faster, and I noticed in my Action tool that there are Start and End Date parameters. However, they come across as these large numbers. I learned today from Alteryx Support that "The numbers you provided for StartDate (1725163200000) and EndDate (1726751052709) represent Unix timestamps in milliseconds. Unix timestamps indicate the number of milliseconds that have passed since January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC."

 

While I am attempting to build a custom macro myself, it feels like this enhancement could just be included in the tool itself! Relatively simply conversion using DateTimeDiff([#1],"1970-01-01 00:00:00",'milliseconds') 😊

 

Edit: it's there for the Calendar option, but ideally it could be included for the Email option too! And while you can you the search parameters, we could make it easier for the user.

Whenever I start something in Alteryx Designer which takes some time (e.g. opening a workflow), and I want to do something in another application in the meantime (e.g., Explorer), Alteryx Designer repeatedly catches the Windows focus back and brings Alteryx Designer to the front, interrupting my work in the other application. And Alteryx does this really multiple time during an action (often multi times per second), not even only when finished, causing me to  have to press Alt-Tab multiple times to get the other window in the front again).

 

First, this is annoying: If I purposely select a different tool to be in the front I want to work in that tool and not be disturbed by a different tool that catches the focus back.

Second: This cannot be good for performance. Sending the "I want the focus" signals to Windows also takes time.

 

Suggestion:

Switch off all requests for getting the focus in entire Alteryx Designer. Instead, the Alteryx entry in the task bar might blink once or twice in green when the background action is completed.

If there are people who like this catching focus thing, then please introduce a setting so that it's possible to switch it off.

When using "Find and Replace", the content of the search term field ("Find") is cleared when switching between workflow windows. From my perspective, there's no reason for that. Why does Alteryx Designer decide that I don't want to search for the same term in another workflow?

 

Please change that behaviour that content in "Find", "Search Locations", and "Replace:" are preserved when switching between Designer windows.

Cache function is very useful when executing very long db request.

I'd like to see a checkbox option (in workflow runtime settings for example) to enable/disable automatic caching of first execution for all inputs tools.

 

 

I have a sales column in my dataset that includes both a dollar sign and a period (e.g., '$320,000.00'). When I use the data cleaning tool and select 'Remove unwanted characters' with the punctuation checkbox, it removes both the dollar sign and the period. However, I only want to remove the dollar sign. It would be great if @Alteryx could allow users to specify which character they want to remove after selecting the punctuation checkbox. Thanks!

Hello team,

It would be really nice if user interface tool can be set with a default set up that will flow into the connected tool. Currently it will always been blank as no data flow in.

 

There are ways to bypass it as run the automation in Open Debug, but then if you want to amend the the automation you need to go back to the original WF and then run it again with Open Debug.

 

Of course you can set a static data for these fields however then you must remove them before saving it to the Gallery, which might create future errors if you are forgetting to delete the static data.

 

So if I added a Select Date, it will be nice if it will be possible to select a data in that tool and that date will reflected in the WF. It is less an issue at the development part as normally at that stage these tools will not be set up, however when you need to upgrade existing WF or amend one due to changes, that's were it will be very handy and will save a lot of time.

Improve the user experience by enable search filtering options in browse tool result just as in the canvas. See attached pics.

  

I used to use a software before (LabVIEW) and it had the capability to exchange code via snippets or as part of png images. I think this will impact not only community, but also facilitate the code exchange

The management of connections, especially in a collaborative environment is not cohesive or intuitive.

 

1. When configuring an input tool for a server / gallery connection, hunting for the correct connection in a long list is quite frustrating.  There is no search, no sort and the list of connections does not sort in any logical order by default.
   SUGGEST:
   
   • List of Server Connections is sorted Alphabetically by default
   • Give the ability to search and sort
2. Add additional connection metadata
   • Primary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Secondary Owner (add metadata element to Curator screen & surface in the connection list)
   • Connection String (surface the server name and login name to the connections list, omitting the password)
3. Rethink the concepts of RCM, Gallery Connections and the external file method of storing credentials for In-DB connections.
   • Make one overarching, cohesive method of storing and sharing credentials across the platform.
   • Enable Artisans to create
   • Enable Artisans to share
   • Retire concept of external files to store credentials, as is used with In-DB connections

Few ideas for boosting the expression editor:

 

1) When writing expressions it can be hard to trace the matching brackets. Can we add some corresponding bracket colours to address this.

2) When I want to wrap an expression in brackets ([{or other symbols!}]) I have to manually add a bracket to the beginning and end of the expression. In Jupyter Notebooks (and many other softwares or IDEs), you can highlight a string, add a single bracket to it and it'll wrap the entire highlighted string with an opening and closing bracket. 

3) Multi-line cursor. This is a real gem of a feature if possible.

 

I will add a GIF that demonstrates all three together in action:

 

All the best,

BS

Would it be possible to Hide all annotations by default rather than each time a new workflow is created?   It's a simple thing but can save time.

Workflow configuration