Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

After upgrading to version 10.5, my workflows become unreadable for community members on versions prior to it.  It would be nice if either the prior versions can (with warning) open the workflow or if I can readily export/downgrade the version header.  I understand that if the workflow contains elements unique to the new version that this would be problematic, but it would be helpful to have.

There is a NOTEPAD solution that I use where I edit the XML,

Thanks for consideration.

Mark

It would help if there is some option provided wherein one can test the outcome of a formula during build itself rather than creating dummy workflows with dummy data to test same.

For instance, there can be a dynamic window, which generates input fields based on those selected as part of actual 'Formula', one can provide test values over there and click some 'Test' kind of button to check the output within the tool itself.

This would also be very handy when writing big/complex formulas involving regular expression, so that a user can test her formula without having to
switch screens to third party on the fly testing tools, or running of entire original workflow, or creating test workflows.

It would be good if an option can be provided wherein on clicking a particular data profiling output (cellular level) one can see the underlying records.

May be configurator/designer can be given this option where she can select her choice of technical/business keys and when an end user (of Data Profiling report output) clicks the data profiling result he can be redirected to those keys selected earlier.

One option might be to generate the output of data profiling in a zip folder which would contain the data profiling results along with the key fields (hyperlinked files etc).

Since in such case even data would be maintained/stored, it would be good to either encrypt or password protect the zip file based on various industry standards.

This can be provided as an optional feature under something like advanced properties for the tool, making use of the industry best practices followed in context of report formatting and rendering.

The reason why this should be optional is, not always there might be a need to have the detailed linking back to source level records in place.

For e.g. if the need is only to highlight the Data Profiling outcome at a high level to a Data Analyst this might not be useful.

On the other hand if there is a need for the Data Steward to actually go and correct the data based on the Profiling results, the linking of profiling results back to source data might come handy.

I'd like to see a tool that you can drop into a workflow and it will stop running at that tool and/or start running after that tool. I know about the cache dataset macro, but I think it could be simplified and incorporated into the standard set of tools.

It would be super cool to run a regular workflow in "test mode" or some other such way of running it just one tool at a time, so you can check tool outputs along the way and fix issues as they occur, especially for big workflows. Another advantage would be that if, for whatever reason, a working module stops working (maybe someone changed an underlying file - that NEVER happens to me lol), rather than running the whole thing, fixing something, running the whole thing again, you could just fix what's broken and run it that far before continuing.

Actually, that gives me an even better idea... a stop/start tool. Drop it in the workflow and the module will run up to that point and stop or start from that point. Hmm... time to submit a second idea!

Hello. While working at my company it has come up a few times that An Interface tool that acts like a standard "grid" would be extremely helpful.  

This tool would allow users to update data that has a logical link to each-other like a stanard "row".  Below are a few very simple examples where this would be extremely helpful.

#1) An application is being used as a file System ETL that has an interface that allows users to select what data to pull from a flat file and store in a database.  The users can pick which 'columns' to keep by choosing the following information.  The column name, type, and final database location of that column. 

In this case a user needs to enter 3 key pieces of field information that have to relate to eachother.  

#2) There is a table in a database that has thresholds for a specific law at the state level. (for Example: All loans in Florida must have a loan balance < 300k).  However these laws can be updated, and the end users want the ability to #1: See the data, and then #2: Update it if the laws have changed.

A grid in this case would be perfect, as they could query the data to see the 50 states and specified limits, and then change the data in the "limits" column in order to update the database.

The previous 2 examples are pretty simple examples, but I have run into this request a few times from my personal experience, so figured I would see what everyone thought!

Give the option in the tags properties to place the tag to the right of the tool. 

Have this be the default setting for Browse and Output tools or others that would normally be found at the end of a workflow. This allows the detail to remain and a cleaner view of the module.

It would be great to connect the email tool with MS Exchange without SMTP, because in my company the policy is to not use any SMTP (therefore its blocked) . 

For this reason I am not able to use the email tool..

I'd like to see a tool that can take an input, then send it in different directions (similar to formula tool), but with many options... based on filters and/or formulas and/or fields.

Sometimes I need to perform actions on parts of my data or perform different actions depending on whether the data matches certain criteria and then re-union it later.

Right now, the filter tool only allows true or false. If we could customize further we could optimize our workflows rather than stringing filter tools together as if they are nested if/then.

So either the filter tool could have more options than true/false, and infinite ouputs, or the join multiple tool could be flipped, as shown below.

I envision something that says:

Split workflow:

• By Field: Field Name (perhaps with summarize functions such as min/max, etc.)
• By Formula (same configuration as current)
• By Filter
  • Field
  • Operator
  • Variable

I sometimes find that a workflow would be more efficient if I swapped the order of a couple tools. It would be cool if we could select 2 tools and then right-click or something to swap them.

It would be nice if we can arrange some tools on the canvas neatly by one click and having them distributed evenly (horizontally/vertically).

See this picture which worth thousand words.

Like PDF Reader and Tableau Reader wherein things can't be edited but users (at large scale) can execute pre-designed content and business logic can interactively use it; I'd like to propose Alteryx Executor as free platform for the end users. Once the business logic has been designed on the designer, the alteryx wizard/ app/ workflow can be handed over to the clients for easier adaptability.

These days I get my work done easily though Alteryx and it creates client delight and once they also want to have it for their production usage - they push me to convert it all into MS Office/ SQL/ Python platforms. Which ends up into very inefficient usage as well as drop in adoption of Alteryx. I've significantly dropped using Alteryx and have stopped encouraging others to use as end state is extrememly painful.

What's Alteryx is doing about it? USD 3500 is a lot of money to shed for data blending and analysis tool each year for the license whereas lot of freeware like Sisense/ Pentaho/ Python is available to the clients for their usage.

When you have multiple workflows open in tabs and want to rearrange them, it's kind of hard to tell where the tab is. In Firefox and Chrome, as examples, the tabs move around as you drag - if you drag a tab left, the tab next to it will slide to the right. In Tableau, a line with an arrow appears in the location where the tab will be dropped. But in the Alteryx interface, the new location of the tab is not so obvious. A line or something at the destination point would be great!

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and reboot. Order shall return.

For those of us really old school, this would be a novel Easter egg to add

It would be great if there was an option in the configuration of the Output Tool to create the output directory if it doesn't already exist. Maybe also to append instead of overwrite for all file types too?

I think in case we can have a feature at workflow level to check if the entire logic written inside an Alteryx workflow can be converted into a native language, there can be performance improvements in terms of avoiding too and fro between App (here Alteryx) level and DB level.

For e.g. if I am using Oracle as my source connection and target connection as well, and the transformations done in Alteryx can be pushed down to a DML statement (or some loop with commit interval set) to execute within Oracle itself, we might be able to get performance improvements as the overhead of pulling data from Oracle to Alteryx and that of pushing it back from Alteryx to Oracle can be avoided.

Hi,

I have a suggestion for selecting multiple tools. You currently have it to where the user can hold down Ctrl and select multiple tools one at a time. Could you take it the next step and allow the user to hold Ctrl and then click and drag over multiple tools, then go to another area while still holding Ctrl and click and drag to select multiple tools again.

For example, I would first click and drag over these tools:

Then hold down Ctrl and click and drag over these tools (I’m trying to select the 5 tools without grabbing the Filter tool and it’s 2 Browses):

Please ignore this post! I just discovered the amazing dynamic input tool can accomplish exactly this 🙂

This is no longer a "good future idea" but simply a solution already provided by AlterYX!  Thanks AlterYX!

Hello everyone. I think it would be incredibly helpful if all input tools (database / csv files / etc..)  had an input stream for data processing.  

This input stream would cause the tool to fire if and only if at least 1 row of "data" was passed into it.  This would work similar to the Email tool, as the input would simply not fire if no records in the workflow were passed into it.

By making this change, AlterYX could then control the flow of execution when reading / writing to database tables and files without having to bring in Macros or chained applications.

The problem with having to use batch macros and block until done to solve this problem is that it obfuscates your workflow logic, making it much harder for another developer to look at the workflow and understand what is happening.   Below is an extremely simply example of where this is necessary.

Example: any time you are doing a standard dimentional warehouse ETL.

Step #1: Write data to a table with an auto-incremented Key

Step #2: Read back from that table to get the Key that you just generated

Step #3:  use that key as a foreign key in your primary Fact table.

Without this enhancment you need at least 2 different workflows (chained apps or marco's) to accomplish the task above, however with this simple enhancement the above task could be accomplished in 3 tools.

This task is the basic building block of almost all ETL's so this enhancement would be very useful in my opinion.

Hi,

I am wondering if it is possible to add search function in the browse tool/preview results. It would be easier to locate the key words and not necessarily to add filter for checking and re-run the workflows for extra number of times.

Another thing is about the connectors, is it possible to allow manual adjustment on the connecters or the positions of the tool container? It would be great to adjust the lines when handling complex workflows.

Thanks.

Kenneth