Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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

Create a connector for Azure Cosmos DB, integrate it directly into their Alteryx workflows

Include a tool specific configuration to allow for the ability to turn off annotations on that specific tool instead of the global setting to turn them all off.

This would especially be useful for the SORT tool.

I find myself wasting multiple clicks in order to eliminate the annotations every time I insert a sort tool into my process flow, since it is rare when I actually need to include an annotation.

When creating a series of workflows, it is most common to run each tab in order from left to right. When saving them as workflow group, the order is not preserved and cannot be controlled. Recommendation: Always open workflow group tabs in the order at time of last Workflow Group save.

Vanilla Alteryx Chained Apps can only progress linearly, which means developers could not let users skip few applications ( or ) reach the last app in the chain ( or ) let the user select which specific app to trigger based on the requirement.

 

This can be bypassed by using a render tool with output as PCXML and HTML link of the Application you can trying to divert to, which does not affect the existing workflow in any way.

By using the below set of tools on any workflow/chained app you can either branch the flow of apps ( or ) you can skip a few apps in the chain.

1. A excel or csv file which has the links of the apps -  the reason for keeping the hyperlinks in an external file is so that we can update the link if the server link changes/updates - refer Image 1
2. A filter tool to specify which application to move to ( can be changed using a radio button/drop down to app 2/3/4/5 etc.)
3. A text tool ( This is where the magic is ) - configure it to pick the server link from the incoming data from the filter tool as hyperlink and generate a output preview, as shown below - refer Image 2
4. Use a render tool as output and write to any PCXML file ex: "File.pcxml" - refer Image 3

Image 1 - Input Configuration with the flow that can be part of any existing application

 

Image 2 - Text Tool Configuration

Image 3 - Render tool Configuration

POC in action

• Let assume our 3rd application is located in www.alteryx.com - if the user selects 3rd app in the radio button

• Which would generate an Output Preview like below

Now If clicked on App 1, it would divert me to www.Alteryx.com

Keywords : Chained Applications, Chained Apps, Application Sequence, Skip Application Sequence, Branch Application Sequence, Application Order, Controlled Order, Trigger Next Application

Regards,

Maithreyan S

Vanilla Alteryx Chained Apps can only progress linearly, which means developers could not let users skip few applications ( or ) reach the last app in the chain ( or ) let the user select which specific app to trigger based on the requirement.

This can be bypassed by using a render tool with output as PCXML and HTML link of the Application you can trying to divert to, which does not affect the existing workflow in any way.

By using the below set of tools on any workflow/chained app you can either branch the flow of apps ( or ) you can skip a few apps in the chain.

1. A excel or csv file which has the links of the apps -  the reason for keeping the hyperlinks in an external file is so that we can update the link if the server link changes/updates - refer Image 1
2. A filter tool to specify which application to move to ( can be changed using a radio button/drop down to app 2/3/4/5 etc.)
3. A text tool ( This is where the magic is ) - configure it to pick the server link from the incoming data from the filter tool as hyperlink and generate a output preview, as shown below - refer Image 2
4. Use a render tool as output and write to any PCXML file ex: "File.pcxml" - refer Image 3

Image 1 - Input Configuration with the flow that can be part of any existing application

Image 2 - Text Tool Configuration

Image 3 - Render tool Configuration

POC in action

• Let assume our 3rd application is located in www.alteryx.com - if the user selects 3rd app in the radio button

• Which would generate an Output Preview like below

Now If clicked on App 1, it would divert me to www.Alteryx.com

Regards,

Maithreyan S

Whether it is a date range or a numeric range, I would like an official tool that can tell me where the gaps exist within the range.

The Find and Replace tool currently replaces text or appends fields by reviewing the first word in the string and evaluating if there is a matching value in the lookup replace table. If there is, it returns the replace text or it continues onto the next word in the string and repeats until a match is found or not found.

However the functionality should be that the entire string is evaluated and the first match in the replace lookup table is returned. This is similar to how the VLOOKUP formula functions in Excel. 

This makes workflows easier to maintain as the ordering of the lookup table can be amended to return the appropriate value. The ordering of the source string is far trickier to automate/change. 

I have seen workarounds where append fields is used to append all lookup values to each row and then find rows which contain the string and use a sample tool to return the first row, however this causes processing issues when working with large number of records/ lookup values.

The functionality should either be changed or at least a setting which can be toggled to switch between the two options.

Hello,

We would like to have further options in the test tool. As of today you can only test if records matches (equality test) , we would like to be able to test also when it is greater (>) and smaller (<).

Thanks !

Hi all 

Currently when you set your workflow to don't write outputs (disable all tools that write output) under runtime of the configuration of workflow- the render and green output tools become greyed out and do not write an output (as expected). 

However, this is not the case for connectors - for example, if you use the SharePoint output tool and click disable all tools that write output, it will not be greyed out and still write an output. Is it possible for these connectors to also not run when this is selected in the configuration? As otherwise currently, you have to add it to a container and disable it.

I love the ability to cache data. Sometimes, I've cached too far and I need to go back and alter a tool's configuration or make some other cache-destroying change. I then have to recache somewhere and sometimes the dataset is so huge it is a pain. I'd love to create multiple cache points as a safety or backup.

In conjunction with the "First N% of Rows" and "Group by column (optional)" features, an additional option that would be great to have would be to tell the tool to take at least 1 record per group. If I am telling the tool to take the first 3% of records and grouping by a field, but one of the groups only has 5 records, it won't return any records for that group, as 3% of 5 is .15, so the tool rounds that down to 0. If I could also choose an option for the tool to always round up, that would also be sufficient.

In the formula tool, you can generate uniform random values using the RAND() function.

I would like to have similar functionality to get normal random values by calling RANDN().

As a workaround, the values can be produced from a Python tool using 

numpy.random.randn()

Python documentation on numpy.random.randn.

The full script below produces 100 random normal values in a column called 'Normal_Rand'.

The zip file has both a direct workflow and macro solution to produce the random normal values.

Would like to have the ability to filter to searched fields. Having the ability to search for already known fields, and then selecting those fields, temporarily, and isolating them for view. While there is the selection of fields under "X of Y fields", this still requires manual clicks and could be tedious when there could be a large amount of fields.

While you could also use the SELECT tool, that would still require manually searching for the field and isolating it for viewing. This could possibly be an enhancement for the SELECT tool or it could be an enhancement for the "X of Y fields".