Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Extend the MongoDB tool to work with Atlas MongoDB instances.

When building out Alteryx workflows there may be a need to read in different ranges within the same Excel spreadsheet. For example bringing in a table from Sheet1, but also isolating a table name in a particular cell (in my example cell C8).

When turning this into an analytic app, with a file browse is to add an action tool with the default value of "Update Input Data Tool".

However when specifying this option within the analytic app interface, you are only allowed to chose one option of the following:

i) Select a sheet

ii) Select a sheet and specify a range

iii) a named range or

iv) a list of sheet names.

The problem is in the example above I need a sheet and a range, but I want to avoid adding two file browse interface tools as it shouldn't be needed. If the user selects (i) then it loses the reference to cell C8, but I would imagine a lot of users as they get started with apps don't realise this is what will happen.

There is however a way to solve this currently and it requires overwriting the default behaviour and configuring the second action tool (the one that updates the file for C8), to update value with a formula, where you assume the user would select sheet name and then use this formula:

replace([#1],"$`","$C8:C8`")

However I would argue that this has a lot of technical debt, plus if the user needs to modify where the header is, for example to D8 they need to change the input file and the action tool so it works as a workflow and an analytic app.

Solution

Like how the configuration options for the input file, such as which row to input data from or whether first row contains data is maintained, modify the behaviour of the default option in the action tool to maintain references to ranges.

I've used the Table tool with large data sets to make tables with conditional formatting etc. There's a couple of suggestions I'd like to see.

1. I noticed an issue where if you disconnect from the tool prior to the Table tool before it forgets your settings quite easily and you may need to redo them. This is quite frustrating if you have lots of columns

2. The controls for sorting and interacting with columns aren't very good, if they were more like the select tool controls that would be fantastic. Perhaps this could be resolved with a select tool beforehand but I still think it is worth putting on the table tool itself.

3. Render output. when making excel outputs with multiple sheets of varying sizes, its very difficult to control. The sheets all stretch to the largest size. I've found I've had to put in white space in Report Text tools on one side of a table tool in order to make up the space and prevent stretching. (I found that solution on the forums)

Thanks.

Frank

The drop down\list box have numerous ways to list values. One of them that I like is connecting to an external source. You simply have an external source file with a Name column and a Value column. It will display the data in the Name column and pass the data in the Value column. Now suppose instead of connecting to an external source I wanted to use connected tools. Currently, I would have to crosstab this data and the drop down\list box would display and pass the column names.

What if the drop down\list box could have an additional option added where you could connect tools and it would act identically as an external source (display the data in the Name column and pass the data in the Value column). This would be much easier and more functional!

A few suggestions that I think can improve the Sharepoint Files Output Tool:

1. Maybe I'm missing it, but I cannot see how you can delete a file from the output list once you've added it:
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2. Have the write headers output checkbox ticked by default as I expect this is the more common expectation:
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3. Take the file extension by default based on the users selection in the Options tab as I shouldn't have to write .xlsx for the extension:
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@VojtechT 

This idea has arisen from a conversation with a colleague @Carlithian where we were trying to work out a way to remove tools from the canvas which might be redundant, for example have you added a select tool to the canvas which hasn't been configured to change a data type or rename a field. So we were looking for ways of identifying in the workflow xml for tools which didn't have a configuration applied to them.

This highlighted to me an issue with something like the data cleanse tool, which is a standard macro.

The xml view of the data cleanse configuration looks like this:

<Configuration>
  <Value name="Check Box (135)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (136)">False</Value>
  <Value name="List Box (11)">""</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (84)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (117)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (15)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (109)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (122)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (53)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (58)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (70)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (77)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Drop Down (81)">upper</Value>
</Configuration>

As it is a macro, the default labelling of the drop downs is specified in the xml, if you were to do something useful with it wouldn't it be much nicer if the interface tools were named properly - such as:

So when you look at the xml of the workflow it's clearer to the user what is actually specified.

This request is super simple!  I love how Alteryx displays the row count and size of the data passing through each tool at run time.  Can you set the default formatting for the row count indicators to be #,###?  Without the commas, it's hard to easily check the row count once you get more than 6-9 digits.

In the example below, it would be so much more readable if it displayed as 75,640,320.

Please consider implementing a consistent case-sensitive option for all tools and functions.

To compare string values, including case-sensitivity:   This post had a good description of the challenge, but the post has been archived:

   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/IF-equation-ignoring-case-BUG/m-p/4170...

   For all the time I've used Alteryx, I thought that IF "test" = "TEST" would evaluate to false. Today I realised that isn't the case and I was surprised. I'm very surprised that "equals" performs like it does.

A few existing Ideas request case-sensitivity for individual tools:

   Case insensitive option while joining two data sets
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Case-insensitive-option-while-joinin...

   Unique tool enhancement - deal with case sensitive data
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Unique-tool-enhancement-deal-with-ca...

This new Idea requests system-wide consideration for case-sensitivity, for all tools and functions.

Current state:

These tools and functions are case-sensitive:

• Tool: Join
• Tool: Tile
• Function: FindString
• Functions: MD5_ASCII, MD5_UNICODE, MD5_UTF8

These tools and functions are NOT case-sensitive:

• Tool: Unique
• Function: CompareDictionary

These tools and functions can be either case-sensitive or NOT case-sensitive, depending on the options used:

• Function: Contains
• Function: EndsWith
• Function: StartsWith
• Functions: REGEX_Match, REGEX_Replace, REGEX_CountMatches

Current Challenges:

   How do we easily identify Lower Case, Upper Case, Mixed Case?

   How do we easily compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity?

Request:

   Ensure all tools and functions include an option to ignore or consider Case

   Create new functions for IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase

   Create a new function for IsEqual, with an option to ignore or consider Case

See attached workflow, which

• uses REGEX_Match to create 3 new fields: IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase
• creates a field [Flag: Original value IsEqual, case-sensitive], to compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity

I will start off with a story. I have built a process to manage batch API requests. It's an iterative process that checks to see where the export is at by calling an API and then returning some status. It will run and wait and run and wait until the export is ready to be downloaded. However sometimes, the jobs don't finish and a status returns something like "failed" or "cancelled". When this is the case, I have my process (which is a little bit batch macro) kicks off an error message, using the nifty error message tool. After some time I noticed that it was a PAIN to go back and figure out which of my requests failed and I decided that I need to add some messaging around where this was failing, so I could do some easy auditing. So I go back into my tool and much to my chagrin, I cannot pass variables into the message section. I would expect it to have worked something like this:

"Record "+[#2]+" is not 'A'"

Can we please get a change to this. It would save a lot of time and energy if we could create a dynamic error message option.

TL;DR Please allow us to use formulas in the "If expression is true, display error message:" settings area.

It would be very helpful to have an output of the workflow into a step by step document. so someone who does not have access to Alteryx can undestand the steps taken to create the flow hence the result or output.

We have 'CountDistinct' and 'Concatenate' options within Summarize tool. 

But 'Concatenate' displays all the instances of value for a Grouped field, this might include lot of duplicates.

It would be great to have an option like 'ConcatDistinct'.

For example - 

Group by 'Branch' and 'ConcatDistinct' Customer should result as Figure 1 instead of Figure 2 - 

Figure 1-

Figure 2-

While this is achievable in different ways currently with a set of tools, but it gets tedious when number of fields is large from which distinct values are to be captured. 

Thank you,

Rohan.

Hello!
Currently i develop on a 2560 x 1440 monitor, and it is great for development of Alteryx workflows. 

However, from an accessibility perspective (and for demonstration purposes), the whole of the Alteryx Interface text and icons are far too small for anyone to read. For instance, this is what Designer looks like at the most common monitor size, 1920 x 1080:

And at my native resolution (2560 x 1440)

And 4k resolution, for comparison:

As you will notice - virtually everything is smaller, and unreadable at higher resolutions. It doesn't appear that this is a setting within Alteryx, and so I have to resort to windows settings to change the size:

Or as @CharlieS mentions here change the size of text across all applications.

It would be useful within Alteryx to have a 'scaling' slider/dropdown, so I do not have to change the resolution or size of applications within windows, to be able to easy read or demonstrate data from Alteryx Designer. 

Thanks,
TheOC

Hi all,

At present, Alteryx does not support DSN-free connections to Snowflake using the Bulk Connector.    This is a critical functionality for any large company that uses Alteryx - and so I'm hoping that this can be changed in the product in an upcoming release.    As a corollary - every DB connection type has to be able to work without DSNs for any medium or large size server instance - so it's worth extending this to check every DB connection type available in Alteryx.

Here are the details:

What is DSN-Free?

In order to be able to run our Alteryx canvasses on a multi-node server - we have to avoid using DSNs - so we generally expand connection strings that look like this:

odbc:DSN=DSNSnowFlakeTest;UID=Username;PWD=__EncPwd1__|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

to instead have the fully described connection string like this:
odbc:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=Username;pwd=__EncPwd1__;authenticator=Snowflake;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=xnb27844.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user

For Snowflake BL:

Now - for the Snowflake Bulk Loader the same process does not work and Alteryx gives the classic error below

With DSN:

snowbl:DSN=DSNSnowFlakeTest;UID=Username;pwd=__EncPwd1__;Staging=local;Method=user|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Without DSN:

snowbl:driver=SnowflakeDSIIDriver;UID=SeanBAdamsJPMC;pwd=__EncPwd1__;SERVER=xnb27844.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Many thanks

Sean

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

The dynamic input tool is useful for bringing in multiple files / tabs, but quickly stops being fit for purpose if schemas / fields differ even slightly. The common solution is to then use a dynamic input tool inside a batch macro and set this macro to 'Auto Configure by Name', so that it waits for all files to be run and then can output knowing what it has received. 

It's a pain to create these batch macros for relatively straightforward and regular processes - would it be possible to have this 'Auto Configure by Name' as an option directly in the dynamic input tool, relieving the need for a batch macro? 

Thanks,

Andy 

When we create new workflows, we like to have them in our company template, to stnadardise documentation. This makes it easier for a supervisor to review, and for a colleague to pick up the workflow and understand what is going on. For instance, we have all data input on the left, and all error checks and workflow validation on the right, and a section at the top with the workflow name, project name, purpose etc. We have a workflow that we use as a template with containers, boxes and images all in the appropriate places

It would be great if there was an option to select a workflow as a template. When a new workflow is opened, it would load this template rather than having a blank canvas.

Hello,

In Datascience, Levenshtein and Jaro Winkler distances are used to quanitify a similarity between two strings.

Here the wikipedia pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaro%E2%80%93Winkler_distance

Note 1 : the Levenshtein and Jaro Distances are already used in Fuzzy Matching tool, so that shouldn't be a huge work to include it in formula
Note 2 : there is a useful macro on the galley https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/LevenshteinDistance/5c54701f826fd30988f02779
Note 3 : some product already have it implemented such as Apache Hive or Qlik Sense

Best regards,

Simon

As of today, for a full refresh, I can :

-create a new table

-overwrite a table. (will drop and then create the new table)

But sometimes, the workflow fails and the old table is dropped while the new one is not created. I have to modify the tool (setting "create a new table")to launch it again, which may be a complex process in companies. After that, I have to modify it again back to "overwrite".

What I want :

-create a new table-error if table already exists

-overwrite a table-error if table doesn't exist

-overwrite a table-no error if table doesn't exist (easy in sql : drop if exists...)

Thanks!

DearAlteryx team and community,

all the best for 2021!

Thank you very much for enhancing the output option from Alteryx Designer to Excel keeping the format.

For a lot of my use cases this is very helpful!

Still, there are some use cases left. In case I want to overwrite a calculated/linked number (e.g. calculated prediction) with the Actual number, it would be very helpful to feed into those cells as well. At the moment Alteryx is doing the job but I receive a lot of Excel Errors (xml errors) and a corupt Excel file when overwriting calculated fields/linked fields.

Is there a chance to extend the current setup for all of those cases?

Thanks and best regards

Chhristoph

A "Filter" that would work like a "Formula" - where you can add multiple criteria in one space, and for each criteria, you would get an output anchor.  I use Alteryx to manage master data from several factories - each needing to have separate workstreams.  Stacking Filter criteria functions, but it would be much cleaner to have it managed within a single tool.