Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

In a fututre release from SQL Server the datatypes text, ntext and image will be deprecated. It is already a bad datatype because you cannot use it as a "normal" character string. No equal to sometinh else in T-SQL on a text datatype.

As far as I know Alteryx defaults to text (my source is a PostgreSQL database) when creating the table in SQL Server. The datatype in Alteryx is Vstring. Instead of text or ntext it would be zo much better to use varchar(MAX) or nvarchar(MAX) when creating the table. Not only for compatiblity and later use in T-SQL (if any), but it is faster as well. Data from a varchar(MAX) column is stored in the same page as the record, as log as it fits.

When building out a large workflow, I'd say one of the bigger challenges I come across is being able to quickly navigate the canvas to a certain spot. In these types of workflows, my personal way of keeping things organized is creating sections of my workflow in different Tool Containers and naming them with a short description.

Here is what I picture helping out a great deal in navigation. Create a drowdown somewhere in the ribbon on top (would not want another sidebar or floating window that takes up needed space) that simply lists out every tool container in my workflow by name. When a tool container name is selected, the view jumps to that tool container in the window pane. Another option in terms of the interface might be to add a keyboard short that gives a popup "tool container search" window. Begin typing a tool container name, and it would jump to the first result it sees as a match. Then just hit escape or click outside the popup to continue your work. 

I think this would help immensely in being able to jump to a particular spot in the workflow without having to drag the overview or scroll around until you are able to find it. I included mock-ups for each version I mentioned.

For example I have an ERROR MESSAGE tool that is rather verbose.  I chose to modify the annotation as:  ZIP Code Check.  I presumed that the result would simply be "ZIP Code Check", but Alteryx added that to the beginning of the annotation rather than replacing the whole annotation.  I reported this as a bug, but was told that this was designed to operate in this manner.  It was suggested that I bring this out as a "New Idea" to the community for review.  If you agree that the tools should operate in a similar fashion for annotation (or other actions) across the pallet, please STAR this.  Otherwise, I'm happy to hear your feedback.

Thanks,

Mark

Hi,

Today I pressed F1 in the Output Tool to find out what the setting Transaction Size does. It turned out that this is not documented.

It would be a great idea to make a documentation that covers the options of a tool.

Regards,

Frank 

The summarize tool have drag drop facility and cross checking and suggestion on the type of aggregation that can be applied based on the data type.

e.g. Let there be two different stack. One to be used for Group By. Another for aggregation.

We should be able to drag fields to these sections.

Now when we are dragging something to the Aggregation stack, based on the data type, a small suggestion list of possible aggregation to choose from.

And a small validation of the data type to aggregation if we are defining the aggregation manually.

I can provide mock ups if anyone is interested.

I love that Alteryx lends itself to good workflow documentation, but I'd really like to be able to add a bit of basic formatting within my comment boxes. I tend to have one large (read: verbose) box at the top/beginning of the workflow describing the purpose of the workflow and quirks of the datasource to watch out for, and it would be easier to read these if I had some simple options like Bold, Italic, Underline, numbered list, bullet list. You know, the sorts of things you can do in basic HTML email? Those. I want them!

There is currently no way to export interactive output from the network graph tool. I would like to be able to export a png of the static network graph image, a pdf of the report, and a complete html of the whole (which means including the JSON and vis.js files necessary for creating the report).

I think it would be extremely beneficial to have the customization option to rearrange tools within their panels in the tool palette.

This would allow the user to group frequently used tools in their desired order, which would make navigation of these tools easier.

As an example, having the ability to place Data Input as the first tool in the palette would make a lot of sense to me, as its usually where I start building a new workflow.

Can you devise a way to bring out the dynamic network visualisation on to Powerpoint.  Right now, we can only see a static image on a browser

I found what I think is a bug.  Usually the bug maker is me, but on this occasion I really think that it could be Alteryx (version 10.1.6.60263).  Maybe we could add a category for posts as:  Is this a bug?  Currently, the idea labels allow for a "BUG".  But is bug reporting really part of New Ideas?

I'm going to report my findings to clientservices@alteryx.com.

For those interested in what I'm observing:

Try creating a INTERFACE using an ERROR MESSAGE tool.  Once you've got a formula and an error message, check the ANNOTATION.  Do you see one on the canvas and do you see it in the configuration?  Try putting a brief annotation into the Annotation box.  I believe that the Annotation should appear in the annotation box as it does with other tools. Check the canvas and see what happens.  Here's what mine looks like:

Hello all,

It will be great if there is an option to specify sql statement or delete based on condition in write In-DB tool. We have to delete all record even though when we are trying to delete and append only a subset of records. If it allows for "WHERE" statement atleast, it will be very much useful. I have a long post going on about this requirement in http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Is-there-a-way-to-do-a-delete-statement-in... .

Regards,

Jeeva.

I recently began working with chained analytic applications.  One of the things that I wanted to do was to take the values selected by the end user at each stage of the app and pass them further down in the application.  I was able to do this by dumping the selected values to Alteryx databases and then using drop downs to pull the data into subsequent apps.  However, I was wondering if there would be a better way of accomplishing this.  One reason is that, with my approach, I wind up with several additional drop downs in my interface--which I really don't want.  If there's a way around this, I'd love to hear it.  Alternately, if Alteryx could potentially support doing something like this in the future, I think it would be really helpful.

For the purposes of troubleshooting/optimization, it might come in handy to have a timestamp column in the Results Pane. Especially with processes time-consuming enough that I let them run in the background, I would like to know which steps are particularly time consuming, and seeing when the messages were generated would at least be a start.

I just noticed in a workflow I'm looking at, that I derived a column but after a bit of developing, forgot about it, so there it sat, unused.  It doesn't hurt anything, but it would be useful if that sort of thing would automatically generate a soft warning on the tool in question: e.g. any item not referenced downstream automatically generates an "Unused variable" warning.

Scenario: I open a results window with a link, filepath, value, etc. and I want to copy the text.

If I click inside of that cell and press Ctrl +A, nothing happens.

If I click inside the cell, arrow to the end of the text, and then press Shift + Home; the contents of the cell are highlighted.

Why can't we have all of the Windows shortcuts?  Or am I missing something here?

Sometimes I need to replace the last instance of something, such as change the last comma to an ampersand ("A, B, C, D" becomes "A, B, C & D").

Currently I do

ReverseString(ReplaceFirst(ReverseString([Subtypes]), ",", " &"))

One function to do this would be helpful.

The "idea" here is, for any tool utilized in a macro project, to allow any configuration setting for that tool, if desired, to be exposed to the outside world, so that when the macro is utilized in a parent workflow, the embedded tool's configuration setting is directly available to the parent workflow.

A benefit here would be the ability for users to more easily build custom tools based on the existing tools: e.g. send all inputs and outputs through a validation phase of arbitrary complexity, while leaving the "integration layer" of the encapsulated tool untouched.

Can the inputs to app interface tools update other interface tools within the same app?  Right now, I believe the only way to do this is with chained-apps, but I don't wish to go that route again.

Just one example:

Can a Dropdown interface tool update a listbox interface tool with an action?  

Right now, I have two interface tools in an app:

1. Dropdown
2. Listbox.  

For the Listbox tool , it references an external source file for the NAME:VALUE pairs, let's call this file:  Category1.yxdb.

I would like for the resulting dropdown selection to update this external source file to say, Category1.yxdb or Category2.yxdb or Category3.yxdb, etc.

The different .yxdb files here have different name:value pairs within them.

It doesn't seem like this possible at the moment, but please let me know if this is something that's currently supported within Alteryx.

Thanks,

Collin

When converting data types while In-DB, it would be really helpful if I could change the data type with the "Select In-DB" tool in a similar manner to the "Select" tool. Currently, we are having to use the "Formula In-DB" tool in order to create a "Cast" Statement.