Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello,

Tableau has a veru useful "split" function that allows you to split a string with a delimiter and specify the number of the result you want

https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/functions_functions_string.htm

Qlik has the same function, subfield : https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/February2019/Subsystems/Hub/Content/Sense_Hub/Scripting/StringFunc...

I think this is quite useful and a very standard feature.


Best regards,

Simon

Idea:

A tool for encryption/decription of a column with multiple encrypiton options is the idea.

Both one way and two way encription should be possible.

Rationale:

Clients are in need of encrypting customers' personal identification data

before sharing it with a third party like consultants and analytics service providers etc.

When insights are provided back the data owner needs to quickly decrypt the ID field and get results or decide actions.

Clients:

This is especially an important case for banks, non bank financial institutions and telecom companies in EU countries and similar (Turkey has similar strict rules)

Best

Every time we create a file output - you first have to check if the folder exists - and if not then create it.

Currently it's quite onerous to do a directory create - especially with all the error trapping to make this production safe - and everyone is reinventing the wheel in their own companies.

Given the commonality of this need - could we add a tool that allows you to check for existance of a directory and attempt to create it (with nested directories and useful status / error descriptions to act upon)

The Source field of the field metadata is very useful, but has some problems.

• It is repetitious. A long connection string repeated for many fields from the same source can bloat the size of the workflow above 10 MB, and when removed is around 0.5 MB.
• It exposes sensitive information about a company's infrastructure, such as server names, ports, user ids, and proprietary data structures.

I first started paying attention when we found a user's password in the metadata because they had passed it as a string to the Dynamic Input Tool (separate Idea submitted for that - LINK). Then when I had to share an App with the Alteryx Support team for support with an issue, I thought to check the metadata, and I noticed that the file was too big and was exposing information that I would not normally share with another company.

I'm not sure how you want to handle this, but here's some thoughts:

• Default the Source field to 'off' and provide users the option to turn it 'on' in the workflow/app settings.
• Provide a mechanism to strip the 'Source' field at time of saving or exporting the workflow.
• If nothing else, provide education to users on the implications of including this information in the file.

Thanks for listening!

Cameron

During the design phase, we make some experimentations and create tables with Alteryx.

But, sometimes, after this phase or after a mistake, we need to drop those tables.

We know that it's possible to write a drop table statement in Pre-SQL or Post-SQL but it requires SQL skills and it could be done only if you write in a table.

It will be great if we could drop a table directly in the Query builder of the Input tool by making a right click on the table in the discovery tree.

Extension : It also be great to have the same thing in the HDFS browse.

Hey all,

I don't know about you, but I have always had trouble hovering the mouse over the Results window pane trying to get the resize icon to appear. It seems like you need surgeon level precision to find the icon! 😷

I love Designer and want to see it be the best it can possibly be. I feel like increasing the clickable/hovering area for this resize would be amazingly helpful! 

Just wanted to see if we could get some community momentum going in order to get some developer eyes on this issue. 🙂

 Please help by bumping/upvoting this thread!

 -K

Migrated this from another thread. Some folks tagged from the original post :)
@cpatrickwk @caltang @afellows @MRod @alexnajm @ericsmalley @MilindG @Prometheus @innovate20 

I am aware that an Auto-Documenter tool is available in the Gallery, but that has not been maintained since 2020. 

It would be great if Alteryx could have that as an added feature to the Designer as an option for end-users to utilize. 

The breakdown of it can be done via XML parsing as such: 

<Nodes>: Configuration of tools

<Connections>: The tools used

<Properties>: Workflow properties

Right now, the current workaround is for users to export their XML, and the internal Alteryx development team has to build another workflow that reads the XML accordingly + parses it to fit what is needed. 

It would be better for Alteryx to build something more robust, and perhaps even include some elements of AiDIN which they are promoting now.

Hello all,

As of today, we can easily copy or duplicate a table with in-database tool.This is really useful when you want to have data in development environment coming from production environment.

But can we for real ?

Short answer : no, we can't do it in these cases :
-partitions

-statistics
-index

-any constraints such as primary-foreign keys

But even if these ideas would be implemented, this means manually setting these parameters.

So my proposition is simply a "clone table"' tool that would clone the table from the show create table statement and just allow to specify the destination path (base.table)

Best regards,

Simon

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.

As a designer, I need to output data only when no data quality errors are encountered within a workflow.  I suppose that I wouldn't want to see any errors, but if I am writing multiple output files and errors are encountered during the output processes (e.g. #3 of 4 fails), then I'm kind of out of luck.  So let's focus on data quality.  If Nulls are encountered in "Actual" data or unjoined records are found or dates are out of range, you name the issue, I don't want to output any data to specific output tools.  Work-arounds exist.  I can output to a staging file and conditionally schedule or use a conditional runner macro to output to the production data.  But what I really want to do is to stop an output tool from receiving any data to output.

Today I handle this by counting error records that would be caught by a TEST tool and appending the count of these bad records to the data that would go to output(s).  I filter for IsNull([Count]) and only when 0 ERRORS are found by the test tool, can data be output.  Otherwise null records are received by the output tool and it quietly makes no changes.

My ask is to configure an output tool to be disabled if ERRORs exist.  That means that the LAST thing to happen in the execution of a workflow will be the output processes.  They will all be blocking tools and can't happen until there are no tools left to run except for the outputs (configured as blocked).  Maybe this is a big ask.

There would be great usefulness in having event triggers in 2 different places:

- Similar to Informatica - it would be useful to have event triggers for workflow - specifically "trigger when file arrives" or "trigger when value exceeds X"

- It would be also useful to have an event trigger component with an input so that we can use semaphore type flags to control sequencing in complex sets of flows.    For example:

    - When the ETL is done - mark the "Completed" flag as true

    - The reporting job is running, waiting for a completed flag to complete

Overall, it would be useful for Alteryx to have event-driven triggers.

Would love to see a tool that allows you to find the Top N or Bottom N% etc. using a single tool, rather than the current common practices of using 2-3 tools to accomplish this simple task. It's possible some/all of this functionality could be added by simply expanding the current Sample tool to include more options, or at least mirroring the configuration of the Sample Tool in the creation of a new "Top/Bottom Tool."

For example, let's say I wanted to find the top 5 student grades, and then compare all scores to those top 5 grades. I would currently need to do something along the lines of Sort descending (and/or Summarize Tool, if grouping is needed) + Sample Tool (First N Records) + Join the results back to the data. That's anywhere from 3-4 tools to accomplish a simple task that could potentially be done with 1-2.

I'm envisioning this working somewhat like the Top/Bottom rules in Excel Conditional Formatting (see below), and similar to some of the existing options in the Sample Tool (also see below). For example, rather than only being able to select the First N Records in the Sample Tool, I could indicate that I want to select the Top N Records, or the Bottom N% Records. This would prevent the additional step of having to group/sort your data before using the Sample Tool, especially in cases where you're then having to put your records back into their original order rather than leaving them in their grouped/sorted state. You'd still want to have the option of choosing grouping fields if desired. You would also need to have a drop-down field to indicate which field to apply the "Top/Bottom rules" to.

A list of potential "Top/Bottom" options that I believe would be great additions include:

• Top N
• Bottom N
• Top N %
• Bottom N %
• Above Average
• Below Average
• Within a Percentile Range (i.e. "Between 20-30%")
• Skip Top N
• Skip Bottom N

The value added with just the options above would be huge in helping to streamline workflows and reduce unnecessary tools on the canvas.

Hi to all,

I have seen one or two posts requesting ability to total up rows and/or columns of numbers, however this idea also requests the ability to subtotal data by a field and also produce an overall total.

This could be an extension to existing tools such as 'Summarise' and 'Cross Tab' or could be a stand alone tool.  Desired output of using a tool like this would produce something like this:

This would be incredibly useful for building reports within Alteryx as well as analysing the data, and cut down the amount of tools currently required to produce this.  I have seen a third party tool which does some of this but this adds the ability to subtotal.

thanks - Roger

Hey all,

I would love to be able to have an interface tool that allows a user to search through drop down values (when there are more than 100 or so) similar to autocomplete. It would be helpful as a multiselect or single select drop down. I have inserted a very poorly mocked up picture below. It would essentially be a modified version of the drop down as all the values would be in the tool, but the user could type to find what they are looking for.

As a developer I want to Cache & Run all/selected inputs in a Workflow with one command. Maybe even with a keyboard shortcut?

Currently the cross tab tool automatically sorts alphabetically by the "New Column Headers" field. Often times I have to output data with dates across the columns and therefore have to do a cross tab to achieve this. The problem is when I have the dates formatted with month names, the crosstab automatically sorts it in alphabetical order instead of date order (i.e. Apr, Aug, Dec, etc vs Jan, Feb, Mar). To get around this issue, I have to use a dynamic rename tool. It would be great if there was a way to choose the order of the crosstab (i.e. in the order of the data, crosstab, another field, etc.).

The Undo button in Alteryx has saved me many times! Unfortunately, I never know what all was "undone" when I click the button. It would be nice to update the Undo process in 2 ways:

• Replicate the Excel undo drop down (which includes a brief description of what will be undone and allows you to undo multiple actions at once).

• Move your location on the canvas to the area affected by the Undo-ing. Currently your location on the canvas doesn't change when you press Undo, even if the change being undone was off screen.

Hi Everyone,

Many workflows I work with along with those of my colleagues, use big databases in order to get some data. After a few steps down stream and testing, we normally just add an output and then open up that data in a new workflow to save time running the original workflow. Not that this is much of a burden, but I am used to copying and pasting tools from workflow A to workflow B, but you can't do that with the output, because in workflow B the output needs to be converted to an input. I just think it would be a cool added feature if possible. Anyone else agree?

Thank you,

Justin

When bringing data together it is often needed to assign a source to the data.  Generally this happens when you union data and need to know things later about the data for context.  It would save time to generate a source field that is assigned based upon the input connections of the union tool.  Perhaps when unioning data you can assign a name to each input stream?