Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I can't even count how often I looked at an Excel, CSV or even YXDB file, where I KNEW that it was generated by Alteryx, but I couldn't remember the workflow. Currently, I have to simply go through all workflows I ever build and see if I can find it.

Theoretically, I could use a text-search across all workflows and see if I can find the output names - problem here: Most of my output filenames are generated dynamically on the run.

It would be amazing if Alteryx could simply write the Workflow name (maybe even path) into the metadata of a file.

(Screenshot from Google, as my os is set to German) 

How about, we write "This file was created with by "Create Controlling Reports.yxmd on 2023-02-06 with Alteryx Designer 2021.4.298434" in the field 'Comments'?

This would make it extremely easy to find what workflow the file generated. I think it would be an option to talk about "filepath" instead of filename, but the filepath could include the local machine name, which might include GDPR information.

@Community: Is there any additional information that you'd like to see in the metadata?

Best

Alex

Hi All,

I always use a colour standard within my workflows.

I suggest two small features:
(a) RGB Colour Picker from the screen
(b) Copy and Paste function -> so I can paste the whole path (R=203, G=222, B=245) in the specific field.

Thanks! 

Hi:

I believe the ability for Alteryx Designer to read from/write to parquet files will enhance its capability to serve the DSML community better. Potentially someone can design this connector as part of the App community but given the importance parquet file formats have gained as a columnar storage format (as opposed to something like Avro - which is a row storage format), Alteryx supplying native connectors to such files would be awesome. 

Thank you,

Shiva Badruswamy

Principal Architect - DSML

Stratascale

In the current expression editor, XOR(exclusive logical sum) is not supported as an operator while AND & OR already exist, so I'd like to request to add XOR to an operator in expression editor.

Without XOR operator, when we want to use XOR conditional expression, it is like below expression; it looks a bit complicated so it's hard to tell condition is XOR at once.

As a workaround, I defined custom function XOR by myself, but this should not be permanent solution since when sharing workflow to others it doesn't make sense unless they also have custom function XML file in their computers as well.

I believe addition of XOR would help to have much readable code for tools with expression editor(e.g. formula, filter, etc).

Hello all,

As of today, you can populate the Drop Down tool in the interface category with a query launched from a in-memory connection. I would really appreciate the ability to use instead an in-db connection.

Why ?
It means managing two connections instead of one, and finding ways to manage it on server for both of them, etc etc.. Simplicity is key.

Best regards,

Simon

I could not find any helpful document to connect to Azure Databricks to read data directly as an input. I was able to configure it and sharing it for others with the screenshots 

Currently, the Parse Address tool cannot parse a field where the entire address, including so-called "last line" information (city/state/zip), is in all in the same field - it can only parse a street address contained in one field and last line information contained in a second field.  Can this tool be enhanced so that it can parse a full address in a single field?

There is 'skip N first rows', but no 'skip N last rows', we should have this option under sample tool.

I would like Alteryx to offer a native Fuzzy Join tool that allows two datasets with completely different schemas to be joined using Fuzzy matching logic (Dice coefficient algorithm, Levenshtein distance algorithm, etc.). Any matches would be output to a new table with either exactly matched or fuzzy matched primary and secondary records. I want this tool be supported by Server as well.

Hi,

I have 2 simple ideas that would help me a little bit while working with the explorer box: 

• I think it would be amazing if we could pick the Internet Browser while using the Explorer box. 

While opening certain websites, I am getting this information: 

I know probably the answer to it isn't so simple, but that would give us a little bit extra flexibility while using Explorer box. 

My goal is to open a word or excel file with specific documentation. If I were able to use a newer browser, I could easily open a file with a link to a webpage. 

• Second, can we give the Explorer box a header similar to what we got in the containers? The address bar does not always give us information about what the explorer box shows and a small extra header that we can configure would add some additional clarification

Alternatively, if I could merge a comment tool with the Explorer box tool that would also work.

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.

Need a tool that can remove nulls in 2 ways:

1. Remove rows with null values

2. Remove columns with null values

Create an option to save the results cached results of workflow so that the next-time a user reopens a workflow after shutting down for the day, they don't have to hit run again. Think of it as a hibernate mode. This would be helpful especially when prototyping large workflows that may take 20-30 minutes to run/pull data from various sources. 

Currently if I have a connection between two tools as per the example below:

I can drag and drop a new tool on the connection between these tools to add it in:

And designer updates the connections nicely, however if I select multiple tools and try and collectively drop them inbetween, on a connection then it won't allow me to do this, and will move the connection out of the way so it doesn't cause an overlap.

Therefore as a QoL improvement it would be great if there was a multi-drop option on connections between tools.

I would like to see Designer offer me the ability to chain workflows together where once Workflow A completes, Workflow B will automatically start.  There are times when linear processing is required in order to avoid dependency issues and/or for making it easier to organize complex processes. It would require outputting results to static files and it would take longer to process than the standard approach, but that is an expected trade-off.  Offering a GUI drag-drop "orchestrator" to tell Designer the order of operation would be even better than having to manually open each workflow and tell it which workflow to kick off next.

When typing a function (often the formula tool), you can use autocomplete to get the syntax to display, however if you are editing a previously written expression, you have remember or try to guess at the syntax.  This often leads to having to consult the documentation or adding an extra duplicate function below your code just to see the syntax (that you then have to remember to remove).  This process could be improved by showing a window that shows the function syntax while you are typing within the parentheses of the function.  This would be even more useful with nested functions to see which function you are within.

Thinking you're able to open the config file like you might a macro. You pull it open, adjust/modify it , you resave it. 

Save/Load Unique Key Tool Configuration – similar to saving/loading other tools configs  (ie: select, join, append, etc)

On the "Join Tool"  allow to click on a connection and say “switch L & R” connection.  Currently if only one connection is there you can move to the other, but if they're both there, you have to disconnect one, and then 'switch'.