Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I'm really struggling with the documentation/examples and the UX around node configuration. I often will spend an hour or more trying to solve really basic issues despite looking at the examples.

Sifting through relevant threads on the forum is a chore.

A link to a subforum or even better a wiki subtopic would be helpful, placed beside the Open Example link in the top ribbon.

eg

I love the ability to setup the UI with the different windows (results, config etc) in the places that I want. However, once I have them setup I generally don't want to move the positions much again, resize windows in place, yes, but not move them all together.

I would love the ability to lock the window configuration in place so accidental drags on a title bar doesn't move the windows stay in place. I still want to be able to resize those windows in the space though.

Cheers

Hello Alteryx Dev Gurus - 

I made an event to email me when there was an error at run time.  But I did not populate the 'To' field.  (I know!)  The process borked soft and shows as an error in the results queue when a customer noticed there was no data.  This is one of the simple ones.  

Thanks!

I still see that companies are expecting BI professionals to write SQL queries manually despite Alteryx giving complete solution. Idea is to spread value add of Alteryx in Indian market and global companies

When reading a SharePoint list with the Input Tool, it does not bring in any columns that are set as "Managed Metadata". Can the tool be updated to include these?

I am using 2 or 3 displays set up to be more productive with most of my work. If only we can have snap-on features in Alteryx that support for the windows to be able to snap on multiple displays, not just floating. 

The problem with floating windows is they are not correctly aligned for the full-frame and some require custom resizing. to make it worse, some floating windows interchange in their resolution due to multiple resolutions of the display and the non-snap floating windows (configuration, results etc.)

While there are ways to accomplish using multiple tools, it should be a pre-setting within the dynamic input.

Default setting should be TopLeft vs TopCenter for Comment Tool.  If you have 10 comment boxes in a workflow: 9 will be comments or instructions or notes and will be TopLeft and one will be the Title and it will be Center.  I always find myself having to change to TopLeft or Center.  TopCentered instructions, notes and comments can be hard to read.

To measure the computational complexity of an Alteryx workflow, you need a unit of measure. Because the execution time depends on hardware performance, execution time is not suitable for comparison on different PC's. I temporarily named this to Alteryx Calculation Score (ACS).

ACS is useful for:
1. For troubleshooting purposes, I want to compare my workflow ACS and execution time between my PC and another PC. If the workflow overflow PC's memory, ACS is same but execution time goes worse.
2. I would like to compare the workflow ACS for Weekly Challenge with other people's workflows.
3. When you want to choose the suitable Alteryx tool for your purpose, ACS will be good guide.

ACS is roughly proportional to execution time without DISK and network I / O. Each Alteryx tool has a fixed ACS value because its computational cost depends on the data and settings.

I believe ACS will improve the performance of Alteryx and its workflow.

This isn't a huge issue, but when I have multiple workflows open, I continuously find myself trying to save it by right-clicking on that workflow's tab. I then realize I have to go up to file and click save. Would it be possible to add that save feature on individual tabs? That just makes more sense in my mind!

If we have similar workflows within the gallery saved and we need to make slight changes in the process to all of them, it would be helpful if we could open all workflows from the gallery by either mutliselect or using a checkbox next to those workflows that we wish to open all at once.  

As an Alteryx developer building ETL workflows for Salesforce, I want to use the successes and errors from a Salesforce Output tool in a workflow to feed other tools in the same workflow.

I think it would be great to introduce something like Ghost Input Data tool. The tool would refer to an Input Data tool that is used in the same workflow multiple times but is placed far from several other tools it needs to be connected to. This way the data would have to be loaded once and annoying and distracting connecting lines can be avoided.

I use the same 2 saved expressions across 58 workflows (and growing).

I'd like to know that I am using the universal expressions, so that I know that it is the latest version and that I am not missing an update.

Is there somewhere on the Configuration panel that can show the name of the expression in use?

Thanks,

Karen

Apologies if this is a bit edge case and only something that I struggle with but I'd really like the option to add workflow Meta Info when saving a workflow to the Gallery.  We have a strict rule that all workflows must have a Meta Info description when we save to Gallery, but I often forget so end up saving once, then I add Meta Info, then have to save again.  I would like a little box under the details box, on the Save As, dialogue box to add this Meta Info, (see screen shot below).  This data would then also appear in the Meta Info tab in the Workflow - Configuration properties.

It would be great to have the option in the Join tool to "Delete duplicate fields from Left input" and same for "Right input". the field might have the same name, but the data in them might be different.

Currently, if the same Excel file is being updated on the workflow, but different sheets within the file, it will error out if the saving process overlaps one another. And there are some cases that using the tool Block Until Done will not work because there are two data streams (for example if you have a filter and is saving the data from the two outputs on the same file).

It would be great if we could output to the same Excel file more than once on the same workflow. 

R has a very large number of useful packages and examples.  Often, we only need a few lines of R code.  However, integrating that with the data flow in Alteryx can be complex.  It would be ideal if there was a tool where you could drop in R code, and have the tool create named inputs and outputs for each variable in the R code, and create blank text documents or YXDBs with the correct column names and variable types.  This seems like it could be automated, and would eliminate a lot of trial and error in using small pieces of R code for specialty tasks.

Hi,

It would be very useful if I could delete/remove fields while using the tool Join - manual configure fields directly instead of adding a "Select" tool next.