Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Since we know Alteryx uses R for a lot of its predictive and data analysis tools. It takes a while to run the workflow whenever there is R based tool is involved. I was told by a solution engineer that its because its opening and closing R in the background.

Sometimes my workflow has a bunch of tools which are running R in the background and it takes forever to run the workflow.

I think there should be a user setting which allows user to choose if the want to start R along with Alteryx and keep it running in the background.

Thanks,

Hi there,

As a beginner in Alteryx with experience in other analytics software, I noticed that there may be a very simple thing that I think could be adjusted which I feel could improve the experience of a beginner in Alteryx. Also happy to know if this is already possible.

When I was doing a introduction training, I noticed that a lot of the questions were regarding not being able to see the right output, regardless of the usage of the right tools & settings. Luckily, we were provided with a good trainer that immediately saw that there was a very simple reason for this: the 'output' button (sometimes called differently, for instance in a select it is called 'true' or 'false') was not selected. Instead people were looking at the input or something else. I can even imagine that some more advanced users have spend a few minutes wondering what was wrong until they realised they weren't looking at the output.

It seems to me to be a bit random when output or input gets selected, and as someone with experience in (preventing) addiction in the gaming industry, I know that the first experience is crucial for someone to get 'hooked' :-), and this small inconsistency seems to break the flow a bit. Could you make the default setting such that a tool shows the output rather than the input by default? A possible addition would be an option that switches a tool back to input every time a button gets deselected. From a programmers/data science perspective, that would also make a lot of sense.

Regards,

Charles

The older versions of the Publish to Tableau Server Macro had an option to Request an authentication token however the latest version does not.  Please return this option to the tool as it is very useful for constructing Rest API call scripts.

Thank you!

~ Eric Marowitz

Please allow a hover over that would show you the value of a variable in the formula tool. At times I get long formulas and it would be nice to see the values of each variable by just putting your mouse on top of it. Just show the first row like the preview. There is similar functionality in visual studio and it makes coding easier. 

Can a spell check option be included that will check the spelling in the comment tool text box and tool container captions?

Ideally a global check would be nice for the annotation section of each tool, especially if it can be determined if I changed the annotation from the default one on some tools.

Hello,

If I go to Options --> Advanced Options --> System Settings, why do I have to click [Next] button several times before I can get to the "Engine" tab at  the very bottom? Why not simply create a user-friendly UI screen where we could directly navigate to the section we desire?

Please improve the UI.

Thanks!

There should be a macro which could be used as read input macro for in-db tools.

Similarly, there should be a write macro for in-db tools.

This is more of an enhancement than a new idea.  When building an application and upon success using separate browsers to display the results, it would be nice to be able to give the browser windows a title.  Currently you see Browse (22) and Browse (38) etc.  My app checks a certain key value in multiple tables/files and presents the table results if found.  I need to rename the data to know which file the data is coming from whereas if the browser windows had a title, you would know from which file they represent.  The titles could be added in the interface designer (see attached)

I just downloaded the new 2018.4 version of Desktop, and I feel like it's going backwards with the Window UI. I prefer to keep my Results window on a separate screen where I can review it side-by-side with my workflow. I have three large monitors, and I have no need to keep that window tabbed, or docked. 

With the removal of he 'Close' option, I no longer have a way of closing that window without putting back in a mode I do not want. 

When i first started using Alteryx, the results window acted the same as any normal Windows window, but over time I've lost the ability to quickly maximize the window AND now I can't even close it. One of the most critical windows is getting harder and harder to use.

Pretty please! 

Good afternoon,

I work with a large group of individuals, close to 30,000, and a lot of our files are ran as .dif/.kat files used to import to certain applications and softwares that pertain to our work. We were wondering if this has been brought up before and what the possibility might be.

Good afternoon,

I work with a large group of individuals, close to 30,000, and a lot of our files are ran as .dif/.kat files used to import to certain applications and softwares that pertain to our work. We were wondering if this has been brought up before and what the possibility might be.

Yeah, so when you have 15 workflows for some folks and you've actually decided to publish to a test database first, and now you have to publish to a production database it is a *total hassle*, especially if you are using custom field mappings.  Basically you have to go remap N times where N == your number of new outputs.  

Maybe there is a safety / sanity check reason for this, but man, it would be so nice to be able to copy an output, change the alias to a new destination, and just have things sing along.  BRB - gotta go change 15 workflow destination mappings. 

When saving my workflows to the gallery I'd like to see the description field be populated with the text I used during the last save. I like to add text here and it is frustrating to have to re-type it every time.

There should be an option to not update values with Null-values in the database, when using the tool Output Data, with the options:

• File Format = ODBC Database (odbc:)
• Output Options = Update;Insert if new

This apply to MS SQL Server Databases for my part, but might affect other destinations as well?

To compare a Grid shape before a change and after the change, both shapes should have a reference point where those grids can be created.

The reference point should be changed according to the coordinates system that the designer want to use

I think It would be very beneficial to be able to find the first instance that a field appeared or when its name changed.

So consider the following:

1) Somewhere in my workflow, I use a formula tool and create a new field called Total Assets which is the sum of Asset1 and Asset2.

After my workflow is built (and I failed to do any sort of documentation) it would be nice in the results window if each field name was a highlighted link that took me to the first instance that a field appeared.

In my scenario above if I am downstream and wonder when Total assets appeared (as I might have multiple formula tools, but if could click the field name and it bounced me right to the first instance the field existed -- in this case a formula tool, this would be a huge time saving when troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Seth

1. An ability to right click on a connection and disable it to prevent any processing beyond that connector.

2. An ability to right click and make a tool 'transparent' (on certain tools like filter, with perhaps icon color change to show it is transparent) to see what happens with/without that tool much further down the road in large workflows.

3. An ability to left click on empty space between tools and connectors (the background) and drag the workflow around for faster navigation in large workflows. I know that there is an overview feature for faster navigation, but this should add further ease in navigation process.

4. An ability to make container any shape (lasso-like) and not just rectangular. It would make for much clearer distinction between containers.

5. How about a 'done' button in the new interactive chart so I don't have to 'close'out of it? After making all the adjustments, having to 'close' the display is not very reassuring.

6. How about third dimension (for size) in the scatter tool?

I am not sure if some of the features I requested are already there, if so please point me in the right direction. I did try to search in ideas and community section, but wasn't able to pinpoint to any specific topics I bring up above.

I am using the 2018.3.5.52487 version.

When outputting files, it is usually beneficial for characters that would cause trouble with formatting/syntax to be properly escaped. However, there are situations where suppressing this behavior is desirable.

Of particular importance for such a feature is in the outputting of JSON files. Currently, if a file is output as JSON it will always have quotations escaped if they occur within a field, regardless of whether this conforms to the JSON standard. There are a variety of current workaround for this, including pre-formatting all fields to look like JSON and then outputting as a \0 delimiter CSV, but in many cases there is no need to escape any characters when outputting a JSON.

A simple toggle--as was created for suppressing BOM in CSVs--to disable character escaping would make the creation of JSON objects simpler and reduce the amount of workarounds required to output proper JSON.