Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello all, just another little QoL suggestion!

There have been a few occasions recently where I've been adding some Report Text to a Rendered output and have needed to reference the current date. However, when building a quick formula to do this, I've first needed to add a dummy field within a Text Input tool so that the Formula tool doesn't error due to no incoming connection.

I know I can create a branch off from the main dataset and just use that, but for something simple like this, I find it cleaner to isolate and generate it in this way and so it'd be great if - for situations like this - the Formula tool's input anchor was optional (obviously only when using it to create new fields).

There are likely many other examples where you may want to build a simple workflow (or branch of one), starting with a quick field generated within the Formula tool itself. However, just thought I'd raise this with a scenario I've encountered a couple of times recently.

Cheers!

Hey all,

At present, if you have an existing canvas and you want to move to a DCM Connection - you are asked something like "this will reset all of your connection details - are you sure".    If you have complex queries; or pre+post SQL - then you first have to copy all of this out into Notepad before you can convert to DCM and then reconfigure it all again.

However, if you are not using DCM you can change data sources when you go into Workflow Dependancies without losing your queries etc.

Could we revisit the user experience of changing to or from a DCM connection to eliminate this "start from scratch" phenomenon - if you are converging from an existing SQL ODBC or ODB or SSVB connection to a SQL connection via DCM then it should allow you to make this conversion without losing your current configuration; and the same for any other database type.

cc: @mbarone 

...and now for probably the most trivial request in a long time, but also one of the most annoying things (for me anyway)..........

When viewing a browse window, it's so darn awesome to be able to sort and search.  However, it would be even awesomeer (yes, I just made up a word) if when you actually conducted a sort or search, you could make your selection (for sorts) or type in your criteria (for searches) and simply press the "Enter" button on the keyboard and  have it do the same thing that selecting "Apply" with the mouse does.  This is common Windows functionality and I think should be easy to implement.

Hi!

Just thought up a simple improvement to the US Geocoder macro that could potentially speed up the results. I'm doing an analysis on some technician data where they visit the same locations over & over again. I'm doing a full year analysis (200k + records) & the geocoder takes a bit to churn thru that much data. In the case of my data though, it's the same addresses over & over again & the geocoder will go thru each one individually.

What I did in my process & could be added to the macro is to put a unique tool into the process based off address, city, state, zip, then Geocode the reduced list, then simply join back to the original data stream using a join based off the address, city, state, zip fields (or use record id tool to created a unique process id to join off).

In my case, the 200k records were reduced to 25k, which Alteryx completed in under a minute, then joined back so my output was still the 200k records (all geocoded now).

Not everyone will have this many duplicates, but I'd bet most data has a few, & every little bit of time savings helps when management is waiting on the results haha!

Please consider implementing a consistent case-sensitive option for all tools and functions.

To compare string values, including case-sensitivity:   This post had a good description of the challenge, but the post has been archived:

   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/IF-equation-ignoring-case-BUG/m-p/4170...

   For all the time I've used Alteryx, I thought that IF "test" = "TEST" would evaluate to false. Today I realised that isn't the case and I was surprised. I'm very surprised that "equals" performs like it does.

A few existing Ideas request case-sensitivity for individual tools:

   Case insensitive option while joining two data sets
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Case-insensitive-option-while-joinin...

   Unique tool enhancement - deal with case sensitive data
   https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Unique-tool-enhancement-deal-with-ca...

This new Idea requests system-wide consideration for case-sensitivity, for all tools and functions.

Current state:

These tools and functions are case-sensitive:

• Tool: Join
• Tool: Tile
• Function: FindString
• Functions: MD5_ASCII, MD5_UNICODE, MD5_UTF8

These tools and functions are NOT case-sensitive:

• Tool: Unique
• Function: CompareDictionary

These tools and functions can be either case-sensitive or NOT case-sensitive, depending on the options used:

• Function: Contains
• Function: EndsWith
• Function: StartsWith
• Functions: REGEX_Match, REGEX_Replace, REGEX_CountMatches

Current Challenges:

   How do we easily identify Lower Case, Upper Case, Mixed Case?

   How do we easily compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity?

Request:

   Ensure all tools and functions include an option to ignore or consider Case

   Create new functions for IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase

   Create a new function for IsEqual, with an option to ignore or consider Case

See attached workflow, which

• uses REGEX_Match to create 3 new fields: IsUpperCase, IsLowerCase, IsMixedCase
• creates a field [Flag: Original value IsEqual, case-sensitive], to compare strings for equality, using case sensitivity

Directory Tool retrieves today a lot of information about a file. I must say I appreciate getting easily the size and the last write time.

But why not the owner? I have developped a macro with a powershell to do that but what a nightmare for a so little piece of information.

Given Crew Macro Pack increases Alteryx's capability so much, and is used so pervasively, is there a reason to not include Crew Macro Pack in Alteryx Designer or Alteryx Server by default?

Can anyone give a reason why Alteryx wouldn't bundle Crew Macro Pack?

If not, can we get Crew Macro Pack bundled into Alteryx and have official support for it?

When using certain tools, particularly market place tools like the SharePoint input/ output etc. it would be helpful to have a quick way to find out which version is being used in a workflow. Something along the lines of an option when you right click the tool, that displays the current version would be ideal. 

This would be helpful in several cases but primarily when handing over workflows. There are cases when I have multiple versions of the same tool installed so that I don't have any issues inheriting workflows. This does however, make things confusing when handing workflows back. Tool Version Labelling would solve this problem.

Regards - Pilsner

The only thing I have ever found that Excel can do that Alteryx can't is creating a pivot table that allows the user to drill up and down levels of aggregation by collapsing or expanding levels in the data hierarchy. (like this). 

Can you add an interactive table to the new interactive charting tool that can provide this level of functionality? It's embarrassing to have to tell Excel users they can't do this in Alteyrx, and likely leads many of them to stick to Excel--and miss out on all the other great things Alteryx can do.

Thank you! 

Hello,

It would be very helpful to have a search box for field names in the summary tool, I think it would help decrease errors by selecting fields by mistake with similar names and will help gain a couple of seconds while looking around for a specific field, particularly with datasets with a lots of them.

Like this:

When I'm organizing my workflow, sometimes I want to move a whole tool container on the canvas. Currently, the only way to do this is to first find the header then select and drag this. When the ends of the container is off screen, it can be hard to know how much I wanted to move my container to get it where I wanted relative to the other tools around it. I feel like it would be nice to be able to select anywhere on the tool container and drag it around (possibly holding right click and dragging so that current tool selection capabilities aren't hindered).

In the (simplified) images below, you'll see that I want my tool container to vertically align just above the browse tool:

I can't currently see the top of the tool container to move it, though, so I must first navigate to that part of the workflow to select the header.

If a tool fails, there should be a way to customise the error message. Currently a way to do it: log all messages in a file, read that file with another workflow, then customise the messages (Alteryx workflow error handling - Alteryx Community). However, there should be a more convenient solution. We should be able to:

- Find/replace parts of a message.

- Specify, which tools messages to modify.

- Change the message type.

- Change the order of the messages in the results window, to prioritise the critical ones.

- Pick which messages cannot be hidden by "xxx more errors not displayed".

This would especially help for macros, as sometimes we have a specific tool failing within a macro and producing a non-user friendly message.

So many tools especially Spatial Tools require a browse tool to be useful. Why not automatically add a browse tool when you add a spatial tool it could even be an option you could select. "Yes Auto Add browse" or not. Even during spatial trainings the instructions keep saying add spatial tool now add a browse tool and hit run. we can always toggle of the browse tools or delete them once we are finished developing. i know there are keyboard shortcuts and i use those but i think this would be a very simple addition.  

Currently, when one uses the Google BigQuery Output tool, the only options are to create a table, or append data to an existing table.  It would be more useful if there was a process to replace all data in the table rather than appending. Having the option to overwrite an existing table in Google BigQuery would be optimal.

Currently the install of AIS is tied to a specific version of Designer. However due to the feature changes being brought to AIS it would be great to be able to upgrade the AIS install separate to the version of Designer.

It might be that this is only possible for a certain number releases, due to underlying dependencies such as python version, but it would be great for example that I could get the newer AIS features without needing to upgrade Designer (which is set by IT policy).

DearAlteryx team and community,

all the best for 2021!

Thank you very much for enhancing the output option from Alteryx Designer to Excel keeping the format.

For a lot of my use cases this is very helpful!

Still, there are some use cases left. In case I want to overwrite a calculated/linked number (e.g. calculated prediction) with the Actual number, it would be very helpful to feed into those cells as well. At the moment Alteryx is doing the job but I receive a lot of Excel Errors (xml errors) and a corupt Excel file when overwriting calculated fields/linked fields.

Is there a chance to extend the current setup for all of those cases?

Thanks and best regards

Chhristoph

I like to suggest having a Batch Macro Container (besides the existing Container) which acts as a Batch Macro within a Workflow and is stored within the Workflow.

I understand that having a batch macro available as a separate tool can be very powerful and reduces redundant work.  However, very often Batch Macros are set up for a specific workflow only and are of no use for other workflows. The Creation of a Batch Macro in a container will significantly reduce the time to deploy a batch macro and keeps the Macro folder clean of one-time Batch Macros.

Attached a picture of how this could look like

Thanks

Manuel

Trying to solve some use cases, I realized that I had to simulate the factorial behaviour.

Having a factorial formula can make this process easier.

Thanks!

I like the new cache option in 2018.3, but I would like it to function a little bit different. Let's say you cache at a certain point and then continue to build after that. If I reach another checkpoint and want to cache, it currently re-runs the entire workflow (ie it ignores my cache upstream and just goes back to the beginning of the workflow); instead, I would rather have it utilize the upstream cache. Personally, caching is usually an iterative effort during development where I keep caching along the way. The current functionality of the cache is not conducive to this. Thanks!