Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When packaging a workflow, or uploading to a Server environment the ability to manage the assets which need to be included is critical, particularly in more complex solutions which may have numerous dependencies. 

The asset management display should be modified to present two column with the first showing just the file name and extension of the asset, and the second column can then show the full path of the asset. This easy change would would prevent the need for scrolling left and right to see the file name when longer paths are utilized. 

An alternative approach would be to allow the window to be resizable so the user could see everything without the need to scroll.

The ability to filter/sort the assets by type would also be useful with the following categories: Macros (.yxmc), Data Files (supported file types from file input screen), Other Assets.

Please could you enhance the Alteryx download tool to support SFTP connections with Private Key authentication as well.  This is not currently supported and all of our SFTP use cases use PK.

Salesforce Input connector tool currently uses REST API.

Can we please enhance this tool to use BULK API?

Use Case:

We are sourcing about 2 million rows of opportunity data from Salesforce do to some insight analysis. This Alteryx workflow takes over an hour to run. The same dataset when pulled using a different ETL tool (Informatica) produces the dataset within 2 min! That makes a HUGE difference when you have a number of process to run in a limited amount of time. Enabling BULK API functionality on Salesforce input tool will help solve this problem.

When writing an expression in a Formula tool, I love that you can just type an open bracket and suggestions pop up that allow you to auto-fill the rest of the variable name. What I find frustrating, however, is that once you type the open bracket, the highlighted field automatically moves to the one where your mouse is pointing, regardless of if you have moved your mouse or not. I think it makes more sense to always highlight the first field in the list and only take mouse position into account once it has actually moved.

It is hard to describe in just a picture as opposed to a video but essentially I had my mouse below where I was typing in the screenshot below then when I typed the open bracket, the 3rd field listed automatically got selected even though I never moved my mouse.

Cc: @Hollingsworth 

Hello all,

I just love the DCM feature. However, you have to enable it manually in system settings after the install or the update.

I don't think there is a good reason for that and it would save time to enable it by default.

Best regards,

Simon

I noticed through the ODBC driver log that Alteryx doesn't care about the kind of base I precise. It tests every single kind of base to find the good one and THEN applies the queries to get the metadata info.

Here an example. I have chosen an Hive in db connection. If  I read the simba logs, i can find those lines :

Mar 01 11:37:21.318 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select USER(), APPLICATION_ID() from system.iota

Mar 01 11:37:22.863 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select USER as USER_NAME from SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1

Mar 01 11:37:23.454 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select * from rdb$relations

Mar 01 11:37:23.546 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select first 1 dbinfo('version', 'full') from systables

Mar 01 11:37:23.707 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select #01/01/01# as AccessDate

Mar 01 11:37:23.868 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: exec sp_server_info 1

Mar 01 11:37:24.093 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select top (0) * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INDEXES

Mar 01 11:37:24.219 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: SELECT  SERVERPROPERTY('edition')

Mar 01 11:37:24.423 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select DATABASE() as `database`, VERSION() as `version`

Mar 01 11:37:24.635 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select * from sys.V_$VERSION at where RowNum<2

Mar 01 11:37:25.230 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select cast(version() as char(10)), (select 1 from pg_catalog.pg_class) as t

Mar 01 11:37:25.415 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select NAME from sqlite_master

Mar 01 11:37:25.756 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select xp_msver('CompanyName')

Mar 01 11:37:26.156 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select @@version

Mar 01 11:37:26.376 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: select * from dbc.dbcinfo

Mar 01 11:37:26.522 INFO  5264 HardyDataEngine::Prepare: Incoming SQL: SELECT @@VERSION;

I can understand that when Alteryx doesn't know the kind of base he tries everything.. (eg : in memory visual query builder) but here, I have selected the Hive database and I have to loose more than 5 seconds for nothing.

I love Workflow Meta info, especially the ability to put the Author, the search tags,the version, the description, etc...

But why can't we use it as Engine Constant? It doesn't seem very hard to implement and it would change life for development.

We are using silent Alteryx installation and would like to package license activation within the package. We do not want to expose Alteryx license key to the users to prevent them from sharing it with someone else. Requesting to add a flag/setting to allow admins to not display license key under Options>Manage Licenses.

Related request https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Is-it-possible-to-hide-the-serial-key-...

Similar to how the Join tool allows to "Select all Left" or "Select all Right" I'd like to see the Append Fields tool have an option to select all source or select all target. Same for deselect. 

Hi all,

In supporting our Alteryx users - we often have situations where users have had multiple different versions of Alteryx installed on their machines over time - and this leads to a situation where settings / configurations are carried forward from one install to another, and there doesn't appear to be an obvious way to force a full & clean reinstall and reset.    This creates a problem when something like the Python settings are broken, since the reinstall does not fix this.

In this line - it would be very useful to have the ability to perform a full & clean uninstall - potentially in 2 phases:

• Initially - a script (e.g. Powershell) which is available on community, which cleans out all files that are installed by Alteryx (any version); all registry entries; an any user settings
• Later - it would be valuable to build this into the uninstaller so that the user has the ability to uninstall and remove ALL traces of the software and user settings.

Many thanks

Sean

Hi there,

When creating a database connection - Alteryx's default behaviour is to create an ODBC DSN-linked connection.

However DSN-linked connections do not work on a large server env - because this would require administrators to create these DSNs on every worker node and on every disaster recovery node, and update them all every time a canvas changes.

they are also not fully safe becuase part of the configuration of your canvas is held in the DSN - and so you cannot just rely on the code that's under version control.

So:

Could we add a feature to Alteryx Designer that allows a user to expand a DSN into a fully-declared conneciton string?

In other words - if the connection string is listed as 

- odbc:DSN=DSNSnowFlakeTest;UID=Username;PWD=__EncPwd1__|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Then offer the user the ability to expand this out by interrogating the ODBC Connection manager to instead have the fully described connection string like this:
odbc:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=Username;pwd=__EncPwd1__;authenticator=Snowflake;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=xnb27844.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user

NOTE: This is exactly what users need to do manually today anyway to get to a DSN-less conneciton string - they have to craete a file DSN to figure out all the attributes (by opening it up in Notepad) and then paste these into the connection string manually.

Thanks all 

Sean

At our organization we are required to change our passwords every few months forcing a change to my Tableau Server password.  How does this relate to Alteryx?  Well, every 90 days I have to change my password in the "Publish to Tableau Server Tool" for all of my workflows.  This is quite a cumbersome process that could be eliminated with AD.

If you dislike manually changing your for each workflow that uses this tool then "star" this post!

I propose another wildcard, %ErrorLog%, that would simply output the error codes and narratives instead of having to use the %OutputLog% to see these.  I'd rather not have a 4 MB text email depicting every line of code and action in the module when all I really need to see are the errors.

Tools within a workflow needs to be able to run in parallel whereever applicable.

For example: Extracting 10 million rows from one source, 12 million rows from a different source to perform blending.

currently the order of execution is the order in which tools are dragged into the canvas. Hence Source1 first, Source2 second and then the JOIN.

Here Source1 & Source2 are completely independent, hence can be run in parallel. Thus saving the workflow execution time.

Execution time is quite crucial when you have tight data loading window.

Hopefully alteryx considers this in the next release!

Hello - The Input Data tool allows you to import a list of sheet names, but it doesn't let you import a list of named ranges. I'm proposing the Input Data tool allows you to import a list of named ranges for as many Excel file formats as possible. Right now when I go to import say an xlsx or xlsm the Input Data tool allows me to select from a drop down of named ranges, so it seems the functionality is already there. I am not aware of a reasonable approach to getting a list of named ranges other than opening up the Excel file as XML, specifically xl/workbook.xml - however, I've ran into issues with this approach providing sheet names instead of named ranges (unsure why but I posted about this here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/How-do-I-get-a-list-of-all-named-range...)

If we were able to import a list named ranges I think the benefits are obvious. The one that really stands out to me is that if you have a standard when creating named ranges (for example "prefix_name1, prefix_name2" etc... you could search for specific prefixes to find the named ranges available. In a large portfolio of models deploying such a standard the total universe of named ranges might not be known ahead of time except the prefix to search. I'm curious if this resonates with others.

Thank you

This is a hybrid idea related to both posts regarding dynamic tool configuration during runtime / without having to run an analytic app.

What I would like to propose is a new optional connection type for the interface tools that can be updated with incoming connections (having a Q letter with white background), namely Drop Down, List Box, Tree and Map tools. This could be a simple R letter in a square for example, which would be located to the left of the incoming question anchor.

Use Case

Imagine an app where there are two control containers and three interface tools (Action tools excluded from the count) outside those containers, one of them is a Text Box connected to a filter tool (via an Action tool) in the first control container with the purpose of limiting the dataset by specifying a city for example, another one is a Numeric Up Down for limiting the dataset by the average transaction amounts that are greater than the specified amount. These two interface tools are contained in a Group Box in the Interface Designer.

The third interface tool is a Drop Down tool which obtains the values (which will be Store Name for this example) from the results of the Select tool (in the second control container that is connected to the output anchor of the first control container) that is connected to an incoming filter tool which is modified by the previously mentioned interface tools. Output anchor of this Select tool is connected to the hypothetical R anchor on the top of the Drop Down tool, which is then connected to an outgoing filter tool that is connected to a series of tools which ends with a Browse tool that displays basic KPI information for the store specified from the Drop Down tool.

The main difference of the R (Refresh) anchor from the Q anchor is that it will enable the user to dynamically update the incoming values (i.e., choices for a drop down tool) without having to run the workflow. Alteryx Designer will automatically execute only the tools necessary to be able to update the values (up to a certain point of the workflow only, which may also be indicated by the boundaries of the control containers containing the target tool) for the R anchor connected applicable Interface tools specified above. This will be possible by clicking the hypothetical confirm button (same appearance with the Apply Data Manipulations button) which only appears next to the Interface tools (or the Group Boxes containing them instead) that are automatically determined by Alteryx Designer to be providing downstream data to the the tools (T anchor of the Filter tool for example) sending values to the applicable Interface tools having an incoming R anchor connection.

I saw that a similar feature recently became available with Alteryx Analytics Cloud Platform with the App Builder product, and I think that Alteryx Designer Desktop could definitely benefit both from this feature and additional App Builder features (that can be adapted to Desktop counterpart) in the upcoming releases.

I was just responding to a post about the Make Columns tool, and I noticed that there is not an example workflow for this tool built into Designer. It is also missing from the Transform category, so I never think of it.

@peyton-louden @binuacs @Luke_C 

Hi, I was using the Image Template tool and I noticed that the icons for import and export are switched.

Can you put a check box on the container title bar to make it easier to enable/disable containers in the process window? And can you make the minimize/maximize option for a conatiner a separate option from enable/disable?