Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi, 

One idea is to have the Select/Table Sheet be dynamically name according to the the interface browse tool prompt. When users are uploading many files it can get confusing. 

Thanks,

Chris

Allow the user to select which type of Join is happening in the join tool. Allow the J anchor to output the join type within a radio option in the tool configuration. Right now the J anchor outputs matches in both inputs. New suggestion would allow the user to select a Right Outer or Left Outer join without having to use a Union tool after the Join.

It would be nice to track changes. The function would need to have an on and off switch. Some workflows are large and you want to go back to the changes you've made. My team has 2 identical workflows one for production and one for validation. Tracked changes would help manage changes between both workflows. The tracked changes could be something like highlighting the tools red once changed, and after the function is turned on. I have attached a sample image for your reference. Thank you.

Hi,

I would like to see an option within the 'Find Nearest Tool' (and maybe other Tools like it) to exclude from results when a particular Target field equals a particular Universe field.  This could be added right under the 'Ignore 0 Distance Matches' in config window.  You could have drop-downs (like a filter tool) to pick the fields etc.  Example of what I'm doing:  One Address may have multiple accounts and it's in Target and Universe.  Ignoring 0 Distance would drop all the other Accounts at the same address.  I only want it to ignore the Universe Address if it has the same Account Number and the Target Account Number.  That is a little deeper drill than just ignore 0 Distance but not too hard to add.

As it stands, I don't ignore 0 Distance.  I have a formula after the 'Find Nearest' to drop  Target Acct Nbr = Universe Acct Nbr.   Then a 'Multi-Row Formula' tool to fix the find nearest order.  This works, but I thought it might be nice to have it in the tool.

dynamic select have field information like [field number] and etc.
i appreciate it available in dynamic rename. 

since both also manipulate with header.

Currently SharePoint Input Tool allows downloading a file from SharePoint to local machine, then we can process it locally, this is great since the tool can only handle 3 types of files and won't support the rest like Zip or anything else.
SharePoint Output tool, only support the same 3 files type, but will not allow uploading to SharePoint a local file, similar to the input tool but in reverse. Why is this important:

1- We can create local files that is in a format like KML, KMZ, ZIP etc., which we can't upload it to SharePoint after.

2- updating multiple sheets on the same file, updating locally then uploading the file to SharePoint will be a lot faster and more efficient. 

it is easier to overcome above challenges if we use Alteryx Designer and Sync the SharePoint, or map it to local drive or folder. but it is impossible to do it when using and scheduling it on Alteryx Server.

Please update the SharePoint Output tool to allow uploading any type of file(s). Thank you.

I would love to see horizontal scrolling support for mice. Currently, you allow scrolling vertically, but not horizontally. It would be so much quicker to be able to navigate with horizontal scrolling support.

1. Image Processing Tool functionality should be available in Reporting tools.

2. Image Output Location should allow for a temp file location

3. Image Processing should allow lock of aspect ratio when Cropping (like Scale)

4. Image Processing should allow for fieldname selection for Crop, Scale ...etc to allow for custom calculations.  Being able to generate custom values for width and height based upon the values generated in from image profile would be useful

The Multi-Field Binning tool, when set to equal records, will assign any NULL fields to an 'additional' bin

e.g. if there are 10 tiles set then a bin will be created called 11 for the NULL field

However, when this is done it doesn't remove the NULLs from the equal distribution of bins across the remaining items (from 1-10).Assuming the NULLs should be ignored (if rest are numeric) then the binning of remaining items is wrong.

Suggestion is to add a tickbox in the tool to say whether or not NULL fields should be binned (current setup) or ignored (removed/ignored completely before binning allocations are made).

Anytime you create a formula in the formula tool, you get a data preview based on the values in the first row of data.  However, if you have a complex "IF c THEN t ELSEIF c2 THEN t2 ELSE f ENDIF" formula then the data combination that gives a TRUE result will likely exist on another row.  Therefore, you need to run the workflow, or place a filter tool upstream to isolate the specific row, to test if the formula result is correct.  

It would be easier if you could select the Input anchor of the Formula tool, then filter the data in the results window to isolate the row in questions, then the data preview would be based on that filtered data set.  I believe this would save a lot of time in the workflow development phase.

For the PDF to Text tool- Config section-  

We suggest a potential config change with pages to take in and scrub, similar to a print # of pages which can help benefit and drive more accuracy and ultimately performance as a separate section or within the Text Extraction Options

I want to have the ability to share workflows with non-Alteryx users so they can see what steps were followed within my workflows in order to create the output(s). Without a read-only viewer Alteryx users are forced to screenshot and write out the steps they followed in the workflows to document what they did which can be extremely laborious and time consuming when workflows get into the 50+ tool range. A read-only viewer would save Alteryx users time and give non-Alteryx users a sneak peak into how Alteryx works as well. It could peak the interest of non-Alteryx users to learn more about Alteryx and possibly convince them to download a trial and eventually purchase a license, so it could improve documentation methods as well as be an asset for marketing to non-Alteryx users. For reference, Tableau offers a similar solution called Reader.

when using switch formula as a more elegant way then if else

't' is not working in switch while it working in if then.

so i recommend to have a formula call True() and False() as excel to solve this issue. 

Currently the summarize tool field selector has one empty column on the left side that must be clicked on when selecting the fields, otherwise the 'Add' button does not activate.

I don't understand why the need for this empty column to be used when selecting the fields to aggregate/calculate.  Why can't we select the fields by clicking directly on the names of the fields instead?  Selecting fields this way is actually possible, but then the 'Add' button does not allow for the selection of the 'Group by' or aggregation method.

This creates confusion, especially for beginner users who might click on the field names, see them selected and be puzzled why the 'Add' button is not working.

Thanks!

sometimes we deal with hundreds of columns and it's hard to scroll and locate a specific one in the Data panel.

In the Metadata panel it's easier to locate the fields by scrolling vertically, however it would be even easier if we could click on the 'Name' column header and have that temporarily sorted so as to quickly locate a given column.  (This would be IDEA 1).

Additionally, but not necessarily dependent on IDEA1, if we could have the Record number of each of the fields in the metadata, also included alongside their respective names in the Data panel, that would make it for much easier location of particular fields in the Data panel, as users could look for a given field in the Metadata, find their 'order number' and then switch back to the Data panel and scroll directly to that number.

Additionally, column name search buttons could also be added to both Data/Metdata panels for a 'contains' like field name search.

Thanks!

The Unique tool is likely lighter than the Summarize tool and extremely useful to identify and remove duplicates, however unlike the JOIN tool where one can select which fields are included in the output, the unique tool will return all fields regardless.

It would be extremely useful if the UNIQUE tool also featured a list of fields to be included or not in the output for users to select from, because many times, all we are trying to extract is the list of unique values from a given column in the dataset and the other fields are not needed, neither do they make sense in this particular type of operation.

Thanks!

Work on allowing workflows to run successfully as the same way as the Designer.

1.  Allow use of DCM connections in Workflow.

2.  Allow use of AMP engine in connections.

3.  Expose the full execution log in the Scheduler Output Window.

4.  Refresh the screen when a Schedule is running frequently showing the same detail as in the Execution Log.  

5.  Allow a retry options for Scheduler.  Allow for number of retries when an Inteval between retries similar to SQL Server Job Agent or other schedulers.  

I've run into an issue where I'm using an Input (or dynamic input) tool inside a macro (attached) which is being updated via a File Browse tool. Being that I work at a large company with several data sources; so we use a lot of Shared (Gallery) Connections. The issue is that whenever I try to enter any sort of aliased connection (Gallery or otherwise), it reverts to the default connection I have in the Input or Dynamic Input tool. It does not act this way if I use a manually typed connection string.

Initially, I thought this was a bug; so I brought it to Support's attention. They told me that this was the default action of the tool. So I'm suggesting that the default action of Input and Dynamic Input tools be changed to allow being overridden by Aliased connections with File Browse and Action tools. The simplest way to implement this would probably be to translate the alias before pushing it to the macro.

It would be great to be able to use keyboard shortcuts to be able to switch between the different tools in the canvas, or use the keyboard shortcut to select different tools from the Tool Pallette (similar to Excel).