Advent of Code is back! Unwrap daily challenges to sharpen your Alteryx skills and earn badges along the way! Learn more now.

Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Share your Designer Desktop product ideas - we're listening!
Submitting an Idea?

Be sure to review our Idea Submission Guidelines for more information!

Submission Guidelines

Featured Ideas

We need the ability to pre-populate App questions with a default value. This not only gives the user an example of what type of data string the App is looking for, but also may avoid the user from having to do anything if the default folder or file is already correct.

This would also allow for quick App testing since we can just accept the defaults and not have to load up a yxwv file every single time.

ArcPy/Python, ESRI Modelbuilder, PyQGIS can all do this (heck, even MapBasic can do it!) - there's no doubt it's more convenient for the designer and end user.

I have several modules that need to run in sequence.   Can a ksh or some other program be used to string the modules together?  

So that if I have Step1.yxmd, Step2.yxmd and Step3.yxmd.  2 is dependent on 1, 3 is dependent on 2.  I want to tell it the jobs to run and then to wait until that module completes, then run the next.  


run Step1.yxmd
Wait

run Step2.yxmd
Wait

run Step3.yxmd
Wait


Or, if I have a group of modules that can run concurrently but subsequent jobs are dependent on all of them to finish, i can let all those jobs run and have the next step wait for those to complete to begin.  

run Step1A.yxmd
run Step1B.yxmd
run Step1C.yxmd
run Step1D.yxmd
Wait

run Step2.yxmd
Wait

run Step3.yxmd
Wait


I know this is very simplistic, but hoping it shows the need.  Also, we do have the scheduler set up to use, so if there is a way to set dependencies between modules within Scheduler, that might be helpful.  Just haven't found anything.  

Thanks!

Right now we can create Tableau extract files (.tde), but cannot read them into Alteryx -- this limits the partnership of these two companies.
Please add the functionality to import .tde files,
Best,
Jeremy

Currently, the map input for an application defaults either to a global view of the United States or to a fixed boundary. Usng a chained application, it would be an extremely useful option to be able to specifiy spatial objects (points, lines, polygons) in the first application and then allow the second application to zoom in appropriately to those spatial objects. This could be done by either specifying a custom zoom level and using those spatial objects as a center through a reference layer, or by allowing the zoom's boundary to contain all the spatial objects (similar to the map reporting tools).

I think that it would be useful to add two new Rename Modes to the Dynamic Rename tool -- here are the existing ones:


I would add:
Take Field Metadata from Right Input Metadata
Take Field Metadata from Right Input Rows

These would allow mass changes in data type, size and scale based on either an existing data table's metadata or an external metadata table.
The field selection pane in Multi-Field Formula is very small and not resizeable. It is difficult to select anything other than all variables when only 4 1/2 fields are displayed at a time. Making this pane resizeable would be very useful.

A client contacted us recently asking if there was a way to view the log file of a scheduled process during runtime.  The use case is so that if there is a runaway process, they will be able to identify at what point the process gets hung up.  

Currently, when a scheduled job is running (and logging is enabled), the log file is locked for use.  

Thanks!
In the ‘Report – Table’ tool I would like to be able to force headings to multiple lines. For example If I have a heading such as “Catchment (%)” or “Spend (£)”, I would like there to be an easy way to make the (%) / (£) move to the second line when I have fixed width columns.
 

 

If we rename a field ‘X’ to ‘Y’  in the alteryx module, the renaming is not inherited by all the tools using that field in that module. The tools which are still using the old field name ‘X’ will fail until they are configured to use the new field name ‘Y’. Most of the tools I have worked will inherit the field renaming.
 
It would be very helpful if the renaming is propagated to all the tools in the module using that field name. 

I have often thought it would be nice to have a 'predicted run time' for a module calculated.

An adequate prediction might be the complete run time last time the module ran.  Then, in combination with a counter of how long a module has been running so far, we’d be well armed to estimate whether to go get a cup of coffee or not.

Dear Alteryx,

Alteryx 9 new Macro configuration module, is great
One thing that could be improved :

For Iterative macros, it's very frustrated to set a Maximum of Iterations manually :
when the number is too high it keeps going unnecessarily
when it's too low, we are missing iterations

Ideally this parameters should be calculated automatically by Alteryx
It would just implie to have the possibility to declare the numeric field that must be used for Iteration ... then Alteryx could calculate before launching the job, the Min/Max to set automatically the iteration band.

Is this idea stupid?

Thanks

Arno

I'd love the ability to Input an already-formatted Print Layout area within an Excel document, or a .PDF document in an effort to standardize reports needed on a regular basis.

Our department doesn't create everything that rolls into these reports, but we'd love the ability to incorporate external documents and save our company hours.

Is it possible to format an input tool to only look at the Print Area? If not, that capability would be wonderful.

Thanks!

When workig on a module with many tools, and one of those tools is the Allocate Input tool (Experian US), whenever you try to access or configure that other tools, there is a delayed reponse.  I'm assuming because the Allocate data set is so large.  But, it would be nice, if possible, that when accessing/configuring other tools you did not get that delay.  My workaround is to Container the Allocate tool and disable it.  

When developing a module, I generally BROWSE the final data until I'm ultimately ready to generate output.  Then I need to add or replace a browse tool with an output tool.  Perhaps a general purpose output tool could save time for developers where the output tool functions as a browse tool until the output is actually checked on the tool configuration.

Taking this a step further, if an output is defined and the module is executed one could have a row limit on the read of data into the browse function of an output tool and see the first N records within a browse/output tool.

Sneak Peek.

m

In my environment, creating tables with fields in a particular order is a requirement.

The Select tool (and others) let me manually change sort orders. The Select tool will also allow me to sort on Field Name in Ascending or Descending order.

I can add a sort order prefix to my input data with the Dynamic Rename tool, connect a Select tool and then go into the Select tool properties to sort by Field Name. But this requires that I first run the module so that the Select tool knows what the incoming fields are called, then set up the Select tool properties, and then rerun the module. If I change the prefixes or the list of incoming variables, the Select tool has to be reconfigured.

It would be really nice if there was a Field Sort tool that only had Ascending or Descending as properties that would 'dynamically' do what the Sort on Field Name option in the Select tool does.

I got to know that in version 9.1 Alteryx will have Unique Tool with "Unknow"check box to make it dynamic. I want to suggest same logic for Summarize tool for making it Dynamic.
Please add Unknow like functionallity in Summarize Tool

Thanks,
Pratik Gujarathi 

In the Browse window:

  1. Can we add a Find function like in excel? (e.g. find record_ID==4 or name =='foobar')
  2. Can we click the column name so it sorts on that field?
  3. In 9.0 when I click 'Cell Viewer' in Browse window,  'Show Whitespace' seems to be turn on by default. Can we turn it off like in 8.6?
  4. When I click the 'Fields' button to toggle fields on/off, it would be great to add a Sort function here too, so fields can be sorted a-z by fieldname (like in the Select tool).

Thanks!

Our team works with a lot of in-house transaction data sets that have been put into a calgary database.  It would be much easier to build apps that use the calgary input tool without having to configure html code.

Currently when I open and run an app in designer mode im unable to access any other modules while it runs.  It would be nice to be able to work on other modules while an app runs without opening a debug.

Add an option to read directly from a zip file.