Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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

I understand the need for "exclusive rights" when using an input tool.  Unfortunately, due to the nature of some corporate data, getting write access to a file is not always possible.  I would like to have the ability to configure an input tool to open a file in "Read Only" mode while producing a warning message that the file was processed in that mode and may not contain the lastest version pf the data.  I envision this as a checkbox option in the tool configuration panel.

I am having to render my Alteryx formatted reports to Excel and then upload the report to Google Sheets

It would be very useful (and improve the less well known Alteryx Reporting capabilities) to be able to render straight to a Google Sheet and preserve the formatting.

Thanks

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.

As an international organization we deal with clients in multiple-countries.

Name matches for names including Chinese characters generate a unicode conversation warning and are excluded from the fuzzy match.

It would be good if fuzzy match could be enhanced to handle Chinese characters.

We've had several requests from clients for the ability to import password protected Excel spreadsheets into Alteryx.  Within Alteryx, it would be good to specify the password and inport the file without the need to create an unprotected copy for use in Alteryx.

Thanks

For in-DB use, please provide a Data Cleansing Tool.

We frequently have issues where users report slowness from an Alteryx installation on a particular machine; or where a specific tool or package fails to install correctly.

For our admin teams - this becomes a debugging exercise to go through different permutations to understand the cause - and if this is escallated to Alteryx Support, this becomes even tougher.

Could we think about including a basic "Self Diagnostic" in to Alteryx which runs through the basic functionalities of Alteryx with some basic timings; checks that Python is working correctly; checks the memory allocation and temporary disk space - and then either persists this to disk and/or sends to a central environment for analysis?

Given a large deployed environment like ours (over 10 000 seats deployed) - self-checkout-telemetry like this would provide the central team with massive increase in their ability to manage the deployed base; and at the same time signficantly reduce the time to resolve support issues.

I use the field name auto-complete feature whenever I can. One issue with it, however, is when there are parentheses in a field name. After auto-completing the field name, Alteryx highlights a portion of the field name after the first parenthesis. This is not ideal as I typically expect the cursor to be at the end of the field name so I may continue to type. In this scenario, unfortunately, I would begin to type over my field name and the expression gets messed up. 

For example, as shown below, I begin to type "st" and then hit the tab button to complete the field name in my expression.

In this case, because my field name has parentheses in it, however, some of the field name remains highlighted and the cursor does not go to the end of the right bracket, as one would expect.

If I were to continue typing at this point, the highlighted portion of the expression would get erased and replaced. 

Field names that do not contain parentheses continue to function correctly as shown below. 

1. TEXT TO COLUMN TOOL : Check Mark  for “Output/No-Output” next  to  “OUTPUT ROOT NAME”  

Most of the time I don't want/need the column that I parsed. Provide a check box for if you want the root column output. 

In a controlled environment, there is a need to control promotion of assets to prod with basic controls to ensure that someone has tested, signed off, that it meets certain quality standards (like "no warnings", "no Run Commands", "all reports must have company logo on top left" etc).

However, at the moment there doesn't appear to be a promotion process in Alteryx to control this flow, so assets are copied across by an admin.   This is very manual and error prone (many times we've had the wrong assets copied), and it also means that this process is controlled in a workflow outside of Alteryx (e.g. A JIRA queue or similar).

Could we request that Alteryx look into a production promotion process, which allows the admin team to perform any required checks (including automated checks), and then pushes this into prod stamped with the designer's Kerberos rather than the sys admin?

Joint idea with @avinashbonu @DamianA  @BenBu

The Download tool allows for encrypted SFTP connections, but I recently discovered (the hard way) that the Alteryx capabilities are incomplete and the algorithms not fully up to date. Just adding an additional updated algorithm or two to the 4 available for message authentication would bring it up to date.

As back story, our firm has onboarded a new SFTP server, and all of a sudden my Alteryx SFTP workflows didn't work when I pointed them at the new server. After going back and forth extensively with the helpful folks at Alteryx, we discovered there's a gap in Alteryx's current capabilities.

Basically, the Alteryx download tool can use the old encryption algorithm and half of the new version, and half of the new version is like having half a bridge.

Up until 2017, SHA-1 was the most common hash used for cryptographic signing. Since then it's been slowing getting supplanted by SHA-2.

Alteryx can use SHA-2 for key exchanges, but not for message authentication (the HMAC algorithm). The internet seems to swear up and down that the old SHA-1 algorithm works just fine for message authentication, but I don't have the luxury of caring about that. All I know is that as of March 2019 the SFTP server I have to connect with has deprecated Alteryx's SHA-1 algorithm as being too out of date and only allows the new SHA-2 message authentication. 

Alteryx CAN use the up to date SHA-2 for key exchange (GOOD, halfway there!) but can only use (old) ways of doing message authentication that do NOT include SHA-2 (NOT GOOD!). Please add updated SHA-2 algorithms (hmac-sha2-512, hmac-sha2-256) to the HMAC mix too!

Many thanks,

Josiah

Currently the InDB tools require to select a DSN that is defined on your computer.

This makes any workflow which uses a DSN incredibly painful to deploy to the server, since the DSN needs to be created on every worker node and for a large server environment this can  mean creating DSN entries on 6+ worker nodes in prod plus prod server plus dev/UAT environment plus dev/UAT worker nodes.

Could we please change the InDB tools to default to DSN-less connections, where the connection persists the connection details in-line so that it can deploy to the server without a DSN setup (since all connection details are contained within the connection string)?

Thank you

Sean

CC: @rijuthav @jithinmony @HengHe @RajK @ydmuley @revathi @Deeksha @MPistone @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller @JoshKushner @samnelson @avinashbonu @Sunder_Sriram @Rahul_Thakur @Rahul_Singh

Hey YXDB Bosses,

Let's move forward with our YXDB.  Maybe give AMP a real edge over e1.  Here are some things that could may YXDB super-powered:

• Metadata
  • Workflow information about what created that poorly named output file.
  • When was the file originally created/updated.
  • SORT order.  If there is a sort order for the data, what is it?
• Other stuff
  • INDEX.  Currently you get spatial indexes (or you can opt out).  If I want to search through a 100+MM record file, it is a sequential read of all of the data.  With an index I could grab data without the expense of a calgary file creation.  Don't go crazy on the indexing option, just allow users to set 1+ fields as index (takes more time to write).  
  • I'm sure that you've been asked before, but CREATE DIRECTORY if the output directory doesn't exist.
• Old School - Crazy Idea
  • Generation Data Groups (GDG)
    This will likely make @NicoleJ 's eyes roll 🙄 but back in the days, we could write our data to the SAME filename and the old data became 1 version older.  You could read the (0) version of the file or read from 1, 2, 3 or more previous versions of the data using the same name (e.g. .\Customers|||3).  The write of the output file would do all of the backing up of the data (easy to use) and when the initial defined limit expires, the data drops off.

Just a little more craziness from me

cheers

There needs to be a way to step into macro a which is component of parent workflow for debugging.

Currently the only way to achieve to debug these is to capture the inputs to the macro from the parent workflow, and then run the amend inputs on the macro. For iterative / batch macros, there is no option to debug at all. This can be tedious, especially if there are a number of inputs, large amounts of data, or you are have nested macros.

There should be an option on the tool representing the macro in the parent workflow to trigger a Debug when running the workflow, this would result in the same behavior when choosing 'Debug' from the interface panel in the macro itself: a new 'debug' workflow is created with the inputs received from the parent workflow.

On iterative / batch macros, which iteration / control parameter value the debug will be triggered on should be required. So if a macro returns an error on the 3 iteration, then the user ticks 'Debug' and Iteration = 3. If it doesn't reach the 3rd iteration, then no debug workflow is created.

Would like to direclty query Hyperion Cube / Essbase data source directly - please propose functionality in next release or add a user macro to the gallery.  Thanks -cb

Is it possible to add sort functionality to the Sample tool in Designer, similar to the 'Sample Based on Order' functionality in the Sample tool in Designer Cloud? This would cut down on the Sort + Sample tool combo in Designer!

Thanks!