Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I want a feature to enable join by custom conditions. Currently, in Join tool, allowed condition is only equality of specific fields and specific position, however, in SQL, we can join data by much more flexible conditions like;

SELECT TableA.id FROM TableA INNER JOIN TableB ON TableA.id=TableB.id and TableA.value > TableB.value  

Of course, my idea can be easily realized by using combination of Appendix Field + Filter tool, but I meant to say is that Appendix-Fields is quite expensive operation in calculation cost, and it would generate many unnecessary records, which is annoying us in case of handling a huge dataset.

I suppose this kind of flexible conditions can be specified by using expression editor, thereby configuration window of this feature would look like the below image; Adding one more radio button option, and expression editor similar to one used in Filter tool.

Any positive/negative feedback on my idea would be appreciated. Thank you for your attention!

When building an Alteryx Macro - one of the tough parts is that the input data you put into the Macro Input is used for testing, but you cannot set the type.

So for example - I want to test with the value 1, and Alteryx automatically assumes this is a Byte.

However 1 is just a useful test value, but I need this to be an int 64.

Can we provide the option to strongly type the macro inputs - this way, we can give advanced users the ability to control the type on Macro Inputs, and not run into this sort of issue with test data implicitly defining the type?

Note: this is similar to the idea here:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/Set-data-type-in-Text-Input-tool/idc-p/115209...

Hi everyone,

Add two additional features to a directory tool. Something like this:

Use cases:

1. Since it is not possible to use a folder browse on the Gallery, this could help a basic user create a list of possible folders to select from with the help of a drop-down

2. Directory analysis for cleaning purposes - currently, if you want to get a list of the folders with Alteryx, it takes forever for big file servers since Alteryx is mapping all the files

Both are achievable today through regex or a bat script.

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

Hello,

Just like Monetdb or Vertica, Clickhouse is a column-store database, claiming to be the fastest in the world. It's available on Cloud (like Snowflake), linux and macos (and here for free, it's open-source). it's also very well ranked in analytics database https://db-engines.com/en/system/ClickHouse and it would be a good differenciator with competitors.

https://clickhouse.com/

it has became more popular than Greenplum that is supported : (black snowflake, red greenplum, orange clickhouse)

Best regards,

Simon

Can a function be added to the Text-to-Column tool that allows selecting "split on entire entry" or "split on entry-as-a-whole" for the delimiters field?

Background:

Currently if we type  vs.  in the delimiters field, it'll look for each character separately including spaces.

The recommendation in the tool help is to use RegEx for splitting on whole words, but for some, RegEx is quite intimidating and adding this function would be a big help for new users.

Proposed Change:

2 Radio Buttons added to the Text-to-Column tool

1. Split by Each Entry
   1. Current functionality
   2. Should be default
   3. Splits on every letter, space, punctuation, etc. separately
2. Split by Entire Entry
   1. Allow splitting by using entire entry in the field
   2. Still includes spaces, letters, and punctuation, but now sees as "whole-word"

Example of function:

1. Radio button set to "split by entire entry"
2. Delimiter field has:   vs. 
3. Tool sees  ______ vs. ______  in a column in the data
4. Tool splits ______  and  ______ into new columns leaving out the entire vs. including the spaces entered around it

Thank you!

I can be picky about how my workflows are laid out.  Oftentimes, the connector between tools has a "mind of its own" as to what direction it goes and how it crosses other objects.  I'd like to see the ability to control the connector lines with "elbows" that can be positioned in custom locations and directions, like an MS Visio diagram. Alternatively, add a simple "pin" tool could be added to the canvas and it's only function is to take in and send out a connector line by defining the input and output location.  The input and output locations could be defined angularly/radial in degrees, for example.  Image attached below of existing workflow with a "troublesome" connector and the concept of "elbows" and "pins" added as an alternate control mechanism.  Both would be great!  :)

In a similar vein to the forthcoming enhancement of being able to disable a specific output tool, my idea is to have the inverse where you can globally disable all outputs and then enable specific ones only. This should help reduce the number of clicks required/avoid workarounds using containers to obtain this functionality and allow users to be very specific in which outputs run and don't run as required.

Functions such as Year([Date Field]), Month([Date Field]), and Day([Date Field]) would really help with date-based formulas and filter tests.

Hello all,

OLEDB is usually way faster than ODBC so that the way to connect we promote. However, the new DCM only works for ODBC connection, which is quite strange.

Best regards,

Simon

While the result window allows sorting and filtering, every time the user switches to another tool within the same run, the configuration is lost. It would be good if there was a 'Retain" button so that the user does not have to keep setting this each time the tool is switched or when the canvas is retriggered.

I'm testing out the new Data Connection Manager (DCM) and think it needs 1 enhancement based on the way we'd use DCM. Whenever Alteryx opens, it should sync the Data Sources/Credentials from the Server. This is critically important when sharing these with more than 1 user when a password needs updated.

For example, DesignerA updates the password in the source system, and then updates the password in their Designer DCM settings. In order for this new password to get synced to DesignerB, 2 things have to manually happen: DesignerA would need to sync the new password to the server, and then DesignerB would need to sync the new password from the server. I can live with the first part where DesignerA needs to sync to the server. It's just part of the password update process. The second step though seems perilous. DesignerB should get the new password without having to do anything; as things currently stand, DesignerB will have the old password until they manually intervene and sync the password. Imagine a scenario where it's just DesignerB, but hundreds of people who would all have to sync their credentials. 

I also think this idea makes sense in light of the way Data Connections currently work (pre 21.4) where a similar sync happens automatically every time alteryx opens.  

Add the support to write out in TopoJSON to make it easier to create custom shape maps that can be used with Power BI

After I type something into the filter box, I should be able hit enter and then it just applies my change (ie enter hits the apply button). It used to be this way, but it's not working as of 2021.2. This feels like a very tiny move in the wrong direction. Currently enter does nothing. It looks like if I hit tab twice and then enter, it finds the apply button. I shouldn't have to hit tab twice. 

cc: @Hollingsworth @A11yKyle 

While Alteryx allows for a proxy username and password in the settings, these are not passed properly to an NTLM proxy. Support for NTLM authentication would be incredibly useful for a number of corporations who utilize this firewall setup.

We currently have to either download via Python or cURL through batch commands called by Alteryx. Since Alteryx uses a cURL back-end, this should be a fairly simple addition to the existing download tool by allowing a selection of proxy server, port, and authentication method in addition to the proxy username and password. This could be done either in the tool itself or in User Settings.

When building custom tools for Alteryx using the Python SDK, there is no current way to test these outside of the Alteryx Designer.

This means that your development process is:

- write some code (no code-sense; intellisense; auto-complete because Jupyter; VSCode; Visual Studio; etc cannot access AlteryxEngine or any of the other imports)

- hope

- copy that .py module into your C:\Users\<username>\AppData\roaming\Alteryx\Tools\<toolname>

- fire up Alteryx

- drop this new custom tool on a canvas

- run it to see if you get any errors

- then copy these errors out of Alteryx result window into Notepad to be able to read them

- then go back into your development environment to make changes

- repeat.

This is very painful, and this will directly scare most people away from learning how to create custom tools since it's not only inefficient - but also scary and frustrating for beginners.

Proposal:

Could we instead create mock python libraries; and a development harness (like Google does with Android development in Eclipse) in this SDK where:

- you have full code intelligence (intellisense, autocomplete)

- you can simulate engine events in a test harness (for example in the Android SDK; you can simulate the user rotating their phone, turning off GPS, hitting a volume button, etc).

- you can also write test cases which can run automatically

- then once you know that your tool will work - only then you drop it into the Alteryx Designer environment.

NOTE: This IDE way of thinking also allows you to bring the configuration pieces (like number of inputs; etc) out of raw code and into configuration options.

Although you may be able to do remote debugging by using platforms like PyCharm - that really does not give you the full ability to check in the code of your tool; along with all the test cases; in a harness that allows you to automatically check different events; or to make sure that your tool works in the test harness before deploying.

Thank you

cc: @BlytheE @SteveA @Ozzie @tlarsen7572 @cam_w @jdunkerley79 

There are a number of tools that lose their selections when copied and pasted. Here are the ones I quickly found so far: 

-Multi Row Formula (Group By)

-Running Total (Group By)

-Transpose (Key Fields and Data Fields)

-Unique (Unique Fields)

-Concatenate (Group Data by these values and method for aggregating values)

It would be really great if they could keep their selections when pasted. This would be similar to the Join, Multi Field Formulas, or Sort tools which keep their settings but let you know if a field is missing. Thanks!

When training people on the use of action tools, something that I always have to hit on is that when you are telling the tool which piece of the XML that you are adjusting, it's sort of difficult to tell what you have selected, and super easy to accidentally select something else.

Example:

When you initially select the action to take it's this nice Blue Color. However, it still doesn't feel exactly like you have actually selected anything or told the Action Tool what to do, since it's so easy to just select any other one of these actions.

A slightly different problem is that if you are selecting an action that has been previously configured, it is just this light grey color. So it can be easy to accidentally change your settings because you may not realize it's actually set up.

Here is a recent community post that sort of outlines a few of these problems.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Analytic-App-to-Create-Custom-SQL-Quer...

I'd like to see an enhancement that at the install level (through an XML configuration file for example), the use of the From field in the Email reporting tool could be disabled for population by the end user and instead would auto-populate with that current users e-mail address.  Currently users can populate the field with any address on their domain, which is useful, but also poses a risk in that messages can be made to appear to be coming from a party that is not aware of it.  We'd like to be able to control that on install and "turn off" access to the From field

In response to my question here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Singin-Error-to-Tableau-server-using-P...

The Publish to Tableau Server does not support SAML/SSO. I would like this feature to be added to this tool as it will make our business process more efficient.

Thank you.