Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Is it possible to add a search feature to the Summarize Tool that is similar to the search feature in the Select Tool?  Selecting specific fields to summarize in small datasets is fine, but if I am dealing with a table that has 200 fields searching for a specific field can be cumbersome.  Type in a few key letters to filter the available fields would be helpful.

We build some pretty robust maps with multiple connections and it would be great to copy the map tool and paste it with all of the connections when we want to tweak the map slightly but keep our original map.  It is a regular occurrence for us to have a very detailed map grouping by trade area name and then may want to have an overview map with all of the same connections but slightly different layout.  Tracking down the connections, reconnecting them and naming them accordingly takes a substantial amount of time even in the most organized of workflows.  This function would be a huge time-saver.  It would also be of value with joins and unions - anywhere you have multiple streams coming in.

When building out Alteryx workflows there may be a need to read in different ranges within the same Excel spreadsheet. For example bringing in a table from Sheet1, but also isolating a table name in a particular cell (in my example cell C8).

When turning this into an analytic app, with a file browse is to add an action tool with the default value of "Update Input Data Tool".

However when specifying this option within the analytic app interface, you are only allowed to chose one option of the following:

i) Select a sheet

ii) Select a sheet and specify a range

iii) a named range or

iv) a list of sheet names.

The problem is in the example above I need a sheet and a range, but I want to avoid adding two file browse interface tools as it shouldn't be needed. If the user selects (i) then it loses the reference to cell C8, but I would imagine a lot of users as they get started with apps don't realise this is what will happen.

There is however a way to solve this currently and it requires overwriting the default behaviour and configuring the second action tool (the one that updates the file for C8), to update value with a formula, where you assume the user would select sheet name and then use this formula:

replace([#1],"$`","$C8:C8`")

However I would argue that this has a lot of technical debt, plus if the user needs to modify where the header is, for example to D8 they need to change the input file and the action tool so it works as a workflow and an analytic app.

Solution

Like how the configuration options for the input file, such as which row to input data from or whether first row contains data is maintained, modify the behaviour of the default option in the action tool to maintain references to ranges.

The Transpose In-db stands in the "Laboraty" for years now. I understand Alteryx invested some time and money to develop that but sadly we still can't use that tool for sensitive workflows. Did you get some bugs on it? Can you please correct it and make this tool an "official" tool?

Thanks

I am currently using alteryx to generate pdf reports and noticed there is no option to have multiple row headers. In my line of work i cant skip this as the end users insist on having it like they have always had it.

I definitely think this should be available as many of us like replicate canned reports which are otherwise in excel and hence see the need for such an option.

The following might give an example of the multi row header,

Also the ability to merge certain columns to create the above effect should be available.

I think it would be nice to be able to more easily reorder fields that you're joining by in the Join tool.

For example, I have already joined by CASS_Address and CASS_City. After I did this, I realized I wanted to go back and join on Name, too, and I want that to be first. How the tool is configured now, if I want Name to be first, I must redo all of the drop downs. I would like to be able to add Name to the next set of open drop downs then use some arrow buttons to be able to move them up in the order (similar to the Summarize tool).

Often as I am scraping web sites, some clever developer has put an invisible character (ASCII or Unicode) in the data which causes terrible trouble.

I've identified 89 instances of zero-width or non-zero-width glyphs that are not visible and/or Alteryx does not classify as whitespace. There are probably more, but Unicode is big y'all.

Unfortunately, the Trim() string function only removes 4 of these characters (Tab, Newline, Carriage Feed, and Space).
REGEX_REPLACE with the \s option (which is what the Cleanse macro uses) is a little better but still only removes 20. And it removes all instances, not just leading and trailing.

I've attached a workflow which proves this issue.

@apolly: this is what I mentioned at GKO.

And I did see this post (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Elegantly-remove-all-ASCII-characters-...), but it's too brute force. Especially as Alteryx is localized and more users need those Unicode characters.

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

Under the Runtime setting, there is an existing option to "Disable All Tools that Write Output". This is incredibly useful when developing workflows when you don't want to overwrite existing files.

But this option doesn't disable all outputs, like Publishing to Tableau! 

I suggest adding the option to disable ALL kinds of outputs, uploads, and publishing (except possibly logging and caching).

Problem statement - 

Currently we are storing our Alteryx data in .yxdb file format and whenever we want to fetch the data, the whole dataset first load into the memory and then we can able to apply filter tool afterwards to get the required subset of data from .yxdb which is completely waste of time and resources.

Solution - 

My idea is to introduce a YXDB SQL statement tool which can directly apply in a workflow to get the required dataset from .YXDB file, I hope this will reduce the overall runtime of workflow and user will get desired data in record time which improves the performance and reduce the memory consumption.

A "Filter" that would work like a "Formula" - where you can add multiple criteria in one space, and for each criteria, you would get an output anchor.  I use Alteryx to manage master data from several factories - each needing to have separate workstreams.  Stacking Filter criteria functions, but it would be much cleaner to have it managed within a single tool.

Hello, 

Please can we have some drawing tools, so we can add another dimension to our workflows.  I would like to draw arrows and lines across my workflow, so I can show the different stages of the workflow. I could use containers as an alternative, but feel lines would be better.

Also, is their a grid-line option, and a space equally (to spread tools evenly across work page), and an auto straighten!

Also, when you FIND, it would be nice if the Find box is allowed to stay on screen, whilst you work on the tool that has just been found; and if the founded tool can be highlighted more clearly so it can be seen. 

Also, a timer, so we can see how long the workflow runs for.

That's it for now. 

Thanks

Now that we have a Snowflake Bulk Loader option, it would be great to utilize the built-in Snowflake internal staging.  This eliminates the need for an end-user to have the technical know-how or access to IT resources to utilize a separate S3 bucket and generally reduces friction in the process. 

There was pretty widespread support in the original Bulk Load thread: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Snowflake-Bulk-Loader/idi-p/105291/page/2#co...

With an increasing number of different projects, involving different machine learning models, it's becoming difficult to manage different package versions across workflows. Currently, the Python tool has a single virtual environment, so we need to develop models in different projects always using the same Python and package versions as the Python tool venv. While this doesn't bother the code itself too much, it becomes a problem as soon as we store and load pickled models, which are sensitive to even minor changes in packages.

This is even more so a problem when we are working on the Alteryx server, where different teams might use different packages. Currently, there is only the server admin who can install packages on the server and there can only be one version per package.

So, a more robust venv management in the Python tool would be much appreciated!

It would be nice to be able to concatenate numeric values (integers, doubles, etc.) directly in the Summarize Tool.

I know this would involve converting it to a string on the backend, but I don't believe there would be any data loss when going from numeric to string. I know this can be done by using other tools like Select of Formula to convert to string before the summarize but I don't see any reason why this couldn't be accomplished in a single tool.

Thanks,

Paul

Hi all,

The Publish to Tableau Server tool is great.. but requires username and password. If you are using AD, there is a chance that your users don't have a password. In that case, you probably have a technical user that you share across the team. This is not an ideal situation and you loose the governance around the data. 

Fortunately, there is an easy workaround. You can leverage personal token authentication : https://help.tableau.com/v2019.4/server/en-us/security_personal_access_tokens.htm 

The advantage of this method is that it logs in with your user and your data source is uploaded under your name. This is still using the Tableau REST API so the changes to do in the current macro is MINOR. 

Changes to do in the current macro : 

1- Add a parameter authentication method with choices : Username/Password ; Personal Token 

2- If Personal Token is selected, add two parameters : Token_Name and Token_Value

3 - In the TableauServer.Login supporting macro, improve the formula(13) to change the payload based on user selection. If Username/Password, keep it as is. Else use the syntax here : https://help.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/REST/rest_api_concepts_auth.htm#make-a-sign-in-r... 

This is quite a straight forward change but could help a lot of companies using Alteryx.

Can you please implement that changes to strengthen this tool ? 

Thanks a lot,

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

Hello,


As of today, when you connect o, a database, you go through a batch of queries to retrieve which database it is ( cf https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Smart-Visual-Query-Builder-for-in-db-less-te... where I suggest a solution to speed up the process) and then, Alteryx queries the metadata. In order to get the column in each table, Alteryx use a SHOW TABLES and then loop on each table. This is really slow. 

However, since Hive 3.0, an information_schema with the list of columns for each  table is now available. I suggest to use the information_schema.columns instead of the time-consuming loop.

PS : I don't know if it's linked to the Active Query Builder, the third-party tool behind the Visual Query Builder. In that case, it would be a good idea to update it as suggested here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Update-Query-Builder-component/idi-p/799086

Best regards,

Simon

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.