Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Here's a twist on the iterative macro.  Suppose, like a generate rows tool, you could initialize a container to iterate on it's internal processes without having to construct a macro?  The container could include anchors for iterations and for output and allow the user to DoWhile inside of the container.

Just a thought....

It would be great if you could select multiple Data Fields in a single Crosstab

For example. I would like to SUM (Methodology) Pet Food Sales (Data Field 1) & Baby Food Sales (Data Field 2) By Store (Grouping Field) By Day of Week (Header field).
 

Bulk Load for Vertica (especially with the gzip compressed format) is very powerful, I can upload several dozens of millions of rows in a few minutes. Can we have it please?

https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/AdministratorsGuide/BulkLoadCOPY/UsingCOP...

It would be nice to have Directory tool working for ftp. I would like to have the list of files on a ftp server including sub folders

Alteryx Designer should automatically save my modules on a regular basis so that if I have a failure of some sort, my hard work will not be lost.

Hello all,

We all know for sure that != is the Alteryx operator for inequality. However, I suggest the implementation of <> as an other operator for inequality. Why ?

<> is a very common operator in most languages/tools such as SQL, Qlik or Tableau. It's by far more intuitive than != and it will help interoperability and copy/paste of expression between tools or from/to in-database mode to/from in-memory mode.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialized_view

 In computing, a materialized view is a database object that contains the results of a query. For example, it may be a local copy of data located remotely, or may be a subset of the rows and/or columns of a table or join result, or may be a summary using an aggregate function.

The process of setting up a materialized view is sometimes called materialization.[1] This is a form of caching the results of a query, similar to memoization of the value of a function in functional languages, and it is sometimes described as a form of precomputation.[2][3] As with other forms of precomputation, database users typically use materialized views for performance reasons, i.e. as a form of optimization.

So, I would like to create that in Alteryx, for obvious performance reasons in some use cases.

This is not a duplicate of https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/In-DB-Create-View/idi-p/157886

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

So, right now, we have two very separated products : Alteryx Designer and Alteryx Designer Cloud. But what if you want to go from Alteryx Designer on your desktop to the cloud ?

well, you will have to rewrite every single workflow because you can't publish or import your current workflow on Alteryx Designer Cloud. You cannot  export Designer Cloud workflow to Alteryx Designer on Desktop either.

This is a huge limitation on cloud implementation and sells and the ONLY product I know that's not compatible between on-premise and cloud.

Please Alteryx, this is a no-brainer situation if you want to convince your customers !

Best regards,

Simon

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

In order to perform audit-trail logging - it would be valuable to have 2 new capabilities

a) environment variables which show the workflow name; filepath; version; run start date and time; etc.   For any worklows we build, we need to have a solid audit trail to be SOX compliant, so having this detail available as a data field to write and manipulate is essential

b) A logging component.   What would be great is a component that you can drop on a workflow, not connected to anything, which is able to trap the start; end; runtime; version; etc of a workflow; and commit this to any output data format (CSV or ODBC etc).   This logging tool would need to be able to capture the full runtime, so it would need to be the last thing that runs (which means it may need to exist in parallel to the main workflow in some way).    This is not currently possible with a complex workflow with outputs, because it's not possible to identify when the entire workflow ended; or the runtime (since output tools don't have an onward connector to pass flow-of-control to catch the final end-time)

Again, both of these are necessary to meet audit requirements for workflows and prodcution-quality ETLs for BI data warehouses.

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.

The Edit menu allows you to see what your next undo/redo actions are. This is super helpful, however sometimes I decide to scrap an idea I was starting on and need to perform multiple undo's in a row. It would be great if we could see a list of actions like in the debug undo/redo stack menu then select how many steps we'd like to undo/redo.

For example, using the below actions, if I want to undo the Change Summarize Properties and also the Modify Summarize, currently I have to do that in two steps. I'd like to be able to click the Modify Summarize and have the workflow undo all commands up to and including that one.

Here's a sample of what you get if no records are read into a python tool:

Error: CReW SHA256 (4): Tool #1: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Engine_10804_3513901e8d4d4ab48a13c314a18fd1f9_\2f1b1eb4701e445775092128efe77f76\workbook.py", line 7, in <module>
    df = Alteryx.read('#1')
  File "C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\Miniconda3\envs\DesignerBaseTools_venv\lib\site-packages\ayx\export.py", line 35, in read
    return _CachedData_(debug=debug).read(incoming_connection_name, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\Miniconda3\envs\DesignerBaseTools_venv\lib\site-packages\ayx\CachedData.py", line 306, in read
    data = db.getData()
  File "C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\Miniconda3\envs\DesignerBaseTools_venv\lib\site-packages\ayx\Datafiles.py", line 500, in getData
    data = self.connection.read_nparrays()
RuntimeError: DataWrap2WrigleyDb::GoRecord: Attempt to seek past the end of the file

I've fixed this in my macro by forcing a DUMMY record into the python tool (deleting it on the back-end).  It would be much nicer to have error handling that prevents the issue.  Even as a configuration option, what to do with no input this would simplify things.  

This error condition potentially effects every python tool created.

Cheers,

Mark

Note: This idea doesn't strictly fit into any given category as it involves enabling support for something that affects numerous aspects of Alteryx's already existing spatial features.

I live in Australia. As do a large number of your users. Like me, many of those users use Alteryx to process spatial data. There is only one problem; we live on a roving continent. Every year our continent shifts ever so slightly but over time that shift becomes significant. For this reason we have our own continental system of spatial coordinate projections. It's called the Geocentric Datum of Australia or GDA.

Since 2000, the official Australian geodetic datum has been GDA94.  However, according to the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), because the coordinates of features on our maps, such as roads, buildings and property boundaries (and so on), are all based on GDA94, they do not change over time. This is why they have since adopted a new datum: GDA2020. This has now become the standard for mapping in Australia, bringing Australia’s national coordinates into line with global satellite positioning systems.

A more detailed explanation of this can be found on the ICSM's website: What is changing and why? | Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (icsm.gov.au).

Of course Alteryx supports the more global WGS84 standard, which like GDA94 is a fixed datum. But there is up to a 1.8 metre discrepancy between GDA94 (and WGS84) and GDA2020. For spatial analysis projects that don't require metre accuracy that's not a problem. But imagine you are building a bridge, plotting the lanes of a road or programming a GPS enabled tractor. That 1.8 metre discrepancy between the real world coordinates and the projection is enough to cause problems. 

And it is. Which is why we request that Alteryx include support for GDA2020 in its existing selection of spatial projections.

This will enable spatial datasets configured in GDA2020 to not require conversion and thus risk corruption or error. This includes providing the ability to configure GDA2020 as the spatial projection in the input tool and all spatial tools.

Doing so would go a long way to supporting your ever growing Australian user base and maintaining Alteryx's position as a trusted software for processing spatial data.

Hello there!

Currently the email tool has the following configuration:

It is a fairly easy tool to use - however one part that I would like to be improved is testing the SMTP settings - similar to how it is done on the Alteryx Server. It would be awesome to have a button as part of this page, that would send a test email, and return true/display to the user that the email sent correctly. This would stop the need to setup dummy data and a dummy output to test a connection before rolling the email tool out into a live environment/use-case.

I imagine something along these lines for this functionality:

Clicking test (and passing):

Clicking test (and failing):

Thanks,
TheOC

I will start off with a story. I have built a process to manage batch API requests. It's an iterative process that checks to see where the export is at by calling an API and then returning some status. It will run and wait and run and wait until the export is ready to be downloaded. However sometimes, the jobs don't finish and a status returns something like "failed" or "cancelled". When this is the case, I have my process (which is a little bit batch macro) kicks off an error message, using the nifty error message tool. After some time I noticed that it was a PAIN to go back and figure out which of my requests failed and I decided that I need to add some messaging around where this was failing, so I could do some easy auditing. So I go back into my tool and much to my chagrin, I cannot pass variables into the message section. I would expect it to have worked something like this:

"Record "+[#2]+" is not 'A'"

Can we please get a change to this. It would save a lot of time and energy if we could create a dynamic error message option.

TL;DR Please allow us to use formulas in the "If expression is true, display error message:" settings area.

We are using silent Alteryx installation and would like to package license activation within the package. We do not want to expose Alteryx license key to the users to prevent them from sharing it with someone else. Requesting to add a flag/setting to allow admins to not display license key under Options>Manage Licenses.

Related request https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Is-it-possible-to-hide-the-serial-key-...

Hi all,

Is it possible to add an option to 'Add an Image' in the settings option of Interface Designer while building Apps or macros?

Currently, we can add Group box, Link, Tab, and Label. It would be really helpful if we can add static images as well!!

This would enable a developer to add an explanatory image just as a link or label is used to communicate to end user.

I am attaching a screenshot for the reference.

Thanks in advance!!

Regards,

Shreyansh Rathod

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,