Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Pardon the length of this post, but I have been working with Alteryx since version 2.0 (11 years) and have been accumulating a wish list ever since.  Some of these suggestions have been made in the past but have yet to be embraced.  This is the first post for the first 'idea' but, as I said, this is a wish list that has grown since I was first introduced to Alteryx. More posts will follow.

 

I will break this into sections to hopefully make the suggestions easier to categorize and digest.

 

Application interface - Since I was introduce to Alteryx, the application interface (what is presented to users) has remained rather stagnant and, with the rumored push to adopt HTML as a replacement for pcxml, could benefit from the following additional settings. I suggest these based on the fact that dot Net classes for interface controls are readily available in Windows which allow for manipulation of each of the controls attributes.

 

1. The ability to set 'style' attributes for each of the interface tools in the application interface (font-family, font-style, font-size, font-weight, color, etc. This could be presented to the developer as an additional (perhaps optional button) in the Configuration panel for each interface tool as below:

These settings would be specific to the type of interface tool and to how the individual tool would layout and/or be styled relative to the application interface window. One layout option, applicable to most interface tools, would be where the label would be relative to the object itself (top, bottom, left, right). The CSS could be stored in and interpreted from the XML of the yxwz file referencing the ToolID of the Node in a section of the XML hierarchy called <CSS> or something standard.  An option to alter the default CSS could be displayed with a radio button control so that if not selected, the tool would fallback to the default system CSS of the tool.  This default could also be set in System settings so that a consistent interface could be defined across the enterprise.

 

2. Moving to the actual window that displays when the application is opened, a lot of the same concepts could be applied to the Interface Designer pane.

Attributes that could be set could include position on screen when opened, width and height of the window, and all the attributes of a dot Net form.  The same radio button strategy used for individual interface tools could be employed to use or not use system defaults.

 

3. In the UI, it would be nice if there was additional flexibility in how the interface tools could be laid out.  Along with the relative position of labels for each control, being able to layout controls horizontally as well as vertically would allow for a more organized interface.

 The Radio buttons would work as normal with the Text Box controls inside each Radio button and only displaying when the button is selected.

 

I realize a lot of the current development in Alteryx is focused on the new Alteryx Connect and being able to attach to more data files and services. But, if there is still also a concerted effort to move from what could be considered a legacy proprietary mark up language, pcxml, to a more robust and universally accepted mark up, html and css, then, in my humble opinion, expanding the options for developers to design more user friendly and customizable applications to a standard 'style' across the enterprise, both on the desktop and in the gallery, is a worthy endeavor.

 

Thanks for your attention.  More to follow.

 

Dan

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

Add in-database tools for SAP HANA.

Please star that idea so we can prioritize this request accordingly

Alteryx is unlike many BI tools in the sense that it joins NULL. It is difficult to think of another platform that has this behaviour. Either people know about this and work around it or they don't and their joins are a ticking time bomb. Please add a check box to the Join and Join Multiple tools to allow or prevent joining NULL. This will serve to remove the need for workarounds as well as educate users about this default behaviour.

(originally raised as discussion : https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Input-Data-Tool-Record-Limit-control/td-p/58718)

 

Hi all,

 

When using a record limit on a database query - the actual query being executed on the server depends very much on the connection type (Native SQL; OleDB; and ODBC).    However, for all 3 of these, it seems that the record limit is being enacted on the client side, not on the server.   What I mean by this is that when I take the exact queries that are being run by Alteryx on the server (by looking at a SQL Profile trace on the server), and run these in a query window, you can see that the row-limit is not occurring in SQL, but in Alteryx.

(to test this, I ran several queries with and without the record limit; profiled them using SQL profiler; and the profile trace was identical either way)

 

Aside from putting "Select top(100) from..." in all the queries that that we create,  or using in-DB queries for every simple query - could we instead have an option to force the row limitation down to the server on a regular InputData tool, so that we can take advantage of the server's ability to optimize?

 

Thank you

Sean

 

The guide line of Shape File is below. They recommend that you use only letters and numbers.

 

"Spaces and certain characters are not supported in field names. Special characters include hyphens such as in x-coordinate and y-coordinate; parentheses; brackets; and symbols such as $, %, and #. Essentially, eliminate anything that is not alphanumeric or an underscore."

https://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/manage-data/tables/fundamentals-of-adding-and-deleting-f...

 

But many GIS tools can read and write 2 byte field name at Shape File.

(e.g. QGIS https://qgis.org/en/site/index.html)

And Esri Japan says Shape file can use 2 byte field name.

https://www.esrij.com/gis-guide/esri-dataformat/shapefile/

 

We want to use 2 byte field name at Shape File on Alteryx Designer.

(e.g. UTF-8 , Shift-JIS )

 

 

Thanks,

Kajitani

 

When the append tool detects no records in the source, it throws a warning. I would like to have the ability to supress this warning. In general, all tools should have similar warning/error controls.

In Alteryx enable connections to Oracle Databases that are configured to use External Authentication.

This should allow Alteryx workflows to connect to Oracle databases using different authentication mechanisms, e.g. Kerberos.

 

Please see this discussion for some analysis on what would be required in Alteryx to support Oracle Database External Authentication:

• https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Oracle-Kerberos-based-Autheticataion-W...

 

Essentially this would involve Alteryx allowing users to specify that a connection to an Oracle database will utilize external authentication.

Then when connecting to an Oracle database with external authentication, Alteryx would pass the relevant parameter to Oracle to indicate external authentication is required (and Alteryx would not pass user name and password info). Then authentication with the Oracle database would be controlled by the external authentication configuration on the computer running Alteryx.

 

For more information on Oracle Database External Authentication see:

• https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/dbseg/configuring-authentication.html#...

Hi,

        I would like to have something similiar to in SSIS called as Sequence Container implemented in Alteryx. A sequence container would ensure that the process flows in a particular order. Lets say I would like to read 3 different files having different schema each and I want to read/validated it in particular order. I don't see any tool that would help me do this.

 

I would like to see more files types supported to be able to be dragged from a folder onto a workflow. More precisely a .txt and a .dat file. This will greatly help my team and I do be able to analyze new and unknown data files that we receive on a daily basis.  

 

 

Thank you. 

My specific use case relates to writing to AWS but am sure there are many other use cases for federated user session token support.

 

Specifically, using the S3 Upload tool or Athena Bulk Write (via SIMBA and Athena ODBC), the configuration works when using a IAM user, access key, and secret access key but when using a federated user via Okta there is no option to enter the session token and authentication fails.

Alteryx desktop should support federated users' session tokens.

It would be great to see the R tool updated with the same interface as the Python tool to reduce the need to rerun the workflow when testing.

Add the option to flip comment boxes, so they can be read down-up, instead of left-right... (see below in red, how it looks and how it could be). 

 

                                 

I would love to see a detailed change log to help when I encounter issues after upgrading from one version to the next. For concrete examples, I've come across these issues recently:

1) Files saved to %TEMP% were displayed to the end user in the 10.0 but not 10.1 when running in the gallery. 

2) The cross tab in 10.1 would run with a warning if you had column heading of "p_d" and "p d" where the space in the latter item is changed to a _ and then one of them is renamed with a 2 at the end ("p_d" and "p_d2").  In 10.5 you now get a warning and an error and the workflow stops. I've attached a sample workflow.

 

I'm all for bugs getting fixed and the improvements not always being backwards compatible, but I struggle with some of these when I can't reference a detailed change log. For some context, I've also attached a change log from some other software I used in a previous life. Anytime that a change in coding could affect past results, there was a note in the change log to identify these changes to the end user.

Currently, the default location for autosaved files is "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Alteryx\Autosave".  It would be nice to be able to customize, the same way you can for the working directory.

This should be a simple addition:

 

In the same way that many default tools automatically generate annotations when they are dropped into the workflow, or their configurations are modified, there should be a way to add custom annotations for custom made macros. 

 

Thanks!

Hello,

I think it would be extremely useful to have a switch connector available in Alteryx. What I mean by a switch connector is a connecting line with an on/off state that will block the data stream through it when off. Something like below:


Switch Connector in an "Off" state

This would be extremely useful when you only want data to flow down some of the paths. In the example above, I might turn the switch connector to off because I want to see the Summarize results without outputting to a document.

The current methods for having a path/set of tools present but unused are insufficient for my needs. The two methods I and Alteryx support were able to find were:

It would be great if you could create default settings for the Tool Containers. As workflows become larger, I use containers a lot. But once I have 10-15 containers, I have to set all of them to have a Transparency of 1 and a margin of None. While the changes don't take long to make, it would be nice if they could be preset.

I know there's the download but have a look at that topic, the easiest solution so far is to use an external API with import.io.

 

I'm coming from the excel world where you input a url in Powerquery, it scans the page, identify the tables in it, ask you which one you want to retrieve and get it for you. This takes a copy and paste and 2 clics.

Wouldn't it be gfreat to have something similar in Altery?

 

Now if it also supported authentication you'd be my heroes 😉

 

http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Extract-a-table-from-Wikipedia/m-p/14531/highlight/fals...

 

Thanks

 

Tibo