Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello,

My issue is very easy to solve. I want to use the generic ODBC In database for a specific base (monetdb here but it isn't important).

The connexion works just fine. However, I cannot create table because the data types are changed and does not even exist. Here is my data with some Date type :

And here the error in my data stream in give me this very interesting message  :

Error: Entrée du flux de données (2): Erreur lors de la création de la table "formation.temp1" : [MonetDB][ODBC Driver 11.31.11]Type (datetime) unknown in: "create  table "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID"
syntax error, unexpected IDENT in: ""Freight""

CREATE  TABLE "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID" float,"BusinessEntityID" float,"Comment
" float,"CreditCardApprovalCode" varchar(255),"CreditCardID" float,"CurrencyRateID" float,"CustomerID" float,"DueDate" datetime,"Freight" real,"OnlineOrderFlag" float,"OrderDate" datetime,"OrderDate_Month" varchar(255),"OrderDate_Year" float,"PurchaseOrderNumber" varchar(255),"RevisionNumber" float,"SalesOrderID" float,"SalesOrderNumber" varchar(255),"ShipDate" datetime,"ShipMethodID" float,"ShipToAddressID" float,"Status" float,"SubTotal" float,"TaxAmt" float,"TotalDue" float)

1/ My field is a date, why do you want to convert it in Datetime??

2/ Datetime is not even a usual field type in sql database (at least not supported by monetdb, vertica, postgresql, oracle, etc, etc...)... it should obviously be timestamp

Currently, this non-specific in database ODBC connexion cannot be used at all!

Alteryx Server was recently updated to allow TLS-mediated connections to the MongoDB persistence layer. This allowed us to switch off of the embedded MongoDB to a highly-available MongoDB Atlas cluster. To our surprise after the switch, when we went to edit our workflows that make use of the persistence layer's data (Server Usage Report, etc.) to hit the new Atlas cluster, we found that the MongoDB Input tool does not support TLS connections. This absolutely needs to be changed. Based on organizational constraints, Atlas is our only option for a HA persistence layer. We absolutely have to have TLS support for the MongoDB Input tool. There is no other way for us to natively query our server persistence layer in Designer. Please bring the MongoDB Input tool into alignment with the MongoDB connections that are supported by Alteryx Server.

1.  I would like the tab color/contrast of the active tab to be more prominent / discernible.  It does not really stand out. 

2.  I would like the ability to set default colors for different open workflow types -- standard workflow, macro, analytical app, so I can use color to quickly distinguish between tab dependencies or simply what is what.

3.  I would like the ability to change the color of any tab at any time (similar to Tableau Desktop, but with greater color choice).

Hello!
I am making this idea request in response to this question:
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Is-it-possible-to-enable-Performance-P...

Currently, one of my favourite settings to enable in Alteryx is the performance profiling, as i get to see exactly how much time is being used at each step, and its a quick reminder to double check those tools that take a while for optimisation. However, i have to enable this on every new workflow that i open as the setting only applies to the current workflow, and it can be frustrating executing a large workflow only to realise after waiting for it to run, that this setting was not enabled.

What i'd like to propose, is an extra set of settings within the User Settings, default tab (which is currently):

To something like:

Which would simply enable these settings as a default, when a new workflow is made. 

Let me know what you think! I think a couple of the other settings in there could see use, especially as the AMP engine develops and those who want to see all macro messages, for example.

Cheers,
TheOC

Roughly, in all versions of Alteryx Designer, you can use the Annotations tab and rename a tool.  This is awesome for execution in designer, because you can then easily search for certain tool names, better document your workflow, and see the custom tool name in the Workflow Results.

However, when log files are generated, either via email, the AlteryxGallery settings, or an AlteryxEngineCMD command, each tool is recorded using only its default name of "ToolId Toolnumber", which is not particularly descriptive and makes these log files harder to parse in the case of an error.

Having the custom names show in these log files would go a long way towards improving log readability for enterprise systems, and would be an amazing feature add/fix.  For users who prefer that the default format be shown, this could be considered as a request to ADD renames in addition to the existing format.  EG "Input Data 1" that I have renamed to "Load business Excel File" could be shown in the log as:

00:00:0.003 - ToolId 1 - Load business Excel File: 1 record was read from File Finished in 00:00:0.004

Hey gang, just another QoL suggestion from me!

Currently, when applying changes to an existing field that will take the outcome beyond the current field size, we have to use an additional Select tool to get around truncation:

The usual route here is to either a) use a Select tool beforehand to increase the field size:

Or b) create a new field and then remove the 'old' one in a Select tool afterwards, also renaming the replacement here:

Given that we could just do this in one using the Multi-Field Formula tool:

My request is pretty simple here - can the 'Change Output Type to' configuration also be added to the standard Formula tool? The ability to also update the name of the output would be brilliant as well if possible. Cheers!

Auto Field tools help optimally size and assign data types to your data for better performance but this conversion process can be memory intensive with large datasets. What if you could right-click an Auto Field tool to convert it to a standard select tool with the new data types and sizes much like the existing ability to right-click convert inputs into macro inputs or browse tools into outputs? This would eliminate the need to manually transfer the results of the Auto Field tool into a select tool for production workflows!

Add ability to lock comment boxes size, shape, position (send to back), location on the canvas. This would allow a developer to use a template when creating workflow without accidently selecting and/or adjusting these attributes. It will also allow a user to put a tool over the top of the comment box without fear of messing up the visual display of the workflow or it getting hidden underneath the comment box.

Hello,

I work for a company with circa 250K employees. We are in the process of shifting all documents over to OneDrive and I've noticed that when I have an Alteryx workflow that uses inputs stored on OneDrive the connection can be very intermittent. I use the UNC file naming protocol for my input/directory tools, but more often than not I need to run a VBA script that accesses OneDrive before Alteryx tools will connect.

There's a couple of posts on this community about this, but nothing in the ideas board. I believe the SharePoint connector is being updated for v11, but nothing for OneDrive.

I'd like there to be better integration to OneDrive for business and SharePoint Online please.

Thanks,

John.

Hi,

Due to our setup, we need to have the path defined as Environment variables, so they will point to different paths in case a user opens the WF locally or the server is running it.

The issue is that the path of dependency does not accept the windows defined variables:

Thank you!

Dear Alteryx GUI Gang,

I'll create a container and then customize the colours, margins, transparency, border and then want consistency for other containers.  It would be nice to have a format painter function (brush) to apply the format of one container to another.  This of course could be extended to other tools like comments.  There might be a desire to apply this to more tools too, but the comments and containers would be my focus as they are almost always custom configured.

Cheers,

Mark

Now : when you double click on the part of a field name text field (Formula, Filter, etc.) it selects only the word you double clicked.

Idea : It would be easier if a double click would select the entire field name with brackets for copy-pasting as an example.

As simple as the title : an In-Database Block Until Done would be a pretty nice feature to control the execution of a workflow.

Hi there,

The download tool is currently very cryptic, and difficult for most users to grasp..   This is due, at least in part, to the fact that it tries to be generic and serve all needs instead of being broken into smaller tools which fit the need.

Could we please break the download tool into:

- Input FTP tool.   This would allow you to download from FTP or SFTP sites, and work in a wizard fashion to get you to the file / files you wanted and take you through FTP authentication

- Input: Web API call.   This would be much easier if there was a wizard where you could put the API you wanted to call, and then you could add the parameters using a wizard

- Input: Web-download:   This would allow you to download frames or pages from the web.   this would be a good place to do what so many users have asked for and which Excel does natively - i.e. allow you to see the site in a wizard in a browser, and pick the elements you want to download.   Must allow for authentication and walk you through this with the wizard.

- Output; FTP put.   AS above - splitting this out makes it more sensible

There are probably other variants, and we can keep the Download tool for super-complex or bespoke uses - but if we break this down into smaller tools with simpler capabilities, we'll get a higher usage.

Thank you

Sean

We're currently using Regex and text to columns to parse raw HTML as text into the appropriate format when web scraping, when a tool to at least parse tables would be hugely beneficial.

This functionality exists within Qlik so it would be nice to have this replicated in Alteryx.

Obviously, we need to retain the ability to scrape raw HTML, but automatically parsing data using the <td>, <th> and <tr> tags would be nice.

In the following page there is a table showing the states and territories of the US:

With Qlik, you can input the URL and it will return the available tables in tabular format:

As this functionality exists elsewhere it would be nice to incorporate this into Alteryx.

The Dynamic Input will not accept inputs with different record layouts.  The "brute force" solution is to use a standard Input tool for each file separately and then combine them with a Union Tool.  The Union Tool accepts files with different record layouts and issues warnings.  Please enhance the Dynamic Input tool (or, perhaps, add a new tool) that combines the Dynamic Input functionality with a more laid-back, inclusive Union tool approach.  Thank you.

When entering a number of column names in the RegEx parse mode - please can you allow either Enter or down-arrow to move down to the next cell (standard windows convention)?

Currently Enter just exists the edit mode; and down-arrow does nothing.

cc: @Hollingsworth