Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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.

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

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.

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

In the dynamic input tool,

Where you “Read a List of Data Sources”, there should be a radio button below the “Action” field, to   

“INCLUDE FIELD OF DATA SOURCES”,

Then you’d have an output field with the isolated name from which the data was sourced. You wouldn't be required to "include full file path" then parse out the sheet the data came from. 

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

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

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

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.

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.

I usually use the comment tool by:

- dragging it on to the canvas and then

- Repositioning and expanding it to cover the tools I'd like to comment on.

What if I could select the tools I wanted to comment on and then use a key combination or double click so that the comment tool surrounds these tools for me. 

Note: Additional enhancement would be to anchor the comment to the tools selected but I see that this was dropped for consideration: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/Anchoring-comment-boxes-to-tools/idi...

In the Gallery, the File Browse tool returns the file location on the server where the file was uploaded. This allows the file to then be read in as input to a workflow.

If you need the file path of the original file location, you have to add a Text Input for the user to manually add it.

In my case (#00293302), I used a chained app to populate a list box for the user to select the Sheet Names they would like to process through the application. Unfortunately, since I was not able to capture the original file location the application errored out. This is due to the second app using the file location on the server where the file was uploaded, which is provided by the first workflow. This file location (from the Browse tool) is a temporary file location, where inputs are immediately deleted after processing.

Want to test this out? Create an application where you Output the file path from a File Browse tool.

i know.....grrr, this doesn't match your original file location!

Thank you,

Mark

I try to use the Comment tool for documentation within workflows for team members (and my future self when I have to revisit it months after I built it). It would be helpful to be able to use markdown formatting inside the tool.

This might even encourage more documentation. *fingers crossed*

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 

Hello Alteryx Devs - 

When I got to write some scripting in the formula tool, my data stream properties should be the first to be suggested once a user starts typing a letter, not the last. 

uppercase(Ad -> gives me:

DateTimeAdd

FileAddPaths

PadLeft

PadRight

ReadRegistryString

[Address]

I think we would need a dedicated R macro to ascertain the chances anyone in is going to need [ReadRegistryString] before they need a column of their own data that starts with [Ad...]

Easy fix.  Makes a big difference.  

Thanks.

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).

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.