Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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!

Where it stands now, only a file input tool can be used to pull data from Google BigQuery tables. The issue here is that the data is streamed and processed locally, meaning the power of BigQuery processing isn't actually being leveraged.

Adding BigQuery In-Database as a connection option would appeal to a wide audience. BigQuery is also standard SQL compliant with the SQL 2011 standard, so this may make for an even easier integration.

I decided to get real fancy when building a standard macro the other day. I checked the box on my macro input that made the connection optional:

 

 

It worked really well. My macro then became more complex, so I changed it to a batch macro. To my great surpise/astonishment/shock, the optional incoming connection is no longer optional:

 

The standard macro is working as expected on the left, but the batch macro is producing an error because my optional connection is requiring that something be connected to it.

 

I've been told that the code to make it optional is not there for batch macros and that this would be a product feature/improvement.

 

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).

 

 

 

Having the open / close ( expand / collapse ) button for the tool container in lhe top right corner implies that everytime a big container is expanded, to close it the user has to move the pointer to its new position, which sometimes mean scrolling / zooming out and then zooming in to locate it.

I suggest to locate that button in the top left corner by the side of the enable/disable switch or even a double click mechanism for open/close, which would enable to user to open, see what is inside the container, and close it without moving the mouse to locate the new location of the button.

 

 

Please update the Publish to Tableau Server connector tool to support Tableau's Ask Data feature. The data source must be recognized as an extract on Tableau Server in order for the Ask Data feature to work. Currently, all data source published using version 2.0 of the connector tool are recognized as a live data source. The work around is cumbersome and requires multiple copies of data sources to be created and managed.

Here is the issue I have, when you are using a Join tool and you have multiple columns that you are joining on (to the point that they don't all show in the 
Configuration window), i have a tendency to use the mouse scroll wheel to move down to see additional columns i am joining on.  The mouse scroll controls different things depending on where your cursor is.  If your cursor is over the Left or Right columns then the scroll button will change the Fields you are using to join on.  I have messed up more workflows then i care to mention due to this.  I do not think it is appropriate for the scroll wheel to effect and change the fields in the configuration window and it should only be used to scroll up and down in the configuration window.  

 

 

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*

With the continued growth of Graph Databases, it would be nice for Alteryx to creates a new tool set that would allow input/output connectors for Graph Databases like Neo4j which software tools like Pentaho and Talend already have.

 

Keith. 

Hello,

As of today, only English is available. But it's hard to convince French Customers with french language data to buy the AIS if it cannot work with their data.

Best regards,

Simon

Similar to previous ideas from @patrick_mcauliffe and @shailesh_patel - would like to request 2 things:

 

Default on Folder Picker Interface tool

The folder picker tool does not currently allow a default value - this unnecessarily adds work if users have the same value 90% of the time.

Please add a field for the default value that will show when the interface starts up

 

 

 

 

 

Similar ideas:

- Default on Date interface: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Default-Date-for-Interface-Tool/idi-p/35770

- Default on File Selector: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Default-file-location-in-file-broswer-Interf...

As an analyst in a large team, there has been occasions when multiple users are editing the same workflow resulting in duplicated efforts and overwritten work.  

This is particularly an issue with remote working when it's not so easy or instant to ask your colleagues "Are you working on X?"

Having a notification pop-up (like the MS example below) would be extremely helpful in order to know if another user is already accessing the workflow so multiple users do not end up editing the same workflow independently.

 

Added in Alteryx Version 2020.3, the Browse tool no longer shows a profile of the complete dataset (it is capped when the record data size reached 300MB).

 

My proposed solution is an optional override of the record size limit on the browse tool (which will make the profiling take longer, but actually profile the entire dataset).  I would also like a general user setting to set the default behavior of the browse tool to either be limited or unlimited.

 

Below is the newly included documentation of the Data Profiling Limit, which I'm proposing can be overridden.

 

 

Data Profiling Limit
Data Profiling in the Browse tool is capped at 300 MB. This allows you to process very large datasets faster. For each record in the incoming dataset, we process the record and add the record size to a counter. Once the counter reaches 300 MB, we stop processing records.

It is important to note that there is no specific number of records that we can process. This depends on the dataset since a record size can range from 1 byte to a few thousand bytes. This record size is different from the file size, displayed in the Results grid and Data Profiling Holistic View. The file size is generally different since it has been compressed to optimize spacing.

In other words, 300 MB of record size is not the same as 300 MB of file size.

 

 

This new tool can cause confusion when looking at the data profile (e.g. if you expect the sum to be $3 million, but the browse tool is only showing 2% of your total records in the profile tool, the profile sum may only show $60 thousand).

 

The sampled version with a cutoff of 300MB is rarely useful if you are using browse tools to get a quick sense of the variable profiles on medium sized datasets (around 1 million records) since this rarely will fit into the 300MB record size limit.

 

An example can be shown in the image below, where the dataset contains 855,085 records, but the browse tool is profiling only the first 20,338.

 

 

 

Again, being able to override this 300MB record size limit would fix the problem created in the 2020.3 change to the browse tool.

 

 

 

When creating a workflow I generally open a "TEMPLATE" first and then immediately save it to the "NEW WORKFLOW NAME".  My template includes all my preferences that aren't set naturally within the user settings and won't get RESET by them either.  It has a comment box and containers as well as logos and copyrights.  It would be nice to have ready access to this feature.  Maybe others have standards that they want applied to all users and their workflows too.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

When using the text mining tools, I have found that the behaviour of using a template only applies to documents with the same page number.

 

So in my use case I've got a PDF file with 100+ claim statements which are all laid out the same (one page per statement). When setting up the template I used one page to set the annotations, and then input this into the T anchor of the Image to Text tool. Into the D anchor of this tool is my PDF document with 100+ pages. However when examining the output I only get results for page 1.

 

On examining the JSON for the template I can see that there is reference to the template page number:

 

And playing around with a generate rows tool and formula to replace the page number with pages 1 - 100 in the JSON doesn't work. I then discovered that if I change the page number on the image input side then I get the desired results. 

 

However an improvement to the tool, as I suspect this is a common use case for the image to text tool, is to add an option in the configuration of the image to text tool to apply the same template to all pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The idea is to store credentials, login/pw in a "credential alias".

 

Then, those credential aliases can be used in :

-traditional aliases/connection

-in database aliases/connection

-hdfs aliases/connection

-API

-on user aliases for connected controllers/gallery

...etc.

 

The idea is that I only have to change the credentials once for all the connection type (on Hive, I have the in db alias, the traditional alias and even an HDFS alias using exactly the same credentials !! and I have to change all that manually).

 

We've got your metadata.  Suppose the "SELECT COLUMNT TO SPLIT" question is considered by Alteryx and this happens:

 

• A field is selected because it contains similar \W (regex for non-word characters) patterns in the data (e.g. count of delimiters in the field are roughly equal).
• The delimiter (MODE delimiter or BEST) is defaulted
• Split # of columns = MODE count + 1

If a user updates the Field/Delimiter, the metadata could suggest the right Number of columns based upon the delimiter.

 

This all belongs in the automagically idea bank.  It saves me the time of counting delimiters or trial and error counts.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

I would like to be able to use the join tool to join on inequalities.  We could join two tables, A and B on A.value is >= B.value1 AND A.value <= B.value2.  This would replicate the "between" function in SQL.  The equvalent feature in Tableau is pictured below.

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...