Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Current State:  When a macro contains nested macros the only method that reliably works to share them is via yxi (which I fondly refer to as my wixies). 

Future State:  Allow macros published to the gallery be their own tool palette so that when I or any user connects to the server the macros are there and just work, no import, no visible install just a single set of tools that work on that server. 

Side task - also get export to yxi 

Multi-Resolution Raster format, or .mrr, is a MapInfo Pro Advanced file format that is becoming increasingly common as an output option for many software providers.  It is being used in place of .grd and .tiff file formats in some instances, because of its many advantages over most raster formats.  I would like to request that alteryx allow .mrr files to be included as input options, as it seems this trend isn't going to decrease anytime soon.

A client just asked me if there was an easy way to convert regular Containers to Control Containers - unfortunately we have to delete the old container and readd the tools into the new Control Container.

What if we could just right click on the regular Container and say "Convert to Control Container"? Or even vice versa?!

I recently ran into an issue where I had to remove my company's gallery from my Designer's Save As menu.  Unfortunately, figuring out how to do this in the UI took far longer than I anticipated, and I actually blew it away using the registry.  Eventually I found that when going to Save As, you can either remove it from the "Connecting" splash screen or you can press the gear from the Save As dialog box and remove the gallery that way, neither of which are an intuitive way to manage gallery removal.  I would advocate for adding an entry to the Advanced Options menu along with data source collections for adding/removing/modifying gallery connections.  

As this list of connection, dependency, and gallery management entries continues to grow, it may also make sense to remove it from "Advanced Options" and create a more descriptive "Data" or "Connections" menu or sub-menu.  I think it would be helpful to see aliases, in-db connections, dependencies, assets, and gallery management all grouped together within the interface.

I love that Alteryx lends itself to good workflow documentation, but I'd really like to be able to add a bit of basic formatting within my comment boxes. I tend to have one large (read: verbose) box at the top/beginning of the workflow describing the purpose of the workflow and quirks of the datasource to watch out for, and it would be easier to read these if I had some simple options like Bold, Italic, Underline, numbered list, bullet list. You know, the sorts of things you can do in basic HTML email? Those. I want them!

Right now, the List Box interface tool allows end users to select multiple options of fields for selections, filtering, and formatting/formulating. 

However, it doesn't do quite as good when a use case has over 1,000+ columns/fields. This is made even more complicated with each column/field having somewhat similar naming conventions thereby causing confusion. 

Having a search function, as made available in standard Select Tools, Join tools, and other tools that has filtering capacity, will be most helpful for developers to give maximum flexibility to end users.

Today, there is an checkbox to "Disable All Tools that Write Output" within the Runtime settings for a workflow.  Setting this option requires at least 3 clicks:

• Click on the canvas
• Click the "Runtime" tab in the Configuration pane
• Click the checkbox

Could a keyboard shortcut be added for this?  I've spoken to several users who leverage this feature and, while it is already a time saver, it seems helpful enough where a keyboard shortcut is warranted.

Toggle individual expressions on/off in the formula tool.   

On more than a few occasions I have a number of expressions in a single formula tool and find myself wanting to turn off a few or many, but not all. 

It'd be great if there was a checkbox to activate/inactivate : on/off : include/exclude : select/deselect (whatever language you like for the concept) an individual expression.

Simple as a text box.  with maybe a 'select/deselect  ALL box available incase you want to turn most off then only select a single one? 

Hi all!

Based on the title, here's some background information: SHAPLEY Values

Currently, one way of doing so is to utilize the Python tool to write out the script and install the package. However, this will require running Alteryx as an administrator in order to successfully load, test, and run the script. The problem is, a substantial number of companies do not grant such privileges to their Alteryx teams to run as administrator fully as it will always require admin credentials to log in to even open Alteryx after closing it.

I am aware that there is a macro covering SHAP but I've recently tested it and it did not work as intended, plus it covers non-categorical values as determinants only, thereby requiring a conversion of categorical variables into numeric categories or binary categories. 

It will be nice to have a built in Alteryx ML tool that does this analysis and produces a graph akin to a heat map that showcases the values like below:

By doing so, it adds more value to the ML suite and actually helps convince companies to get it.

Otherwise teams will just use Python and be done with it, leaving only Alteryx as the clean-up ETL tool. It leaves much to be desired, and can leave some teams hanging.

I hope for some consideration on this - thank you.

Hey Designer Gurus + @NicoleJ ,

Here's a picture of my canvas (running):

I'd like to be able to see COUNTS and PERCENT completion as the workflow is running.  In my case, the numbers are BIG and  they are prioritized as BACK compared with the lines.  In the case of % complete, they  obfuscate (fancy term for block) the progress of the tool.

Currently, if I want to watch the water boil, paint dry or the workflow crawl/walk/run I must change the workflow before saving it to maximize the distance between the tools.  I'd like to be able to see both the COUNTS and % complete without the added effort.  My idea is to have someone at Alteryx figure out an enhancement to this without engaging the likes of @Hollingsworth who'll devise some evil keyboard shortcut.

Cheers,

Mark

There is "update:insert if new" option for the output data tool if using an ODBC connection to write to Redshift.

This option really needs to be added to the "amazon redshift bulk loader" method of the output data tool, and the write in db tool.

Without it means you are forced to use the "Delete and append" output which is a pain because then you need to keep reinserting data that you already have, slowing down the process.

Using the ODBC connection option of the output data tool to write to Redshift is not an option as it is too slow. Trying to write 200MB of data, the workflow runs for 20 minutes without any data reaching the destination table. End up just stopping the workflow.

Please add support for Databricks' Unity Catalog

Currently, when selecting a Databricks-connection in the “Connect In-DB”-tool, and opening the “Query Builder”, only tables in the catalog named “hive_metastore” are listed. That is, Alteryx submits the following SQL query to Databricks:

Listing tables 'catalog : hive\_metastore, schemaPattern : %, tableTypes : null, tableName : %'

However, with Unity Catalog in Databricks the namespace is three-tier and there may be multiple catalogs (and not just the "hive_metastore" catalog), see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/databricks/lakehouse/data-objects#--what-is-a-catalog

I reached out to Alteryx support, which replied that you currently have a feature request for implementing this change (ID TDCB-4056) and they furthermore suggested that I post here.

Thanks in advance.

I would like to request the ability to connect to a SharePoint List to bring data from and write data to via Windows Authentication.  Currently, the only way to connect to a SharePoint List is via username/password which does not work for our current environment.  

At the moment, at least for Postgres and ODBC connections, the DCM only supports a names DSN that must be installed on each machine running Designer or Server. However, the ODBC admin function is admin only within my company, which makes DCM more trouble than it is worth to use.

Connection strings work well in the workflows, have been implemented on the gallery before, and do not require access to the ODBC admin to implement. Could DCM please be improved to support native connection strings?

Please consider adding a new setting to the Render Tool, so the users can select or deselect if an existing File should be overwritten (Otherwise throw an error, like the Output Data Tool does, when configured to create a new Sheet and that Sheet already exists)

Idea:  I need a function that given two dates, will return the number of business days between them. I need to know the # of business days between when a sales order is placed and when it ships to the customer. I'm in the US, so I would want to not count Saturdays, Sundays, and US Holidays, but I can foresee others wanting the option to change to other calendars or ignore holidays.

There are a couple of posts on this in the community, but everything I've found so far is too laborious to implement or not robust.

Hello!

I'm submiting this idea to put other products into alteryx students program, I think that we (students) should have access to study these products (not only the Intelligence Suite, but Server as well).

I recently did some extensive work on using the download tool to invoke Restful Web Services. A lot of the initial effort was around ensuring that the data being passed in the header and body for the request was as the service required. Following review of experiences on the community I used a tool called Fiddler to directly view what was being sent to identify the problems in my transformations of the data going into the Download tool. The idea is that the raw HTTP request and reply messages are available directly in Alteryx in the Results window when running a workflow, preventing the need to use another tool.

Hey Alteryx Community,

I think Alteryx uses the Tableau SDK to create tableau data extracts, TDE's. Since Tableau 10.3, there is functionality to connect to spatial files in Tableau (.shp). These shapefiles can be converted to an tableau data extract within Tableau. The tableau SDK has this functionality as well, but Alteryx does not support it yet. The suggestion is to add this functionality. See https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/sdk/en-us/SDK/tableau_sdk_samples.htm for the SDK link. 

Spatial TDE's are way smaller (3gb .shp went to 140mb TDE) and way faster.

Thanks,

Marco