Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The email tool, such a great tool!  And such a minefield.  Both of the problems below could and maybe should be remedied on the SMTP side, but that's applying a pretty broad brush for a budding Alteryx community at a big company.  Read on!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

What I said the first time I ran the email tool without testing it first.

1. Can I get a thumbs up if you ever connected a datasource directly to an email tool thinking "this is how I attach my data to the email" and instead sent hundreds... or millions of emails?  Oops.  Alteryx, what if you put an expected limit as is done with the append tool.  "Warn or Error if sending more than "n" emails."  (super cool if it could detect more than "n" emails to the same address, but not holding my breath).

2. make spoofing harder, super useful but... well my company frowns on this kind of thing.

When viewing results of a workflow that has Errors, could we add External error resolution data if the user clicks on the error message?  Like browse everywhere it could lookup the error in help and in community posts.  

cheers,

 mark

Please support GZIP files in the input tool for both Designer and Server.

I get several large .gz files every day containing our streaming server logs. I need to parse and import these using Alteryx (we currently use Sawmill). Extracting each of these files would take a huge amount of space and time.

This was previously requested and marked as "now available", but what is available only addressed a small part of the request. First, that request was for both ZIP and GZIP. What is now available is only ZIP. Second, it requested both input and output, what is now available is input only. Third, while not explicitly stated in the request, it needs to function in Alteryx Server in order to be scheduled on a daily basis.

While challenge 41 was fun to calculate weekdays between 2 dates, there should be a formula similar to networkdays in excel to do the same function

As I previously mentioned here, I think that CReW (Alteryx) Runner could hugely benefit from additional enhancements and documentation that would be made for it, especially by adapting certain functionalities found in AlteryxEngineCmd.exe to AlteryxRunner.exe.

Enhancements

Encoding

As you might have already noticed while using the Alteryx Runner (also documented in this page), the AlteryxRunner.exe executable that is being used by Alteryx Runner does not produce the log file in UTF-16 (default Alteryx log output encoding) or UTF-8 encoding.

Therefore, if there exists a tool in your workflow that could produce a message that includes characters that are not supported by the limited Latin code pages (not including Extended Latin) or only supported by UTF-8 / UTF-16 code pages (same applies to workflow/analytic app name, input file names, output file names and directory names), you will notice that the output log is cut off exactly at that character, even if you use an installer such as this, which modifies the input read options of the Read Results section in the Run Command tool in the macro to read the log file produced by the AlteryxRunner.exe in a UTF-8 encoding.

This limits the way in which users can name their files, directories and workflow names, produce custom messages, or render the Runner tool unusable in certain languages.

As the output encoding settings are directly stored in the AlteryxRunner executable, this is unfortunately not an option that can be changed by the end user and requires direct modification to the AlteryxRunner.exe executable file directly from Alteryx development team.

While not being sure if AlteryxRunner.exe is capable of executing workflows or analytic apps that contain characters in their names or their directory names only supported by Extended Latin / UTF-8 / UTF-16 code pages, I would expect that support to be also added in case it's not already there.

Parameters (Command Line Arguments)

- While trying to find if AlteryxRunner.exe supports any command line arguments, I noticed that it is not possible to run an analytic app with custom values (or even if there is, there's no documentation for it, something I have written about below) via AlteryxRunner.exe, so it would be great to be able to run a YXWZ file with custom values (either using an XML file generated while the workflow is running or a "raw xml data stream with no quotation marks or line feeds" provided in the Runner tool as a new option (a text box for XML File Full Path and another one for Raw XML Data Stream toggled by two radio buttons in a check box group named This workflow is an analytic app) added to the interface of the Runner tool in addition to the workflow full path, already included as a text box interface tool). This would save the users from having to generate an analytic app from a template analytic app (at least in some cases where no advanced modifications to the workflow XML would be necessary) just to be able to change the app values stored in the app.

As already specified in the Encoding section above, I would also expect (at least) the XML file (even if not Raw XML Data Stream) to be able to be read in using UTF-8 encoding.

- I think that users should also be able to specify whether to run a workflow or analytic app using E1 or AMP (overriding the workflow settings), just like in the executable AlteryxEngineCmd.exe. In addition to this, if the AMP flag is passed, there should also be an option (or a 3rd option in addition to E1 and AMP) to pass an Engine Compatibility Mode flag.

- As a final addition, I believe it should also be possible to optionally specify the Memory Limit if desired using an additional flag.

I also think that the two last features should also be added to AlteryxEngineCmd.exe, which could benefit from additional enhancements including but not limited to these suggested in this idea post.

Documentation

Parameters

As you might have noticed while reading the two documentations Run Workflows by Command Line and Runner Tool, while there is an advanced documentation on the use of AlteryxEngineCmd.exe, only the use of the Runner Tool itself is documented and not AlteryxRunner.exe. Some of the enhancement requests here are directly a result of this situation (these features could already exist in AlteryxRunner.exe but we would not be aware of it if these were not documented). While such a documentation would not be needed by the Alteryx Designer users (as those arguments could be passed by the choices users make in the macro interface), it might help better understand the capabilities of the executable that makes it possible for a macro such as Alteryx Runner to exist in the first place.

It would be great if it were easier to add a comment tool to the canvas. As I think about what my workflows are lacking, it's good documentation. My biggest hurdle...is myself. I am simply too lazy to stop what I'm doing and add comment tools. What if you could either 1) double click on the canvas and it brings in a comment tool where I can start writing comments or 2) add a Keyboard short cut in order to add a comment tool (control + shift + C perhaps)? Either of these would help me build better documented workflows.

It would be great if we could set the default size of the window presented to the user upon running an Analytic App. Better yet, the option to also have it be dynamically sized (auto-size to the number of input fields required).

The Tableau Hyper API supports regular SQL queries, see https://help.tableau.com/current/api/hyper_api/en-us/reference/sql/index.html and https://help.tableau.com/current/api/hyper_api/en-us/docs/hyper_api_reference.html for more information. Being able to use the In-database tools for querying Hyper would let us take advantage of Hyper's internal optimizations just like other databases.

Tableau's Hyper file structure can store multiple tables and the published Hyper API exposes a SQL interface. Therefore instead of supporting the standard file-based interface (like text, Excel, etc.) for connecting to Hyper files how about supporting the database server interface used for MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc. so we can select the schema, tables, fields, or even write SQL?

Two related ideas:

Supporting alternative schema & table names: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Input-tool-Support-more-than-Extract-Extract...

Supporting multiple table extracts: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Input-tool-support-multiple-table-extracts-f... to support multiple table extracts for the Input

Jonathan

There are quite a few instances reported in my ognization that user terminates the intallation process since it takes more than one hour and user tends to believe that the intallation process is somehow "failing". So they terminate the installation and try to install again.

A kind reminding message such as "This will approximatly take one hour, and you can enjoy your coffee break" something like that would definetely help.

Please kindly consider.

With the amount of users that use the publish to tableau server macros to automate workflows into Tableau, I think its about time we had a native tool that publishes to Tableau instead of the rather painful exercise of figuring out which version of the macro we are using and what version of Tableau Server we are publishing to. The current process is not efficient and frustrating when the server changes on both the Tableau and Alteryx side.

As of 2019.4+, Alteryx is now leveraging the Tableau Hyper API in order to output .Hyper files. Unfortunately, our hardware is not compatible with the Tableau Hyper API. It would be great if Alteryx could allow a best of both worlds in that they use the new Tableau Hyper API when possible but revert back to the old method (pre 2019.4) when the machine's hardware doesn't support the new Tableau Hyper API. Thanks!

My friend @jdunkerley79 posted a terse idea:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/FieldName-constant-in-Generate-Rows-Tools-an...  it is inactive, but I want to extend his thoughts.

Rephrasing his idea as mine:  The tool defaults the expressions to use [RowCount].  If you should either "Update Existing Field" or change the "Create New Field" the default expressions MUST be updated manually.  Please update the expressions to make use of the new field.

Well, that doesn't always work!  Often it will.  But if you change the TYPE to date, it certainly won't.  In fact, I see many questions about joining from within a DATE  RANGE and the technique to build date rows from the range requires the use of DateTimeAdd().  Wouldn't it be nice (like your sample workflows) to modify the default expression based on the change of data type?  I think so.

If we were thinking easy.  Suppose you could have a RANGE function (dates or numerics) where you simply selected the from, to fields and gave the user the option to select the units.  Now the tool auto-configures itself to create all of the "days" between the from and to dates or "1.0" and it creates all unit values between the two numeric amounts.

These would be "Alteryx" worthy enhancements in my opinion.

Cheers,

Mark

I know that the container title/label should or can be short, and as much descriptive as possible. Also, adding extra comments inside the box helps to a more detailed explanation on regards what process is run inside the container. Visually, if I collapse the container, the "Short" title given can't be of much help.

Could it be possible to enhance the "caption" for the "Container" title? I mean to allow to type 2, 3 or more lines of text?. This will make the Container title more descriptive and visually will allow to have the containers collapsed but with a reasonable amount of text that describe (as much as possible) what happens inside the container.

At the moment, If I type certain amount of text, the container expands according to the length of the text 

Below is the typical container Title 

Below is the current situation if a person would like to give a bit of more description in the "Container" header (The container expands)

An dream would be to have the workflow with all containers collapsed and with titles that tell you what they do (see image below)

Have External Tables in Snowflake be accessible in the Visual Query Builder.

Current state: External tables in the Snowflake DBMS are not available in the "visual query builder" tab of the green input tool. These tables are only available in the "Tables" tab.

Hello,

It appears that Alteryx does not accept .svg (or other vector image format) for icons (I think to custom macro icons), image in comment, etc...

I think that would be a great idea, especially to manage web integration and support of different resolutions.
here an example of a svg logo I made :


As you can see you can zoom in/out without loose quality.

Can we have an option to save a workflow in a prior version for backward compatibility? I think Tableau offers this functionality.

Example:

If I have 2019.4.8 and a colleague has 2019.1.x, I cannot share my workflows because my colleague will receive a notice that the workflow was built in a newer version. I want to be able to save my workflow in 2019.1.x and send to my colleague.

This is predicated on the workflow not containing any tools/features not present in the older version. In that case, give me a warning about the specific tools/features that are not backward compatible. Thank you.