Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi UX interested parties,

Here are some ideas for you to consider:

1.  These lines are BORING and UNINFORMATIVE.  I'd like to understand (pic = 1,000 words) more when looking at a workflow.  

• A line could communicate:
  • Qty of Records
  • Size of Data
  • Is the data SORTED
    • What sort order
  • Quality of Data 

If you look at lines A, B, C in the picture above.  Nothing is communicated.  Weight of line, color of line, type of line, beginning line marker/ending line marker, these are all potential ways that we could see a picture of the data without having to get into browse everywhere to see the information.  If we hover over the data connection, even more information could appear (e.g. # of records, size of file) without having to toggle the configuration parameters.

2.  Wouldn't it be nice to not have to RUN a workflow to know last SAVED metadata (run) of  a workflow?  I'd like to open a "saved" workflow and know what to expect when I run the workflow.  Heck, how long does it take the beast to run is something that we've never seen unless we run it.

3.  I'd like to set the metadata to display SORT keys, order.  Sort1 Asc, Sort 2 Desc ....   This sort information is very helpful for the engine and I'll likely post about that thought.  As a preview, when a JOIN tool has sorted data and one of the anchors is at EOF, then why do we need to keep reading from the other anchor?  There won't be another matched record (J) anchor.  In my example above, we don't ask for the L/R outputs, so why worry about the rest of the join?

4.  Have you ever seen a map (online) that didn't display watermark information?  I think that the canvas experience should allow for a default logo (like mine above, but transparent) in the lower right corner of the canvas that is visible at all times.  Having the workflow name at the top in a tab is nice, but having it display as a watermark is handy.

5.  Once the workflow has RUN, all anchors are the same color.  How about providing GREY/White or something else on EMPTY anchors instead of the same color?  This might help newbies find issues in JOIN configuration too.

6.  If the tool has ERRORs you put a RED exclamation mark.  I despise warnings, but how about a puke colored question mark?  With conversion errors, the lines could be marked to let you know the relative quantity of conversion errors (system messages have a limit)

Just a few top of mind things to consider ....

Cheers,

Mark

Tools should not error with Zero rows, often when working with macros it is possible to have a scenario where zero rows or columns is legitimate. Some tools are fine with this and some are not. In my case the Select Tool does not allow it so I have to create a Work around with a Text Input tool.

Alteryx Server is great, but very costly.  Having the ability to install the Alteryx engine without the Designer, thus allowing you to share Workflows/Apps with users directly.  This could be licensed on a per user basis as well, but a reduced cost.

This also allows for some more advanced workflows that do not work in the Gallery.

Salesforce Input connector tool currently uses REST API.

Can we please enhance this tool to use BULK API?

Use Case:

We are sourcing about 2 million rows of opportunity data from Salesforce do to some insight analysis. This Alteryx workflow takes over an hour to run. The same dataset when pulled using a different ETL tool (Informatica) produces the dataset within 2 min! That makes a HUGE difference when you have a number of process to run in a limited amount of time. Enabling BULK API functionality on Salesforce input tool will help solve this problem.

Hello all,

I just love the DCM feature. However, you have to enable it manually in system settings after the install or the update.

I don't think there is a good reason for that and it would save time to enable it by default.

Best regards,

Simon

Hi, I was using the Image Template tool and I noticed that the icons for import and export are switched.

When using an OUTPUT tool, you can currently only output to one (1) format.  My idea is to allow for a checkbox to create a YXDB file format when you output to another format.  In many instances a copy of the CSV data in YXDB file format is needed.  Creating another output requires another tool with nearly identical information.  This is my backup copy to what I sent the customer is an example.

Cheers,

Mark

Taking inspiration how you work with Jupyter notebooks and use the notebook to show your workings,  wouldn't it be great if you could document your workflows directly on the canvas more in a notebook style.

I think this essentially can be summarised down into two features:

1) Markdown functionality in the comment tool

2) Ability to import results from IRG and  / or browse tool directly into the canvas.

I have mocked up a version of what this could look like in the screenshot below.

Overall I think it would improve the experience of documenting workflows as you can show your workings in-line while building the workflow. Plus it solves the debate around team vertical vs team horizontal as you build using both! 

Currently I find myself always wanting to replace the DateTime field with a string or visa verse.

It would be nice to have a radio button to pick whether to append the parsed field to replace the current field with the parsed field.

I understand that all you need is a select tool after, this would be a nice QoL change especially where the field may be dynamically updated.

If I understand right, currently, Alteryx only accept projection defined with WKT, but not support WKT as an input or output spatial object.http://downloads.alteryx.com/Alteryx/Help/Projection_Support.htm

As a Tableau user as well as an Alteryx user, I suggest Alteryx can support WKT (Well-known_text) as part of its spatial format,  and support output spatial object in TDE file: 1. it can output spatial object into tde file directly, as Tableau use WKT as a spatial object format in its TDE file. 2. WKT is essentially a standard string, which can lower down barrier of handling and exchanging spatial data, and make spatial data more accessible. For example, it is easier to write spatil file to Exasol databse, which support WKT as spatial object.

For your information. I am aware that FME can output spatial object directly into tde file(for example: how-to-write-spatial-data-into-tableau-with-fme ; tutorial-preparing-data-in-fme-for-tableau ), while, currently, Alteryx don't have this function. So if one have a file with spatial object (eg.postcode-string, its polygon-spatial object), it is straight forward to get a file with spatial object ready to use with FME tde file creater, whereas, in Alteryx, it output the string part only. [Currently, I am outputing a spatial file, and combine the string with the spatial file, and let Tableau to transform the spatial object to WKT for me.]

A good article demonstrated how to work around before Alteryx can help to do this inside current spatial object output. I think it shouldn't be too difficult for the Talents in Alteryx to integrate this inside Alteryx, hope it is heard by the Alteryx people.

"Flights of the World: How to map great circle routes in Tableau 10.4

A short-cut. Writing directly into a TDE

If you know that you want to use this data in Tableau (and you have the Personal or Professional Edition of Tableau Desktop), you can take a shortcut and write your routes directly into a Tableau Data Extract (TDE) file using the TableauSDK (SDK = Software Development Kit). The SDK supports several languages (C, C++, Python, etc.). We used the Python version to turn the routes created using geographiclib into a TDE.

A benefit of writing straight into a TDE is that the files are much smaller because coordinates for each route are compressed into our spatial data format as you drop them into the TDE."

Many thanks

Hope this is something the community also support

Steven

(1) I would like to have more text formatting options available in the Comment Tool, such as:

• set different format for selected words (color, bold, underline, size..)
• indenting
• bullet list or numbered list

(2) Option to remove or recolor the blue outline of the comment box. (Especially when I have a comment in a color-filled comment box, I would prefer a comment box without a dark outline.) 

(3) UX -  Add an arrow cursor to indicate resizing functionality

Here's a reason to get excited about amp!   Create a runtime setting that gets Alteryx working even faster. 

when you configure a file input you see 100 records.  Imagine the delight that after you run your workflows all input tools are automatically cached.  You run so much faster. 

now think of the absolute delight that even before you run the workflows that a configured input tool causes a background read off the input data.  Whether it is a new workflow or an opened existing flow that reading can start ahead of the time button. 

what do you think 🤔?

The CompareDictionary([A], [B]) function in Alteryx is case insensitive so it returns an "Equal" response (0) for CompareDictionary("cat","CAT").

Could we please add a either a case sensitivity parameter like the EndsWith(String, Target, caseinsensitivity) function; or create a new function that allows for both case sensitive and insensitive comparisons between strings?

Hi there,

The download tool currently does not work if the user is behind a corporate proxy setup - and the only way to download web-content is using CURL.

This is a significant impediment because this prevents almost all corporate alteryx users from being able to access this capaibilty

Could you please look into using the proxy settings that the workstation uses to access the internet in a corp env?

thank you

Sean

Hello,

  After used the new "Image Recognition Tool" a few days, I think you could improve it : 

  > by adding the dimensional constraints in front of each of the pre-trained models,

  > by adding a true tool to divide the training data correctly (in order to have an equivalent number of images for each of the labels)

  > at least, allow the tool to use black & white images (I wanted to test it on the MNIST, but the tool tells me that it necessarily needs RGB images) ?

  Question : do you in the future allow the user to choose between CPU or GPU usage ?

  In any case, thank you again for this new tool, it is certainly perfectible, but very simple to use, and I sincerely think that it will allow a greater number of people to understand the many use cases made possible thanks to image recognition.

  Thank you again

  Kévin VANCAPPEL (France ;-))

  Thank you again.

  Kévin VANCAPPEL

Instead of using the arrows, I think it would be nice to be able to drag and drop the questions to rearrange them in the Interface Designer. This would go more hand in hand with the drag and drop experience of Alteryx.

Additionally, when a lot of interface tools are on the canvas, Designer really slows down if you need to rearrange the order of the tools in the Interface Designer. I would like to see if there is any way that this can be sped up.

Thanks!

https://orc.apache.org/

Apache ORC is commonly used in the context of Hive, Presto, and AWS Athena. A common pattern for us is to use Alteryx to generate Apache Avro files, then convert them to ORC using Hive. For smaller data sizes, it would be convenient to be able to simply output data in the ORC format using Alteryx and skip the extra conversion step.

ORC supports a variety of storage options that users may wish to override from sensible Alteryx defaults. We typically use the SNAPPY compression codec.

Hello Team,

Currently, in the select tool, we have to scroll up or down to check or see the list of the fields. In case, if the user wanted to change the data type, they can scroll into the list. Like, I am working on the mid-size data, and sometimes data contain 300+ fields, if I need to change anything in the data type I have to search by scrolling up or down. 

The idea here is, If you provide a search bar under Field, it will be a great help to all, in case if anyone needs to go for some specific field, the user just types the name in the search bar and make changes quickly. The select tool is important and we used much time while working on the flow. 

Thank you,

Mayank

Our company often builds applications where we need the ability for it to dynamically update dropdowns based on a user's previous selections. 

For example: 

• A user needs to select their Server, database, and table for analysis (3 dropdowns).
• When the user selects their server, a query is run to get a list of all databases on that server. Then the database dropdown will automatically populate with this list of databases. 
• The user then makes a database selection, and a query is then run to get all tables within that database. The table dropdown will automatically populate with this list of tables. 
• The user makes their table selection, and then runs their analysis using the server, database, and table variables with values that they have selected from each dropdown.

We can do this in other programs, but unfortunately the lack of dynamic selections/dependent dropdowns is a big limitation for us when building Alteryx applications. Our current workarounds are chaining applications together, or using PyQt within the workflow. Chaining is clunky and often causes unforeseen issues when uploading to Server with errors that are non-descriptive, and using PyQt comes with Python versioning issues. 

If this interactivity can somehow be added to Alteryx applications it would be a huge upgrade to our current Alteryx processes. Any suggestions for further workarounds would also be helpful!

Thank you, 

Amanda