Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

It would be great if there was a way for the Text to Columns tool did not drop the last empty when using Split to Rows.

 

For example, if I had the data:

RecordID	String
1	1,2,3
2	1,2,
3	1,,

 

Notice that each value has two commas (representing three values per cell), and If I configure to split into rows on the comma character, what would you expect the result to be:

 

Result A:

RecordID	String
1	1
1	2
1	3
2	1
2	2
3	1
3

OR

 

Result B:

RecordID	String
1	1
1	2
1	3
2	1
2	2
2
3	1
3
3

OR

 

Result C:

RecordID	String
1	1
1	2
1	3
2	1
2	2
3	1

I would expect Result C if I selected "Skip Empty Fileds", and that is what happens if I select that option.

 

But If I do not want to skip empty fields, I would expect Result B, but what I get is Result A where the last value/field is dropped/skipped.

 

What would it take to Result B as the output from the Text to Columns tool?

A simple, very simple idea that can save a few clicks for everyone and that costs less than 1 hour of development :

Just display all the tool categories on a fresh install. There is not need at all to display only a few and that's the first thing I have to do on every fresh install.

I recently had an error in a module because an expected variable was not present coming into a formula tool.  My variable, "MONDAY" was not present and the formula MONDAY/3 failed.  The workaround was to union all days into the incoming data and things worked fine.  I would have liked to have an Excel formula like this instead:

 

IF ISERROR([Monday]/3) THEN 0 ELSE [Monday]/3 ENDIF

 

Thanks

Hello!

 

When you left click + drag across the canvas you can select multiple tools. When you hold control and do this twice, the first selection gets deselected. The suggestion is to combine these selections into one. Much like when single selecting tools and holding down control, but for multi-selecting. Just a small QoL issue. 

Selection of blue box should be added to the already selected tools

Cheers,

Marco

 

 

I have a dual monitor setup. My canvas lives on the left monitor, and I combine tool config and results on the right monitor. I've noticed that it's incredibly difficult to resize the config vs results window size. This is because you have to hover over EXACTLY the right part of the divider until the resize icon appears, as below:

 

 

The difficulty arises because the target zone, over which the cursor changes from an arrow to the resize tool, is only 1 pixel wide. If you have a high resolution screen, or a slightly fiddly mouse, it's almost impossible to successfully hover over the correct place. Please consider increasing the width of the hover zone to facilitate window resizing. I hope I've explained this adequately, please let me know if I need to amend. Thanks!

I was asked by a client @brianvigus to help him put the current date onto a daily Excel output file.  When they tried to prepend/append the date, it only would do so to the worksheet name and not to the workbook name.  I do like the ability to update the table (worksheet) name and understand their desire to update the workbook name too.

 

My solution was to create a COMPLETE PATH\FILENAME|SHEETNAME data element and use the existing option to change the entire file path.  That works.

 

 

I don't know if the solution to this idea is to update the help instructions to explain that table renames act differently than file renames or if the solution requires more functional options on append/prepend.

 

 

Thanks,

Mark

I was just thinking how nice it would be to have an IfError function like there is in Excel.  With Alteryx's design, there isn't really much need for the function.  I just ran into a case today where I thought it might be useful.  There was a function created after a crosstab that expected certain field names to exist.  I got around this by using filter, summarize, and join tools instead. 

 

It just stuck with me that it would be much easier to just say:

 

IfError([FieldThatDoesNotExist],0)

Something like this could also be used when referencing a field which has a calculation that produces an error.

 

I don't know if something like this would be completely antithetical to Alteryx's design, but there are times when it would definitely be convenient. 

With the Action Tool, if you use the "Update Value" action type, you have the ability to check the "Replace a specific string" option

 

If you use the "Update Value with Formula" action type, you no longer have the option to Replace a specific string.

 

Can't think of any reason why we should not have the ability to replace a specific string while using "Update value with formula"

 

Please can you add this in next release?

We need either a customizable view/downloadable report and or a view like the License view with license and machine and user and account elements at the first level of report.

 

The license site (licenses.alteryx.com) is a step in the right direction but needs enhancement.  Now it offers 4 different views of what must be essentially the same data source in a file or DB table(s).  The problem is each view leaves out something important or requires you to drill down and lose your broader view across users or licenses.  Also these you be downloadable to support driving automation of internal functions.

 

1. License view gives good info on a license but you can't see who is associated with the seats or the machines they have it on.  A drill down only extends the information to show the order number, the rest of the data is the same basic info on the higher leve but only specific to that one license.
   1. If Alteryx made the license view customizable to allow users to include the account, order number, User name and other associated columns then you would not need 4 nearly static views.  You would only need the one view and let people choose which elements they want and save that report configuration.  
   2. Then the if you drill down into a user or account or other element you can use admin functions specific to the element, basically the specific functionality in the current drill downs.
2. Machine view shows you the machines and users but you have to drill into a user to see their licenses and i want to see that at the first level for all users/licenses to see who has what at a glance instead of pecking my way through 10 or 20 or more machines/users. 
   1. The request above (1.1) would/could eliminate the need for this and other views and you customize the view/report you want.
3. Account view shows a list of accounts which equate to purchase contracts or orders but nothing else unless you drill into a specific order.  On drill down you see the users associated but no license info.  Additionally on drill down you can't see if the same user also is allocated to another order.  If you click on a user it lops back to the account list but specific to the user...you are kind of in a loop at that point.
   1. Again the functionality in (1.1) would solve this
4. And finally the User View offers useful info and functionality specific to the user but you can't get to license or machine info.

To extend the conversation the online license site should also be the trigger and management mechanism to add or remove licenses.  Authorized license admins should be able to add seats to an existing account/license. this would trigger a confirmation email with bill for incremental prorated amount so all seats are co-terminus and truly interchangeable so as personnel change they can be reallocated without concern for which one terms next month or next year.

 

Additionally the Admin should be able to assign or re-assign any new or existing license seat to someone after adding their user data.  the system would then trigger an email to the user with the correct key to use based on that assignment.

 

And finally, at least in this idea submission, I want to have additional fields the admins can populate for site specific information such as department, budget center, region, etc.  This would allow an admin to see the rest of the data from internal perspectives like what licenses and seats are on what budget center.  this could be downloaded to integrate with and facilitate internal accounting and budgeting systems.  A department head can see who has what and what if any spare licenses are available in his area or budget center.  In the current mixed deployment of seats across an organization and across alteryx accounts if we can tie specific licenses and seats to a department or budget center we can reallocate spare licenses in other departments to another and keep account straight internally regardless of Alteryx account management.

 

We are a small shop growing from 2 initial licenses to roughly 20 users across 4 or 5 departments with each doing their own purchases but in the mix of orders and renewals and new licenses with 2018 upgrades we now have users shotgunned across all contracts in a tangle of associations with no clear view of which department's budget to hit for which licenses and how to allocate unused licenses or how best to incrementally add seats.  recently another department wanted to get 3 licenses and ended up on another departments budget center due to the confusion of licensing allocation as we look at this.  this is just one simple example but we are already seeing other teams poach unused licenses during personnel shifts and changes and budget arguments cropping up. 

 

Being small and seeing what I see i can imagine the issues of a large shop.

 

Finally, this submission is inspired by recent interaction with Alteryx Fulfillment team due to our own internal efforts to organize and clean up our licenses and contracts.  Fulfillment helped me out by generating a report with all the columns I wanted but missed one.  The original report took about a day from request to delivery.  I asked for the additional column and they said they could do it within a few days.  This is of course a one-off.  But one of the powerful aspects of Alteryx is quick turnaround...it will really take a few minutes to add the column but will take them days to get to it.  

 

One quick turnaround partial solution to most of this request would be to provide us, the Admins, a tool to extract the full set of correlated data.  Essentially take the report FulFillment has produced for me and make it an app or site feature that provides downloadable output.  We Admins download it and then add our own site specific columns like department and such and at least see and manage the licenses and seats from our own customized reporting.  When and if you do enhance per the request as a whole this could be kept or sunset according to what users want at the time. I expect this partial solution could be implemented very quickly and for very low cost.

 

 

I have used the SharePoint List Connectors with our SharePoint 2010 (on prem) instance for some time now. It works great and has become invaluable. Unfortunately, I have been told that these connectors do not work with a Cloud instance or an instance that is not on prem. We need this capability since Microsoft is pushing coporations to move to the cloud instance and there is talk that on-prem may not be available past the 2016 version that is coming soon. Many companies including mine have either completed or are close to completing a full migration which has rendered the current SharePoint Connectors useless. While this is the most important part, another piece that is missing is a SharePoint Document Library connector (similar to the Amazon S3 Download/Upload). Currently I must use the UNC path to my SharePoint folders and an easier more reliable way to save files out to OneDrive and SharePoint Online would be very beneficial.

Goal: My goals is to pull Marketo Lead Data via the Marketo Input SOAP API Connector and have specificied only 3 columns to pull for 1 day. 

Issue: It appears that the Marketo Input SOAP API Connector needs to go through all 500 + columns of lead object data before it filters out the specific request I indicated.  What this means is that to process 1 day of lead data for 3 columns of data, it takes 45 minutes plus and not ideal.

Client Services indicated that there is a limitation with the Marketo SOAP API tool and it would be best to utilize the Download tool and build a custom connection to the CRM System (Microsoft Dynamics) to get a predefined list of Lead IDs and then use that as a filter via the Marketo Input SOAP API connector. 

Request:
1.  Add Microsoft Dynamics Connector
2.  Try to innovate a better Marketo Service Connector to just grab the defined fields as opposed to go through the entire processing for all records to only filter back down to. 

Eric  

It would be great if we could select default settings for containers, so that when they are added they could be automatically set to narrow margins and gray background (or whatever). (PS I'm going to add another idea regarding idea categories, because "tools" and "designer" aren't available categories, but that seems like the best place for this idea).

When looking at a complex canvas - my first instinct is to group this into sub-modules (e.g. "/load Data"; "clean data") to make this simpler to understand.

 

We mostly do this through the use of Containers.

However - it would be more useful if you could then take an entire container and convert this to a macro.    This would be very similar to the way that Visual Studio allows you to take a block of code and convert it to a sub-procedure.

 

This would be a super-quick way to allow people to make canvasses more maintainable and easier to understand and test!

 

Thank you 

Sean

I have often thought it would be nice to have a 'predicted run time' for a module calculated.

An adequate prediction might be the complete run time last time the module ran.  Then, in combination with a counter of how long a module has been running so far, we’d be well armed to estimate whether to go get a cup of coffee or not.

You can call me new school, but when I browse for inputs etc. in Alteryx, they are the old school windows interface where I have to hunt and peck through the file directory.  Can you make it so we can use the newer interface with so I can type in my location and navigate a bit easier?

It would be great if the mapping allowed point themes to be bi-variate, i.e. you could change the size of a point at the same time as adjusting its colour to show two variables on the map at once, relative to each other.

Chris

Add a tool to the right-click menu that would place all currently selected tools into a container.

It would be good to be able to fix pie chart colours (either automatically of manually), so that when building a report, categories are given the same colour throughout the report across multiple pie charts.  Currently, if the number of categories being shown varies, there is no way to manually align the colours (In the Bar Chart type there is a Style Mode for the Series where you can use a formula to assign a colour based on a criteria such as the name, but not for pie charts).

 

I would like to be able to pause a module A, run module B then restart A at a later time.