Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I often need to concatenate and sort strings that are on the same row.. Currently, the only way to do this in Alteryx is by transposing each string onto a separate row, sorting the rows, then summarising them back together.

I would love a new function in the Formula tool to concatenate strings. This function could allow you to choose a sort order (or no sort), and allow you to choose the concatenation separator

Concatenate("SortAscending",",",[Field1],[Field2],...)

Would love to see an option to disable a specific Output tool (rather than the global "Disable All Tools that Write Output" option). I'm envisioning the inverse of the Email tool, where there is a checkbox to enable Email... rather, the Output tool could have a check box that would disable that output (and ONLY that output), similar/consistent with the "Disable All Tools" function. A "Disable This Output" check box. The benefits would be a quick way to make sure not to overwrite something in one output (but still getting all the good content in all the other outputs) rather than having to go through the multiple clicks of adding to a container and then disabling the container. Could have benefits for connecting with Action tools/interface toggles as well. It would likely need to contain the same/similar formatting in Designer to indicate it has been disabled, though maybe a slightly different color so you could tell it was disabled differently? 

(On a similar vein, would love to take this opportunity to bring up my favorite idea-that-has-not-been-implemented-yet-that-would-love-your-vote-and-attention, implementing a Warning that outputs are disabled when posting to Gallery...)

Cheers!

NJ

 The Download tool is so much more than Downloads. Think about the situation where you are using the Download tool to upload invoices and try explaining that to co-workers. "Oh yes - I'm going to implement the API to upload the invoices using the Alteryx download tool..." Could we call it the Curl tool or something?

Hi team, Can I have dropdown for Action tool link to container?

a: Check to disable, uncheck to enable

b. Check to enable, uncheck to disable

it was very confuse for me when i want to do a reverse way. it is good to if it able to apply to other interface.

In working with a user who was having issues with workflows hanging, I found that the ‘Select Records’ tool seems to requires an inordinate amount of CPU Utilization.  To fix this, I rewrote the ‘Select Records’ macro to avoid using the ‘Dynamic Replace’ Tool.  What I found is that this not only significantly lowered CPU usage, but also runtime.

Hi,

Can we please make the TS Model Factory customisable to both ARIMA and ETS? I understand that currently it is using auto.arima for R, it would be nice to add the option to customise p,q,P and Q.

Thank you.

A connector tool for the GSuit API that would enable us to import email contents, attachments, and other Google apps data into Alteryx.

(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

After we change to a new type, the Forced option should be appear in the new type.

screenshot below is example, i change to V_string but the forced option is still in double.

it very annoying to change via 2 select tool or edit in xml

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 Formula Tool does a good job of autocompleting expressions (for example an open square bracket will show you variables in your dataset), as well as syntax highlighting (coloring variables, keywords, strings, etc).

I propose having this feature available in all tools that use the expression editor, particularly common ones such as the Multi-Row Formula Tool and the Multi-Field Formula Tool.

This parity across tools would provide a more consistent experience for the user and increase one's productivity using these tools. It's incredibly helpful for beginners and seasoned Alteryx users alike and should be available wherever possible.

It would be easy if there is an alteryx tool or in the input tool a configuration  to put an excel password and it opens the file to use it on a workflow.

It would be really helpful to have the ability to read in a Header from an Excel file as part of the Excel file.  I am not referring to column names but the actual Header on the file as this can contain important info to be appended to the data.  This could be an additional checkbox in the Input tool for excel files to read in the header and append to the data as a field.

Currently, a workaround process to do this is to make a copy of the xlsx file and rename as file.zip.  Then unzip the xlsx file and open the sheets as xml files where the headerFooter child element is read in.  Then the header info is appended to the Excel data file which is read in separately in another input tool. 

Would be much more efficient if this was simply a checkbox in the Input Data interface and the Header read in with the data.

Please have the option to place Calendar tool side by side in the Interface Designer. Currently they are only allowed to be placed vertically i.e. on top of each other. By placing the calendars side by side, the interface will look more organized and intuitive to the user. This is particularly useful when there is a need for a companion calendar tool. For example, allowing user to pull data between a date range. In this situation, arranging Date1 and Date2 side by side will be intuitive than placing them vertically.

Adding "Lightning Bolt" connectors to the standard workflow tools to allow dynamic automation of the settings would be a game changer. I believe that this would enable us to create universally dynamic and adaptive workflows which could be used as drop in solutions for most datasets. This would turn the standard tools into a dynamic ones and dramatically reduce the tool count to accomplish dynamic tasks, and make complex workflows much easier to internalize. Making standard workflow tools more dynamic would allow us to easily dynamically incorporate conditional tests / values / fieldname selections / bypass / etc into tools like detour / filter / formula / unique / transpose / crosstab / summarize / Outputs / etc. I would also like to see the ability to utilize a bool field to bypass any given tool in a workflow. That way we could do things like conditionally bypass an entire formula tool which would dramatically simplify complex formula construction, turn on and off inputs / outputs, simplify error avoidance, etc.

In order to build complex dynamic conditional workflows with the current tool capabilities, most of us are forced to use custom macros (often a multitude of workflow specific ones as well), constantly add and remove formula created fields for message relay, and create complex multi-routings / tests / unions in a standard workflow with large numbers of tools and containers. This hides many of our tasks within short-term use fields / custom macros and it makes the rest of our workflows voluminous and less intuitive.

On the User Interface side, I recommend a simple approach. Next to the standard tool setting there should be a dynamic input option which allows you to select the source field in the lightning bolt connector. Next to that, there should be an icon that can be clicked on to pop up a short text description and a basic screen shot of data in the correct format for dynamic input. I would also like to see a check box at the bottom for manual tool "bypass" which can also be dynamically controlled. (This would especially be helpful on outputs, but it would also be helpful to allow formulas and filters to be kept in place for future use even when they should not currently be used) Turned off tools could be highlighted in a red background or something.

This would be useful for anyone creating dynamic and adaptive workflows, but it would especially expand Alteryx Designer's capability to attract more custom software developers like me.  It would dramatically reduce the need for a large number of complex workflow specific macros that clutter our systems. Users that find the traditional workflow tool approach easier for them could easily use the tools as normal by simply using the standard manual settings. Advanced users could simplify the creation of universally dynamic and self adaptive workflows.

At the moment, we use ODBC driver to connect with Dremio.  However, we have experienced that this connection fail when connect with Tableau until a native connector has been built.  

Do you think Alteryx can work with Dremio on building a connector for stable connection?  Thank you.

It would be ever so helpful and save a couple extra steps if a count distinct option could be added to the crosstab tool.  Seems like a slam dunk since plain ole 'count' is already a choice.

As a best practice, I label a Control Parameter with the exact field name that I want to map to in the workflow. This takes any guesswork out of maintenance down the road. I want the macro questions to automap the labels to field names, just like a Join tool automaps the right side to the left when a field name is chosen from the left side drop down.

I get a lot of requests to replicate the Excel Table format into Alteryx output. When I use Reporting-Table tool, I have option to choose border, give color and size. No dotted border format or any other border formats which excel offers.