Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello all,

We all love pretty much the in-memory multi-row formula tool. Easy to use, etc. However, the indb counterpart does not exist.

I see that as a wizard that would generate windowing functions like LEAD or LAG
https://mode.com/sql-tutorial/sql-window-functions/

Best regards,

Simon

Hello!

I am just making a quick suggestion, specifically for the Formula tool within Alteryx.

Often when I am working on a larger workflow - I will end up optimising the workflow towards the end. I typically end up removing unnecessary tools, fields, and rethinking my logic.

Much of this optimisation, is also merging formula tools where possible. For instance, if I have 3 formulas - its much cleaner (and I would suspect faster) to have these all within one tool. For instance, a scaled down example:

to this:

This requires a lot of copy and paste - especially if the formulas/column names are long - this can be two copy and pastes, and waiting for tools to load between them, per formula (i do appreciate, this sounds an incredibly small problem to have, but on what I would consider a large workflow, a tool loading can actually take a couple of seconds - and this could burn some time. Additionally, there's always potential problems when it comes to copy/pasting or retyping with errors).

My proposed solution to this, is the ability to drag a formula onto another - very similar to dragging a tool onto a connection. This integration would look like:

Drag to the first formula:

Release:

Formula has been appended to the formula tool:

I think this will help people visually optimise their workflows!

Cheers,
TheOC

I dont know if it is asking too much, but here it is 😅

A lot of times when i develop Analytic Apps for business users, they ask me if they can run the app locally without Alteryx Designer installed. For business users it seems to make sense that the developer need to have Alteryx Designer licensed and installed, but also that after the app is developed, it would make sense and be great to be able to be able to run it without Alteryx Designer installed. And i agree with them!

I know that using the Server is the way to go in these situations, but not every company has this possibility. So, the idea is to have some non paid way to let business users from a company that already have Alteryx Designer licenses to be able to run just Analytic Apps locally, without Alteryx Designer installed on their local machines/and if the company does not have Alteryx Server yet.

Here are some previous discussions corroborating with this doubt/necessity:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Analytic-Apps-for-a-Nonuser/td-p/78152...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/App-Design-for-External-Users/td-p/340...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Best-way-to-share-Alteryx-workflow-wit...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/How-can-I-share-a-workflow-to-a-non-Al...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/General-Discussions/Where-to-save-an-analytics-app-for-non-alteryx-...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Does-everybody-that-use-my-Alteryx-App...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Running-a-workflow-locally-via-develop...

Thanks!

Hello all,

According to wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_database

An embedded database system is a database management system (DBMS) which is tightly integrated with an application software; it is embedded in the application.

It's often like a single file/dll that you can use inside an application without the user having to connect (or at least to configure it) to it (it's all done inside the application). So, it's widely portable.


Why it does matter ?

As of today, there is not a single example of in database workflow because all the supported databases need the user to:

1/install an odbc driver (most of time, he won't have the rights to do so)

2/configure an odbc connection (sometimes, he doesn't have the rights to)

3/configure a connection on Alteryx (ok, he can)
So it requires IT action, which can be pretty long (in ùany organization, it requires several weeks !!). And even with all of that,the users must be granted privilege to access database and the customer need to develop its own examples and write its own specific documentation.

Well, this is not efficient.

What I suggest is Alteryx to use one of embedded database for training support/one tool examples. SQLlite seems good, maybe a more analytics oriented (like DuckDB ) would be more efficient.
The requirement are, I think, the following :
-OpenSource and free
-Fast
-SQL compliant
-With a bulk load ability

Best regards,

Simon

Lots of use cases involve concatenating some values based on group by clauses within the Summarize tool.

It will be great to have the option to Concatenate Unique as an aggregation method, so the results will have just one appearance for each value in the results.

Plus, having the option to get the chance to have them sorted or not will be awesome.

hello,

version 2021.4 does not allow workflows to run if any of their input files are open.... would be great to have an option for the input tool that switches on/off the ability to read from open files. Some of my input files have frequent data changes and i tend to keep them open while testing/simulating results

Thank you,

abdou 

We have lots of tools that create new column(s) from the Inputs, e.g., Generate Rows. It'd be very nice if the new column(s) is/are highlighted in the Output. This makes it a lot easier for users when developing the workflow.

I can't even count how often I looked at an Excel, CSV or even YXDB file, where I KNEW that it was generated by Alteryx, but I couldn't remember the workflow. Currently, I have to simply go through all workflows I ever build and see if I can find it.

Theoretically, I could use a text-search across all workflows and see if I can find the output names - problem here: Most of my output filenames are generated dynamically on the run.

It would be amazing if Alteryx could simply write the Workflow name (maybe even path) into the metadata of a file.

(Screenshot from Google, as my os is set to German) 

How about, we write "This file was created with by "Create Controlling Reports.yxmd on 2023-02-06 with Alteryx Designer 2021.4.298434" in the field 'Comments'?

This would make it extremely easy to find what workflow the file generated. I think it would be an option to talk about "filepath" instead of filename, but the filepath could include the local machine name, which might include GDPR information.

@Community: Is there any additional information that you'd like to see in the metadata?

Best

Alex

When making any type of macro, it's important to test the functionality of the macro via a debug.  This is accomplished successfully with normal tools, however there's a bug that will not allow the user to debug In-DB macros that use either of the following standard Alteryx tools:  

• Macro Input In-DB
• Macro Output In-DB

If either of these tools are included in the macro you are building, an error message will appear not allowing you to open a debug.  

Error message: Question Tool Load Error:  A question tool with a tool id of XXX is missing the associated question data.

Of course, Macro input and output tools do not require any specific action/question tool associated with it.  This is a bug.  A user pointed out the XML issue almost 3 years ago here:

In summary: "It appears that the tool itself inserts a hidden Question attribute into the XML which can also be seen in Workflow Configuration"

Source:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/In-DB-Macro-Input-and-Output-t...

Examples....

A normal macro, using standard tools:

After debugging a standard macro, the Macro Input/Output tools correctly change to a Text Input and a Browse tool.  This allows the macro author to test the macro.

However, when trying the same thing with In-DB tools in a macro, an error message appears:

In-DB macro 1:

In-DB Macro error message (after clicking "Open Debug"):

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? 

Hello all,

I'm currently learning Pythin language and there is this cool feature : you can multiply a string

Pretty cool, no? I would like the same syntax to work for Tableau.

Best regards,

Simon

I would like to see Designer offer me the ability to chain workflows together where once Workflow A completes, Workflow B will automatically start.  There are times when linear processing is required in order to avoid dependency issues and/or for making it easier to organize complex processes. It would require outputting results to static files and it would take longer to process than the standard approach, but that is an expected trade-off.  Offering a GUI drag-drop "orchestrator" to tell Designer the order of operation would be even better than having to manually open each workflow and tell it which workflow to kick off next.

I would love a tool to be created for looking up a value in a table based on a condition. It could be called "Lookup." One input to the tool would be the lookup list, the other is the main database. Inside the tool you could enter functions that can query the lookup table and return the results either as an overwrite of an existing field in the main DB or as a new field in the main DB, similar to the options in the Multi-Row Formula tool.

Here is a link to my post in Community that explains the problem. The solution, in a nutshell, was to create a Join (which resulted in millions of additional rows), run the conditional formula, then filter to get rid of the millions of rows that were created by the Join so only those that met the condition remained (the original database rows).

Here is the text of my Community post describing my project (slightly modified for clarity):

Table 1:  A list of Pay Dates (the lookup table)

Table 2:  Daily timekeeper data with Week Start and Week End Date fields.

The goal:  To find the Pay Date in Table 1 that is greater than the Week Start Date in Table 2 and no more than 13 days after the Week End Date in Table 2.

[Table 2: Week Start Date] < [Table 1: Pay Date]

and [Table 2: Week End Date] < [Table 1: Pay Date]

and DateTimeDiff([Table 1: Pay Date], [Table 2: Week End Date], 'Days') <= 13

There are many different flows I could use this type of tool for that would save time and simplify the flow.

Thanks!

It would be great if you could include a new Parse tool to process Data Sets description (Meta data) formatted using the DCAT (W3C) standard in the next version of Alteryx.

DCAT is a standard for the description of data sets. It provides a comprehensive set of metadata that can be used to describe the content, structure, and lineage of a data set.

We believe that supporting DCAT in Alteryx would be a valuable addition to the product. It would allow us to:

• Improve the interoperability of our data sets with other systems (M2M)
• Make it easier to share and reuse our data sets
• Provide a more consistent way to describe our data sets
• Bring down the costs of describing and developing interfaces with other Government Entities
• Work on some parts of making our data Findable – Accessible – Interopable - Reusable (FAIR)

We understand that implementing support for this standards requires some development effort (eventually done in stages, building from a minimal viable support to a full-blown support). However, we believe that the benefits to the Alteryx Community worldwide and Alteryx as a top-quality data preparation tool outweigh the cost.

I also expect the effort to be manageable (perhaps a macro will do as a start) when you see the standard RDF syntax being used, which is similar to JSON.

DCAT, which stands for Data Catalog Vocabulary, is a W3C Recommendation for describing data catalogs in RDF. It provides a set of classes and properties for describing datasets, their distributions, and their relationships to other datasets and data catalogs. This allows data catalogs to be discovered and searched more easily, and it also makes it possible to integrate data catalogs with other Semantic Web applications. 

DCAT is designed to be flexible and extensible, so they can be used to describe a wide variety. They are both also designed to be interoperable, so they can be used together to create rich and interconnected descriptions of data and knowledge.

Here are some of the benefits of using DCAT:

• Improved discoverability: DCAT makes it easier to discover and use KOS, as they provide a standard way of describing their attributes.
• Increased interoperability: DCAT allows KOS to be integrated with other Semantic Web applications, making it possible to create more powerful and interoperable applications.
• Enhanced semantic richness: DCAT provides a way to add semantic richness to KOS , making it possible to describe them in a more detailed and nuanced way.

Here are some examples of how DCAT is being used:

• The DataCite metadata standard uses DCAT to describe data catalogs.
• The European Data Portal uses DCAT to discover and search for data sets.
• The Dutch Government made it a mandatory standard for all Dutch Government Agencies.

As the Semantic Web continues to grow, DCAT is likely to become even more widely used.

DCAT

• Reference Page: https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/
• Dutch (NL) Standard: https://forumstandaardisatie.nl/open-standaarden/dcat-ap-donl
• WIKI Pedia on DCAT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Catalog_Vocabulary

RDF

• Reference Page: https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/
• Dutch (NL) Standard: https://forumstandaardisatie.nl/open-standaarden/rdf
• WIKI Pedia on DCAT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework

In the Input tool, I rely heavily on the recent connection history list. As soon as a file falls off of this list, it takes me a while to recall where it's saved and navigate to the file I'm wanting to use. It would be great to have a feature that would allow users to set their favorite connections/files so that they remain at the top of the connection history list for easy access.

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.

Please improve the Excel XLSX output options in the Output tool, or create a new Excel Output tool, 
or enhance the Render tool to include an Excel output option, with no focus on margins, paper size, or paper orientation

The problem with the current Basic Table and Render tools are they are geared towards reporting, with a focus on page size and margins.
Many of us use Excel as simply a general output method, with no consideration for fitting the output on a printed page.

The new tool or Render enhancement would handle different formats/different schemas without the need for a batch macro, and would include the options below.

The only current option to export different schemas to different Sheets in one Excel file, without regard to paper formatting, is to use a batch macro and include the CReW macro Wait a Second, to allow Excel to properly shut down before a new Sheet is created, to avoid file-write-contention issues.

Including the Wait a Second macro increased the completion time for one of my workflows by 50%, as shown in the screehshots below.

I have a Powershell script that includes many of the formatting options below, but it would be a great help if a native Output or Reporting tool included these options:

Allow options below for specific selected Sheet names, or for All Sheets

AllColumns_MaxWidth: Maximum width for ALL columns in the spreadsheet. Default value = 50. This value can be changed for specific columns by using option Column_SetWidth.

Column_SetWidth: Set selected columns to an exact width. For the selected columns, this value will override the value in AllColumns_MaxWidth.

Column_Centered: Set selected columns to have text centered horizontally.

Column_WrapText: Set selected columns to Wrap text.

AllCells_WrapText: Checkbox: wrap text in every cell in the entire worksheet. Default value = False.

AllRows_AutoFit: Checkbox: to set the height for every row to autofit. Default value False.

Header_Format: checkbox for Bold, specify header cells background color, Border size: 1pt, 2pt, 3pt, and border color, Enable_Data_Filter: checkbox

Header_freeze_top_row: checkbox, or specify A2:B2 to freeze panes

Sheet_overflow: checkbox: if the number of Sheet rows exceeds Excel limit, automatically create the next sheet with "(2)" appended

Column_format_Currency: Set selected columns to Currency: currency format, with comma separators, and negative numbers colored red.

Column_format_TwoDecimals: Set selected columns to Two decimals: two decimals, with comma separators, and negative numbers colored red.
Note: If the same field name is used in Column_Currency and Column_TwoDecimals, the field will be formatted with two decimals, and not formatted as currency.

Column_format_ShortDate: Set selected columns to Short Date: the Excel default for Short Date is "MM/DD/YYYY".

File_suggest_read_only: checkbox: Set flag to display this message when a user opens the Excel file: "The author would like you to open 'Analytic List.xlsx' as read-only unless you need to make changes. Open as read-only?
vb code: xlWB.ReadOnlyRecommended = True

File_name_include_date_time: checkboxes to add file name Prefix or Suffix with creation Date and/or Time

========

Examples:

My only current option: use a batch macro, plus a Wait a Second macro, to write different formats/schemas to multiple Sheets in one Excel file:

Using the Wait a Second macro, to allow Excel to shut down before writing a new Sheet, to avoid write-contention issues, results in a workflow that runs 50% longer:

Similar to this idea, I think it would be really helpful to be able to search for fields in the dropdowns when using the Sort tool. Having to scroll through all of the possible field names can be a chore if you have 50+

Hello,

Just like Monetdb or Vertica, Clickhouse is a column-store database, claiming to be the fastest in the world. It's available on Cloud (like Snowflake), linux and macos (and here for free, it's open-source). it's also very well ranked in analytics database https://db-engines.com/en/system/ClickHouse and it would be a good differenciator with competitors.

https://clickhouse.com/

it has became more popular than Greenplum that is supported : (black snowflake, red greenplum, orange clickhouse)

Best regards,

Simon