Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Experts - 

While developing code in the formula tool (and perhaps elsewhere) it would be helpful to have the "parenthesis highlighting" function found in database software such as SSMS, DBeaver, SQL Developer etc.  I.e. put the cursor next to a closing paren and the corresponding opening paren gets highlighted (or vice versa) - conversely if there is no corresponding paren nothing gets highlighted and you instantly know you've got a bug to fix (and where to fix it)!

In the new Intelligence Suite tools the PDF Image Template tool allows a user to select portions of the document to be OCRed downstream by the Image to Text tool, however there is no way to currently zoom in and out of the document to draw the annotations, the only way I have found is to stretch the configuration window and the PDF width will autoscale, but doing so will lose the annotations.

So the request is to have zoom in/out and pan options within the configuration pane to improve the UX.

Hi there,

When you connect to a DB using a connection string or an alias - this shows up in the Workflow Dependancies in a way that is very useful to allow you to identify impacts if a DB is moved or migrated.

However - in 2023.1, if you use DCM then the database dependancies just show up as .\ which makes dependancy management much more difficult.

Please could you add the capability to view the DCM dependancies correctly in the dependancy window?

BTW - this workflow Dependancy Window would be a great place to build a simple process to move existing DB connections to a DCM connection!

CC: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

Working across a large organisation inevitably leads to people using different drive letters when mapping drives/folders. This makes sharing workflows and macros with other teams more difficult and the first thing I do when creating a new workflow is change the dependencies to All UNC.

This suggestion is to offer the option to default all workflows to UNC via the user settings. Acknowledging that some users will prefer listing files by drive letter and other UNC, adding the option could make life a little bit easier for everyone.

I love the dynamic rename tool because quite often my headers are in the first row of data in a text file (or sometimes, Excel!).

However, whenever I open a workflow, I have to run the workflow first in order to make the rest of the workflow aware of the field names that I've mapped in the dynamic rename tool, and to clear out missing fields from downstream tools. When a workflow takes a while to run, this is a cumbersome step.

Alteryx Designer should be aware of the field names downstream from the dynamic rename tool, and make them available in the workflow for use downstream as soon as they are added (or when the workflow is initially opened without having been run first).

Hi,

This idea is to suggest we add additional comparison capability to the Designer Join tool to more closely mirror what is possible in SQL. Usually, teams work around this limitation by adding tools after the Join tool (or using SQL queries at the start of a workflow), but it would be great to do this in the Join Tool itself.

The current Join Tool in Alteryx only allows for exact field comparisons, but not for more flexible joins, such as the example below

LOAD * FROM Table A

LEFT Join Table B

ON A.Firstname=B.FirstName

And A.Country <> B.Country

AND A.Lastname LIKE (B.Lastname)

OR A.Nationality = B.Nationality

I've drawn a mock-up of what I think could be enhancements to the existing tool. In simple terms, I think there are these options for improvement:

1. When joining on specific fields, allow the user to specify operators for how the fields should join, e.g. Field A=Field B and Field C  !Contains  Field D (almost like the Filter Tool does this). This could be enabled by permitting operators in the menu between the 2 fields, as illustrated below

2. Have the option to say that if either field matches, you'd like to join (i.e. option to choose if this is an AND or OR join condition). A new field would need to be made to the left of the field selection, as illustrated below

3. Perhaps there could be the option to write the expression as you would a formula for the Error message tool (but in a positive context), e.g. Field A != Field B

4. How about enabling the Left Join/Right Join/Full Outer Join options from within the Join tool? E.g. if you select the Venn Diagram buttons, you will return your selection? If you don't want to compromise existing capability, you can automatically add a pre-configured Union tool (with the correct left/right/join inputs) after the Join tool based on the user's selection?

Regards,

Tom

Hi there team,

When using the sort tool - it's impossible to really develop much speed and muscle memory because you're always having to switch between keyboard and mouse.

Can we please add to the sort tool to make this a hyper-quick experience for the user?

Current Experience:

I currently have the select tool selected want to add a sort after this to sort on 3 columns:

• I hit ctrl-shift-f to go to the advanced find
• Then type "sort"
• Then I switch from keyboard to mouse, and drag this sort tool on to my canvas
• I then want to start configuring this tool - so I need to then need to mouse across to the configuration box
• hit the drop-down box with the mouse to get focus on that row in the sorter
• type or mouse select the right field - this is especially painful if there are a lot of fields
• then mouse again to get to the ascending / descending sort option
• then repeat for all other fields

Proposed alternative path:

I want to add a sort tool immediately after the currently selected tool:

• ctrl-alt-s (my user-defined shortcut for the short tool)
• control-space to enter config mode which defaults to configuring sort order for first field
• start typing the field-name - this does a look-ahead search like google.com does
• when I find the field I want, hit tab and have the same experience with asc / desc
• hit tab again, go to sort row 2 - repeat
• NEVER have to touch the mouse

As we all know - when you develop muscle memory for an IDE - not only does this remove the barrier between thought and delivery - but it also makes it more sticky as a platform (you don't want to change products because you are used to the keyboard shortcuts on this one) - so not only would this improve user speed - it would also make sense from an economic perspective for retaining customers through stickiness.

cc: @Hollingsworth 

When bringing data together it is often needed to assign a source to the data.  Generally this happens when you union data and need to know things later about the data for context.  It would save time to generate a source field that is assigned based upon the input connections of the union tool.  Perhaps when unioning data you can assign a name to each input stream?

The Idea behind the Password Masking is - we have "Download Tool" from the "Developer Tab" - which is used to Download files from the given site. For example, let's take Mainframe. I have a scenario where the Alteryx Workflow should connect to the Mainframe FTP Server, download the required file which is used for downstream transformation. For the download, I get the Username and Password information from the Database table (to reduce manual intervention and prevent errors). While passing the Username and Password as a parameter to the Download Tool Macro (Custom Macro - accepts the Username/Password, Filename dynamically) - the Alteryx Workflow will obviously show the username and password in the result window (as it is considered as an output data from Input Tool). Now I want that particular password field to be masked, so whenever the particular Workflow is shared to the User - the password field remains unexposed. I know there's a way to mask a particular field using "MD5 HASH" formula, but that helps to mask anything related to Dataset and not a password (as it may consider it as a new string and not a valid password). This feature would be really beneficial to Developers who use the download tool often. A New Tool or a Custom Macro - embedding this feature would be great for users who needs Masking functionality.

Dear Alteryx Team, 

please put an option marker /button in the formula tool to ask if the newly added column should be placed at the beginning as first column or at the end (as it is now- this could be a default setting). 

The problem is that with a lot of fields it is quite time consuming to drag and drop the newly added column from the end of the field array to the beginning. Depending on where you want to reallocate the column you might want to start from the front or from the back to drag and drop (right click holded) the column in order to reorder it. 

Mostly I would like to start from the front, I noticed. 

Thank you

I'd consider myself as a power user in most of the tools I use. No matter what program it is, I try to learn most of the useful shortcuts and code them into my mouse or keypad.

It's probably pretty uncommon that someone uses a mouse with 12 extra keys or a keypad, but I think many people would be happy to have the option to define shortcuts for everything. I don't really ask for shortcuts for everything by default, but a menu like Microsoft Word has it, that would be great.

For reference: 

Microsoft Word has a menu were nearly every possible action is listed and you are able to define/assign shortcuts (one or more) for every action available.

(Sorry it's German. Path: File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Customize)

Alteryx is not able to read generated Excel sheets which have the prefix "x:" within it's XML tags.  Often this occurs when an xlsx file is created from a bot or rpa process.  Example file attached.

It would be great if Tool Containers had an I/O connector icon where you can connect the last tool in that container to and then Cache the container so that it wouldn't have to run every time.

For example, in the diagram below, the output of the Spatial Match would connect to an object such as the "I" that I drew below. We would then be able to cache the output of that container so that all objects in the container wouldn't have to run each time. The "O" would be the cached output and would feed the rest of the workflow. 

the SQL Editing screen has recently been changed (thank you @jpoz  and team!) - and now has syntax indenting and keyword coloring.

Could I ask for a minor change:

- The tool seems to be doing a word-wrap even if the container doesn't need it - for example in the screenshot below, the entire on clause can fit on one line because I've expanded the window so that it doesn't need to wrap.

- Could you also default to putting the ON clause for a join 4 spaces indented underneath the join clause?   worked example below.

Wordwrap:

Indenting Structure:

Could we use a default structure for queries where the on part is indented underneath the Join?

Select

    Field1,

    Field2,

    field3

from

    Table1

    inner join table2

        On Table1.key = table2.key

        and table1.keyb = table2.keyb

    inner join table3

        on table3.key = table1.key

        and table3.date = table1.date

The Summarize tool should have an option to ignore warnings like this:

Group Bys on Double or Float are not recommended due to rounding error.

I totally get that we want to use a local disk drive for TempDirectory.

Let us override Alteryx (currently Alteryx overrides the user override) and choose a network directory.  If the local temp drive is full, let the user choose.

Cheers,

Mark

Right now - if a tool generates an error - there is nothing productive that you can do with the error rows, these are just sent to the error log and depending on your settings the entire canvas will fail.

Could we change this in the Designer to work more like SSIS - where almost every tool has an error output, so that you can send the good rows one way, and the error rows the other way, and then continue processing?    The error rows can be sent to an error table or workflow or data-quality service; and the good rows can be sent onwards.   Because you have access to the error rows, you can also do run stats of "successful rows vs. unsuccessful"

This would make a big difference in the velocity of developing a canvas or prepping data.

Can take some screenshots if that helps?

Multi-Resolution Raster format, or .mrr, is a MapInfo Pro Advanced file format that is becoming increasingly common as an output option for many software providers.  It is being used in place of .grd and .tiff file formats in some instances, because of its many advantages over most raster formats.  I would like to request that alteryx allow .mrr files to be included as input options, as it seems this trend isn't going to decrease anytime soon.