Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Would like to be able to connect to the Stibo STEP system/database as a Data Source. Some people have the Stibo server on-premise while others have it hosted in Amazon (AWS).

Not sure what else I could provide at this point for further details.

yxdb.  It would be AWESOME to either right-click on the Input tool or use a new tool to get:

• Engine Version
• # of Records
• Writing Workflow (Path + Filename)

anything else would be icing on the cake.

Cheers,

Mark

Alteryx gods,

Please can you include right-click options for select/de-select in all tools that have select functionality, including:

Select

Join

Join Multiple

Append

etc.

Currently this functionality is hidden in the menu which goes against the look and feel of the rest of the product.

I know this was raised by @MarqueeCrew back in the day, and I'm surprised this was never implemented.

Please, Alteryx Gods. It would make me very happy.

M.

Hello Alteryx Gurus - 

I've got some workflows that run daily, but there are times, depending on the breaks, wherein I don't get any data from one of my data sources.  Which is actually fine, nobody did Job X today.  But it makes Alteryx puke out and I get an error message emailed to me.  Ultimately, I've got to hop into the rather voluminous log entries to determine if this was a data stream not initialized / was empty error, or something else that I actually need to care about. 

That being said, in the coding realm, it is relatively simple to look for specific flavors of exceptions and then just eat them without notifying people.  So, why not add something to the runtime / events panel for emailing at error time to allow for ignoring data stream not initialized errors?  In this way, I could get notified when there is a real error I need to pay attention to, and not get notified when there is no new data, which isn't really that big a deal.  

Thank you for attending my TED talk on enhanced error reporting and exception classification capabilities.

Having the ability to call-out via ARROWS/SYMBOLS (gold star) would be nice without requiring the user to create images and call them to the canvas.  This makes the workflow even more readable.

Watermarks (e.g. DRAFT, AMP, Do NOT AMP, FINAL) would be useful on the canvas as well.  

Cheers,

Mark

The problem

When building macros or apps which require a user to update a value in a text input tool via an interface tool, such as text input, the field length does not currently update. This can cause issues when developing things like API calls, where the value can become truncated.

The current workaround to to put a select tool after the text input and update the size of the field to accommodate potential input values.

Suggested solution

As part of the configuration window for the text input tool add a check box which allows a user to specify whether a field size should update based on an interface tool input.

Here is the issue I have, when you are using a Join tool and you have multiple columns that you are joining on (to the point that they don't all show in the 
Configuration window), i have a tendency to use the mouse scroll wheel to move down to see additional columns i am joining on.  The mouse scroll controls different things depending on where your cursor is.  If your cursor is over the Left or Right columns then the scroll button will change the Fields you are using to join on.  I have messed up more workflows then i care to mention due to this.  I do not think it is appropriate for the scroll wheel to effect and change the fields in the configuration window and it should only be used to scroll up and down in the configuration window.  

Hi 

The wording of the tool tip displayed in results window cells with long strings is misleading.  The current wording is "This cell has truncated characters".   

New users tend to infer that this means that the data value has been truncated somewhere upstream.  See here, here and here.   Changing this message to something like "Only a portion of long strings is displayed" will help reduce the confusion immensely.

Dan  

When building API calls within Alteryx there are a few common steps required

1) Build out the URI for the API call (base URL plus any query parameters)

2) Deal with authentication, such as basic authentication requires taking a key and secret, base 64 encoding and passing this into the tool

3) parsing the results out and processing these downstream

For this idea I am specifically focusing on step 3 (but it would be great to have common authentication methods in-built within the download tool (step 2)!).

There are common steps required to parse out the results, such as using Filter (to check for a 200 response), JSON parse, text to columns and then cross tab to get the results into a readable format. These will all be common steps anyone who has worked with APIs will be familiar with:

This is all fine for a regular user to quickly add in and configure these tools. However there is no validation here for the JSON result being as expected, which when embedding an API into a batch macro or analytic app means it can easily fail.

One example of a failure which I've recently come across is where the output JSON doesn't have all fields (name:value pairs) depending the json response. For example using the UK Companies House API, when looking at the ceased to act field at this endpoint - https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources... the ceased to act field only appears in the results if a person has actually ceased to act. This is important if you have downstream tools such as a formula to create a field [Active] where you have:

IF ISNull([ceased_to_act]) THEN "Active" ELSE "Ceased to Act" ENDIF

However without modification the macro / app will error if any results are returned where there is not this field.

A workaround is to add in the Crew Ensure Fields or union on a list of fields, to ensure that the Cease to Act field is present in the output for all API calls. But looking at some other tools it would be good if an expected Schema could be built in to the download tool to do this automatically.

For example in Power Automate this is achieved as follows:

I am a big advocate of not making things unnecessarily complicated. Therefore I would categorise this as an ease of use feature to improve the experience of working with APIs within Alteryx and make APIs (as load of integrations are API based) accessible to as many users as possible.

Hello

I have searched the community but haven't found any obvious solutions to this.

When using a cross tab I often find that there shouldn't be any aggregated values and if there is it means there is an issue with my data or workflow.

Therefore I think a useful feature would be an option for the cross tab tool to be able to return an error if it trying to aggregate any values.

I have a work around by using a summarize tool to count the non unique records and then a test to see if there are any duplicates but I think this could be a useful addition to the tool.

Thanks

Could you add a presentation mode to Alteryx Designer. When I demonstrate Alteryx Workflow to my colleagues, what Alteryx is doing is great, but it doesn't look great. I'd like to see more clarity and flair when running workflows. In presentation mode, all tools should be dimly grayed out immediately after run, and tools that are 100% complete should be bright and clear.

Hello,

I'm using the latest Alteryx Designer version 2021.1. When I drag an Input Tool, before I can proceed with anything, it asks me to choose a pre-saved, named, data connection from the Gallery. This named connection is pre-configured with a USERNAME, target SCHEMA NAME to connect to, with a PASSWORD. This is also known as a PROXY CONNECT method as follows:-

USERNAME[SCHEMA_NAME]

Once I have selected a named, data connection, the assumption is that in the next screen, if I click on the Tables button, that it would ONLY load the tables inside that target SCHEMA_NAME and not take 10 mins to load thousands of tables that exist in the entire Oracle Database, some of them I would not have access to even connect to, so then why load and make us wait for that long?

The same thing should apply WITHOUT a PROXY CONNECT method. For instance, if a saved, data connection only has a USERNAME and PASSWORD, it means the user would like to strictly connect to their own personal schema.

Again, when this connection is chosen, the Tables button should strictly ONLY load the tables that exist in this personal schema by the name of that USERNAME and no need to load thousands of tables that exist in the entire Oracle Database.

I know the workaround would be to select SQL Editor to open by default which is what I'm currently using but seriously, this has to be fixed as the performance hit and showing of table names for which a user may not even have access to connect to is not good.

Currently with Find & Replace tool you can only select one field at a time. 

I have multiple fields for which I need to apply the same Find and Replace.

I'd find it handy to be able to select multiple fields at once, as you can in the Data Cleansing tool etc.

Hi all,

When debugging an error, we need to verify tool by tool in a sequence to better understand what is really going on.

Sometimes the tools are miles away from each other. Imagine a gigantic workflow with a lot of connections going back and forth and wireless connections everywhere to help the workflow organization. Here is an example with more than 1300 tools: 

My idea is to have a shortcut showing all the previous/next tools and by selecting the previous/next one you go directly to them.

Something like this: 

What do you guys think about that?

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

Hi all,

When setting data to fixed decimal, I think I have 100% of the time changed the precision to 2 decimal places. I was working with @DataG8 and he confirmed the same.

Would it be possible to have it default to 19.2 rather 19.6? Not a big deal, but it just means you need to change it every single time you use it...

Thank you, Alteryx Gods.

Kisses

M.

Issue:

Oftentimes when a workflow has an error, the error message is very long and is difficult to read in the results window. Currently, if you hover over the error message in the results window, the error message will popout but only for a couple seconds. Reading the error messages is a crucial step in troubleshooting the issue with a workflow, however, with the current experience it becomes very difficult to read the entire error message prior to the popout expiring.

Solution:

Simply double clicking any message, especially an error message, in the results window should have a permanent popout window presented to the user. This message window will allow the user to scroll down to read the entire message (if lengthy), popout the window further, minimize the window, and exit the window entirely. 

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

Hello,

In Alteryx Designer application, in User Settings, please add an option for us to check/uncheck whether we would like to show/hide the Splash Screen upon app launch.

Thanks!

The macro input tool asks for a template input that is either a text or file input. A perfect template can be hard to come by and so I wonder if the macro input could just ask how many columns are expected and the type and size that this column should be. I feel this would be more intuitive and easier to debug.