Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello all,

The reasons why I would the cadence to be back to quarter release :

-for customers, a quarter cadence means waiting less time to profit of the Alteryx new features so more value

-quarter cadence is now an industry standard on data software.

-the new situation of special cadence creates a lot of frustration. And frustration is pretty bad in business.

-for partners, the new situation means less customer upgrade opportunities, so less cash but also less contacts with customers.

Best regards,

Simon

Issue

Whenever a Summarize tool is used, it renames the output field (e.g., sales becomes SUM_sales or AVG_sales).  

Proposal

I think a reasonable compromise is to by default not rename fields in the Summarize Tool, but to include an option (in the tool, or in global settings) to allow for renaming.

Rationale

I have yet to come across a use case where automatic renaming of aggregated fields is desirable. What I have come across is the annoyance to rename the fields back to what they were with a Dynamic Rename tool, and sometimes having to do this multiple times (e.g., converting back a SUM_SUM_SUM_sales back to sales). Additionally, automatic field renaming causes workflow errors when workflows are later modified by adding/removing a Summarize tool (e.g., if you later add a Summarize tool, all downstream steps will expect the "sales" field and not know to use the "Sum_sales field). 

Automatic Renaming feels very much like historic Excel with Pivot Tables field renaming and not reflective of modern code-based workflow best practices.

I appreciate you considering this improvement.

We currently have language support for a few major languages. I know Chinese is available, but the writing system is only Simplified at this moment. 

I was recently in conversation with a few people from Taiwan, and they are using the Traditional writing system of Chinese. 

If Alteryx can provide Traditional as an additional to their already available Simplified writing system, I think Alteryx can help capture the market in Taiwan better. 

The people I spoke with never heard of Alteryx before, and after a demo - they were impressed. If it has this language support, then I think it’ll be much easier to get more sign ups for Alteryx from the Taiwanese market. 

For all Alteryx versions I can remember, when entering a connection string into an input tool (e.g., "C:\Users\mbarone\Desktop\ . . . "), you could just start typing and it would auto-complete.  This is no longer the case when DCM is enabled.  This is a huge efficiency hit we're taking, and is enough for us not to enable DCM (optional or otherwise), given the fact that current workflow connection manager works just fine (meaning the "akas").

Please bring back auto-complete/predictive text when DCM is enabled.

Can a function be added to the Text-to-Column tool that allows selecting "split on entire entry" or "split on entry-as-a-whole" for the delimiters field?

Background:

Currently if we type  vs.  in the delimiters field, it'll look for each character separately including spaces.

The recommendation in the tool help is to use RegEx for splitting on whole words, but for some, RegEx is quite intimidating and adding this function would be a big help for new users.

Proposed Change:

2 Radio Buttons added to the Text-to-Column tool

1. Split by Each Entry
   1. Current functionality
   2. Should be default
   3. Splits on every letter, space, punctuation, etc. separately
2. Split by Entire Entry
   1. Allow splitting by using entire entry in the field
   2. Still includes spaces, letters, and punctuation, but now sees as "whole-word"

Example of function:

1. Radio button set to "split by entire entry"
2. Delimiter field has:   vs. 
3. Tool sees  ______ vs. ______  in a column in the data
4. Tool splits ______  and  ______ into new columns leaving out the entire vs. including the spaces entered around it

Thank you!

It would be great if we could add example workflows to our macros, accessible in the same way as from the original tools (example hyperlink shown after single-clicking on a tool in the tool palette or when searching in the search bar).

There is a post on how to do it for custom tools How to add an example link in the custom tool (alteryx.com). The way described there has limitations and does not seem to work on macros: I was able to get the link to show up, but nothing happens when I click.

My suggestion, make it easy to add an example workflow to a macro, like it is to change the logo or add a help link.

So our company is relatively new to Alteryx Designer and Server and we recently found out that there's no official communication sent out from Alteryx on when there are patch releases for Designer and Server. We've encountered so many bugs that we later found on the release notes that would've been helpful to know about months before.

So my suggestion is to have an option for Administrators to opt in/out for communication emails on when the patches are released.

Thank you!

Hello all,

As specified in the title, this idea is to distinguish between Append Prefix/Suffix to File and to Table on the Output Data Tool.


For most files (csv...), the table name does not really exist. However, for at least Excel files, if you choose this option, the result will be one sheet by suffix and the only option to have one file by suffix will be to change entire file path.

Best regards,

Simon

This is a QoL-request, and I love me some QoL-updates!

While I'm developing I often need the output of a workflow as input for the next phase of my development. For example: an API run returns job location, status, and authentication ids. I want to use these in a new workflow to start experimenting what'll work best. Because of the experimenting part, I always do this in a new workflow and not cache and continue in my main flow.

Writing a temporary output file always feels like unnescesary steps, and tbh I don't want to write a file for a step that'll be gone before it reaches production. Esp if there is sensitive information in it.

Thanks.

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? 

Currently the only way to do IF / FOR / WHILE loop is either in Formula tool or via iterative/batch macro.

Instead, it will be hugely useful and a lot more intuitive if there is the ability to build the FOR / WHILE logic embedded in a container (similar to LabVIEW interface https://www.ni.com/en-sg/support/documentation/supplemental/08/labview-for-loops-and-while-loops-exp...).

Advantages include:

- Increased readability. (not having to go into a macro!)

- Increased agility. (more power/ features can be added or modified on the go for something that is more than a Formula tool but not too much interface like a Macro App)

- More intuitive

Dawn.

As per a recent discussion (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Geopackages-Can-Alteryx-Open-GeoPackag...), please add the GeoPackage datatype to the Input tool.

For reference, the open-source project ogr2ogr has this functionality. (https://gdal.org/programs/ogr2ogr.html)

Thanks!

Whenever I output the Count using the Summarize Tool I am unable to tell it to sort the results by Count and am forced to grab a sort tool.  It would be nice to offer a sort option from within the Summarize tool itself instead of requiring a subsequent sort tool or to use the Results window to manually sort it.

Requesting a reduced-cost, read-only license to allow for additional users in our organization be directly review workflows for UAT and control testing.  Currently, the only individuals who can see the detail of Alteryx workflows directly are those with a full designer license or temporary trial license.  In our Alteryx control structure, we have additional reviewers confirming the workflow who do not have licenses, which requires copious amounts of screenshots and/or direct meetings with our licensed designers to walkthrough the flows step-by-step.  It would be much more efficient to provide a license that would allow folks to click through the integrations themselves, potentially allowing for comments and annotations, but without the ability to make direct changes.  This would be much more cost efficient for our organization and allow for better workflow review and control.

The "Manage Data Connections" tool is fantastic to save credentials alongside the connection without having to worry when you save the workflow that you've embedded a password. 

Imagine if - there were a similar utility to handle credentials/environment variables. 

• I could create an entry, give it a description, a username, and an encrypted password stored in my options, then refer to that for configurations/values throughout my workflows. 
  • Tableau credentials in the publish to tableau macro
  • Sharepoint Credentials in the sharepoint list connector
• When my password changes I only have to change it in one place
• If I handoff the workflow to another user I don't have to worry about scanning the xml to make sure I'm not passing them my password
• When a user opens my workflow that doesn't have a corresponding entry in their credentials manager they would be prompted using my description to add it.
• Entries could be exported and shared as well (with passwords scrubbed)

Example Entry Tableau:

Then when configuring a tool you could put in something like [Tableau Prod].[Password] and it would read in the value.

Or maybe for Sharepoint:

Or perhaps for a team file location:

Any of these values could be referenced in tool configurations, formulas, macro inputs by specifying the Alias and field.

Hello all,

Here the issue : when you have a lot of tables, the Visual Query Builder can be very slow. On my Hive Database, with hundreds of tables, I have the result after 15 minutes and most of the time, it crashes, which is clearly unusable.

I can change the default interface in the Visual Query Builder tool but for changing this setting, I need to load all the tables in the VQB tool.

I would like to set that in User Settings to set it BEFORE opening the Visual Query Builder.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

As you may know, Alteryx use the Active Query Builder component. However this component itself evolves with cool new features :
https://www.activequerybuilder.com/blog/2018-04-28-much-faster-visual-sql-query-building-in-the-new-...

You can also try the online demo

https://www.activequerybuilder.com/

Best regards,

Simon

Good morning!

This may be a very simple thing, but would it be possible to add a DateTimeQuarter() function? We have DateTime Second, Minute, Day, Month, and Year, and being able to have an easy formula for the quarter as well would be incredibly convenient. 

Thanks,

Kat

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.