Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

As @Jonathan-Sherman pointed out in his blog post we love that the toolbar is back in version 2020.2!

 

One way that this toolbar could be enhanced, however, is to allow the use of the save button while a workflow is running. The user can still click File->Save while the workflow is running, but it would be quicker to be able to use the button on the toolbar.

 

When building iterative macros and debugging I tend to copy an paste the calculation part multiple times underneath to see what the status would be on iteration 2, 3, 4... However when there are multiple inputs to tools in the calculation steps, for example join tools or unions, then for each step it need re-connecting. 

 

So the idea is two fold

1) Allow the user to 'lock' an input so that when that tool is copied the upstream connection point is always the same, e.g. the R input for the join tool is automatically connected to the D input macro whenever that tool is copied

2) For iteration outputs, recognise that the select tool is connected to an iteration input so when it is copied it takes the iteration output as the upstream tool.

It seems that currently the Python tool is raising a `FileNotFoundError` exception in Python when there is not data incoming on an input connection. I have, for example, a Filter tool before the Python tool and sometimes there is just no data coming to Python tool - as it is intended.

 

Unfortunately, the Python tools gives my an error message in those cases with this message before the error:

 

This is only the case when there is no data incoming. In all other cases, the tool works fine.

 

Since this is not really an error, a way to either catch this before using `Alteryx.read("#1")` or just having `Alteryx.read()` return an empty data.frame (as I would expect it to do) would be appreciated.

Is there a reason why Alteryx does not include hierarchical clustering?

 

Well it's sort of slow especially with huge data sets, computation effort increases cubic, but then when you need to do two step clustering,

"creating more than enough k-means clusters and joining cluster centers with hierarchical clustering" it seems to be a must...

 

P.s. Knime, SPSS modeler, SAS, Rapidminer has it already...

I think it would be great, especially if you have browse tools at multiple phases in workflow, to be able to view Browse results while module is running, rather than having to wait until it's done. I think it would help with being able to head off problems sooner.

The are a lot of SQL engines on top of Hadoop like:

• Apache Drill / https://drill.apache.org/
  Schema-free, low latency SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage
  It's backed up at enterprise level by MapR
• Apache Kylin / http://kylin.apache.org/
  Apache Kylin™ is an open source Distributed Analytics Engine designed to provide SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Hadoop supporting extremely large datasets, original contributed from eBay Inc.
• Apache Flink / https://flink.apache.org/
  Apache Flink is an open source platform for distributed stream and batch data processing. Flink’s core is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations over data streams. The creators of Flink provide professional services trought their company Data Artisans.
• Facebook Presto / https://prestodb.io/
  Presto is an open source distributed SQL query engine for running interactive analytic queries against data sources of all sizes ranging from gigabytes to petabytes.
  It's backed up at enterprise level by Teradata - http://www.teradata.com/PRESTO/

 

My suggestion for Alteryx product managers is to build a tactical approach for these engines in 2016.

 

Regards,

Cristian.

Hello!
I have recently come across something within Alteryx that caught me by surprise. Currently when you are within the configuration window of a tool (in this example, the browse tool) and use ctrl + backspace (shortcut for deleting a previous full word), a blank character is instead added.

 

Please see example:

Currently in the Browse tool configuration

 

 

Go to change the Name of the tool - and naturally to clear it, use ctrl + backspace:

[] is added to the end. From what i can gather, this is a 'control character' , used when an application does not support ctrl+backspace.

Ctrl + Delete however, is supported.

 

I am proposing for this character/functionality to be supported. I believe the configuration window is the main - and potentially only, i couldn't find any other examples - place this is not supported.

Hope this makes sense!
TheOC

When utilizing the alteryx 'publish to tableau server' tool, only the name of the folder (project name) is visible for selection of where to publish the .hyper file on the tableau server.  When there are multiple folders with the same name under different parent folders, i.e. a 'weekly updates' folder under North America parent, a weekly updates folder under South America parent, etc... there is no way to differentiate between the 'weekly updates' folders in the tableau publish tool. 

In this case, you essentially have to publish test files to all the folders and write the results on a piece of paper for future reference.  

 

This request is to enable the navigation, or at least view, of a hierarchical folder structure within the 'publish to tableau server' tool.  

For those of us dealing with mail files, it would be nice to be able to run presort discounts, but we need the following CASS fields for those discounts:

Line of Travel, Ascending/Descending Code & Walk Sequence.

Add PowerPoint format file (ppt/pptx) into supported file type as direct connection in Input Tool.

 

 

PS. I know that we have workaround allowing to import PowerPoint slides into Alteryx but I'm describing automated solution :)

 

Cheers,

Pawel

It would be nice to have Directory tool working for ftp. I would like to have the list of files on a ftp server including sub folders

Currently the Databricks in-database connector allows for the following when writing to the database

1. Append Existing
2. Overwrite Table (Drop)
3. Create New Table
4. Create Temporary Table

This request is to add a 5th option that would execute

• Create or Replace Table

Why is this important?

• Create or Replace is similar to the Overwrite Table (Drop) in that it fully replaces the existing table however, the key differences are
  • Drop table completely removes the table and it's data from Databricks
    • Any users or processes connected to that table live will fail during the writing process
    • No history is maintained on the table, a key feature of the Databricks Delta Lake
  • Create or Replace does not remove the table
    • Any users or processes connected to that table live will not fail as the table is not dropped
    • History is maintained for table versions which is a key feature of Databricks Delta Lake

 

While this request was specific to testing on Azure Databricks the documentation for Azure and AWS for Databricks both recommend using "Replace" instead of "Drop" and "Create" for Delta tables in Databricks. 

 

Sometimes I get conversion error messages or warnings that really don't matter, and it would be great if there was a function similar to spell check or grammer check where I could say "Don't show me this again", so that once I've read the message I can choose whether or that particular message pops up again.

I would like to see a pre-built visual flag or message/warning that shows if the join I made was cartesian or not.

 

To avoid cartesian joins I sometimes add a unique or summarize tool before the L or R inputs or add a message tool after the join.

 

If I don't do that then I sometimes calculate if the number of records in the L + C and L + R joins don't match up to the L and R input records.

 

It would be nice for Alteryx to be able to show some indication of if a cartesian join happened or not without having to add the extra tools or manual calculations

 

Something akin to Canvas>Connection Progress>Show Only When Running to be updated with the added functionality of Show with Cartesian Join Flags

Right now the PublishToPowerBI connector only publishes to "My Workspace."  I manage datasets that feed reports for multiple workspaces, some of which are not necessarily personal workspaces (so there is no login associated). A drop-down that lets you select which workspace, that you are a member of, would be fantastic!

 

The workaround right now is to ETL in Alteryx then save the dataset out to OneDrive. You can then "Publish" the Excel sheet to Power BI natively, and the data refreshes once an hour. This works for some data, but we have use cases that need refresh rates much higher than that. Plus publishing directly to Power BI would be ideal.

We really need a block until done to process multiple calculations inDB without causing errors. I have heard that there is a Control Container potentially on the road map.  That needs to happen ASAP!!!!

I would like a new format option within the Designer function DateTimeFormat such that where a date is held in the database

e.g. 2023-01-01

 

DateTimeFormat([date],%o)

 

will return 1st not 1 or 01. 

 

Workarounds exist, but are fiddly given the different options....1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.....

 This might be something that people see as a feature, but if you've got an input tool on your canvas that isn't connected to anything, I'd like the engine (either) to ignore reading the data.  

 

I often put tools onto the canvas and build around the input and in reality (or when working with large files), the execution is slower than it needs to be with reading files that are not used.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Idea: Add a Connection Line Routing Tool

Details

Connection lines get in the way. A routing tool could solve this problem simply by guiding the line through its position. The input would be the same as the output, but the direction of the input/output anchors should be configurable.