Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Can we have a User Setting that allows the users to select if Alteryx should prevent the computer to go into Sleep or Hibernate mode when running a workflow?

Hello Alteryx Community,

If like me, you've been developing in Alteryx for a few years, or if you find yourself as a new developer creating solutions for your organization - chances are you'll need to create some form of support procedure or automation configuration file at some point. In my experience, the foundation of these files is typically explaining to users what each tool in the workflow is doing, and what transformations to the data are being made. These are typically laborious to create and often created in a non-standardized way.

The proposal: Create Alteryx Designer native functionality to parse a workflow's XML and translate the tool configurations into a step by step word document of a given workflow.

Although the expectation is that after something like this is complete a user may need to add contextual details around the logic created, this proposal should eliminate a lot of the upfront work in creating these documents.

Understand some workflow may be very complex but for a simple workflow like the below, a proposed output could be like the below, and if annotations are provided at the tool level, the output could pick those up as well:

Workflow Name: Sample

1) Text Input tool (1) - contains 1 row with data across columns test and test1. This tool connects to Select Tool (2).

2) Select Tool (2) - deselects "Unknown" field and changes the data type of field test1 to a Double. This tool connects to Output (3).

3) Output (3) - creates .xlsx output called test.xlsx 

Hello!
Just another QOL change from me today. 
When building a workflow - just for fun sometimes I like to make mistakes. It's never by accident I promise 😎

Now theoretically, if I did make a mistake, and put a tool in the wrong place (or want to refactor, or want to move a select earlier in the workflow etc), I would typically right click, cut and connect around, and then right click the connection I want to paste onto. This works fine, however, some users are unaware of it, and it can still be a bit of a pain.

What would be really nice, is if we could hit ctrl and click/drag a tool, to move it elevated of connections. I have attempted to create a couple of gifs to illustrate.

The current method of moving a tool within a workstream:

What I'd love, if you could hold ctrl + drag:

Cheers!
Owen

I know there is an idea for Dynamic Summarize, however I think with only small change to Summarize tool this could be achieved. 

If we set the Summarize to Group by all our dimensions but then use ListBox + Action to control which dimensions we want to select - wouldn't it be nice (ahh Beach Boys comes to mind) to be able to tell Summarize tool that if the dimension in group by is not found just ignore it? At the moment it throws an error. I just think such small configuration would achieve this, right? 

Please let me know what you think

Hi 

I'm really missing a search in the medata phane?

If I am on data phane:

If im browsing though metadata:

Hello,

Please add UI-related Themes to choose from such as a Dark Theme, so that all aspects of the UI changes accordingly.

Without a Dark Theme, it is very difficult to work in Designer for a long time.

Add these themes under User Settings --> Themes tab

Thanks!

When numerous formulae exist within a single formula object, being able to "Expand All / Collapse All" would be most welcomed.  :-)

Also - the ability to Disable/Enable a single formula in the formula object - also very nice to have.

Hello!

This is along the same lines as my other thread:
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Allow-For-Drag-and-Drop-in-The-Interface-Des...

I love building Analytic Apps, and i wish it was just a little bit quicker to do.

Currently when adding an element from the dropdown to the interface designer:

it will always be added to the bottom of the interface:

And requires moving manually. It would be great if depending on where you have selected on the interface, the element is created. For instance, i would like to select one of my elements:

Hit add - Label:

And the label be created under my element:

Thanks,
TheOC

I want modification of the Email Tool to support running it at a specific point, defined by developer, within a workflow where currently "The Email tool will always be the last tool to run in a workflow". 

We use the tool to send notification of completion of jobs and sometimes attach outputs but we would like to be able to also send notifications at the start or at key points within a workflows processing.  Currently the email tool is forced to be the last tool run in a flow, even if you use block until done tool to force order of path execution to hit the email tool first.

If we could add a setting to the configuration to override the current default, of being the last tool run, to allow it to run at will within a flow that would be awesome!  And of course we would want the same ability for texting, be it a new feature of the email tool or a new tool all its own. 

The Texting option refers to an issue in Andrew Hooper's post seeking enhancement of the email tool for texting, search on "Email tool add HTML output option" or use link...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/Email-tool-add-HTML-output-option/idi-p/92114...

When you have an Alteryx workflow open, Alteryx seems to by default try to keep you up to date on what might be happening with your data when it runs through your workflow. So if you for example add a misconfigured tool (a filter not connected to an input) and click somewhere on the canvas it'll presumably try to compile the code and then figure out that the new tool is misconfigured and it'll tell you why. A major thing it does seems to be that it tries to figure out if macros included in the workflow have changed and to take such changes into account so that it can notify you if there's a problem somewhere e.g. with the macro's output schema or whatever. I know it's doing this kind of thing because the moment I add a macro to the workflow I'll have to spend a 15-20 second 'tax' every time I touch the workflow canvas, a formula, when I click on a join, etc. Sometimes it's 30 seconds, sometimes you get lucky and it'll only be 5 seconds. This delay is by now from my perspective considered a fixed cost of adding a macro to a workflow. I'm assuming similar processes also take place in the context of other dependencies (main one probably being queries inside input tools) and that they may also cause problems for similar reasons.

I'm assuming part of the reason for the long delays is that the macro repository where we usually save macros in my organisation is saved in a server location which is close to the Alteryx server executing the in-production workflows/macros, but not close to me when I'm developing in my office. Yes, I could save the macros I develop elsewhere (locally) and then only save them in the repository when they're 'complete' (...we all know exactly when that's the case; we're never in doubt about that, right? ...and you'll still have problems if you need to modify a workflow which includes macros later, even if you're not touching the macro itself). I'm actually doing that in some contexts where the above user experience has been frustrating enough to justify such a step, and I'm always trying to find ways to just outright kill Alteryx' live connection to the macro (e.g. by caching the output) if it's not critical. But these things are not solutions, they're poor workarounds some of which are adding complexity and the potential for errors as a result of a problem which really shouldn't be a problem.

It would be desirable to have the option to pause these kinds of 'background processes'/'semi-live compiling'/'whatever', make Alteryx do this kind of thing less frequently, add an 'only update meta-data when running' option, or some fourth option of a similar nature. Debugger-mode is implicitly always on, why not give the option of turning that off if the user figures s/he can handle that? Give me the error when I try to run the workflow, don't try to have the software figure out if the code will run with an error every time I even touch it - this is not always helpful, it's in some contexts causing a huge waste of developer time.

After evolving my workflows to provide email alerts after they run with errors I thought it would be a good idea to include conditional alerts. Meaning: incorporating formulas(if then) to determine when the alert will run. Currently, the only options are "Before Run, After Run, After Run with Errors, After Run Without Errors, Disabled".

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)!

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 

Add a search or find function that looks for content within a tool rather than just the tool number. e.g. ctrl Find, to look for any tool that uses a keyword or field in the formula/join/etc. This would save me a boatload of time editing, updating, and troubleshooting my workflows.

The ‘Existing File Action’ configuration setting needs to address the situation where columns change.

Currently the following options exist, with instruction as follows at https://help.alteryx.com/20213/designer/microsoft-power-bi-output-tool:

There are two expectations when using this tool:

1. Reloads are built to completely replace the contents of a dataset, i.e. an Append is not being performed

2. Columns will change over time with continued development

There is therefore a need for an ‘Overwrite (update columns)’ option. However, when this Existing File Action is used it updates column names, but it does not delete the contents prior to upload. An append onto the existing data, but with new column names is therefore performed.

I acknowledge that the instructions do not say that existing rows are deleted.

This leaves the need to perform a workaround:

1. Publish with ‘Overwrite (update columns)’
2. Publish (immediately after) with ‘Overwrite (keep existing columns)’

If step 2 is not done data will be appended which would lead to duplication issues.

Either these Existing File Actions need to be renamed to be clearer as to their operation, or preferably an option that updates the columns and sets up new (non-appended) data is required.

When creating a formula with the formula tool, it would be useful to be able to quickly tab into the data type column, then press D for Double and select this quickly.

Right now, you cannot use the keyboard to quickly type-ahead in this field, so every double field requires you to select, drop down, move the mouse to the bottom of the scroll window, click scroll down, then mouse back up to D for double.

(or "S" for Spatial etc - this is standard for most drop-down boxes)

For performance, it would be great if designers could mark Batch Macros safe for parallel execution. E.g. the macro will not dead-lock itself accessing inputs / outputs. 

Either Alteryx would run all iterations simultaneously, or to what available resources permit.

My use case here is a rule table (DMN) which execution against a data set, each rule needs to be executed against each row. The rules are expressed as formulas and are joined through the Dynamic Replace tool.

However we need to check whether inputs match multiple rules these may violate the matching process, so I run each rule through the batch macro to find matches. Once all matches are processed then validation on the matching occurs.

The input could be 30k rows, and there are about 80 rules which my Alteryx takes about five minutes to execute.

In order to make it easier to find workflow logs and be able to analyze them we would suggest some changes:

• In the log name instead something like "alteryx_log_1634921961_1.log" the log name should be the queue_id for example: "6164518183170000540ac1c5.log"

This would facilitate when trying to find the job logs.

 To facilitate reading the log we would suggest the following changes: 

1. Add the timestamp 
2. Add error level 

For the example of current and suggested log: 

 Please consult the document in attachment.

In the suggested format the log would be [TIMESTAMP] [ERRORLEVEL] [ELAPSEDTIME] [MESSAGE] 

Hi team, Can I have dropdown for Action tool link to container?

a: Check to disable, uncheck to enable

b. Check to enable, uncheck to disable

it was very confuse for me when i want to do a reverse way. it is good to if it able to apply to other interface.