Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I work in an enterprise that uses Active Directory to manage database access. When I connect to MS SQL with Alteryx, I can use a string like:

odbc: Driver={SQL Server};Server=XXXX;Trusted_Connection=yes;

When I connect to Oracle using a 32 bit OCI, the string looks like:

32bit:oci:USER/__encryptedPW__@HOST.XXX

 This is problematic because my password must be changed every two months according to company policy. I have to update any workflow that uses the Oracle connection. It would be grand if I could use AD for Oracle and for any Alteryx connection the way I can for MS SQL in the first instance.

I am using Designer 2019.4.8.22007. This version has the new Input tool experience. When I create a connection to 32 bit OCI, that connection stays in the Recent list. After a while, it disappears, replaced by files and other things. When I need it, I have to go and create it again. Can you please persist connections? Thank you.

I'd love to see a Haskell Tool similar to the already existing Python and R-Tool.

Haskell is a great way to handle data without side-effects. I know I am probably pretty much alone with this suggestion, but I wanted to share it anyway.

I also know Python can do basically everything Haskell can do, but it isn't as beautiful and effective as it is in Haskell. Haskell brings many logic operators and great syntactic "sugar" out of the box. Things like pattern matching with input parameters is just amazing in Haskell and would require way more code in Python.

Dear Alteryx Gods,

Please hear my plea and add these beloved excel functions into the formula tool, using 3 Alteryx tools to do this simple task is ridiculous.

Thanks!

I would like to see the Publish to Tableau Server tool updated to allow appending an extract with Encryption at Rest enabled.  As data security requirements become more stringent, this would be a beneficial option.  Right now, I'm only able to create or overwrite an extract if I've turned on server-wide encryption at rest enforcement in Tableau Server.

*This is an idea from @sayuri  from the Portuguese Community*

• Create a button to add any tool to all output anchors of selected tools (similar to “Add All Browses”)

*This is an idea from @sayuri from the Portuguese Community*

• Create a tool to document the workflow process, including exporting a file/table that shows the connections from all tools and their main configurations in the order the workflow is run

*This is an idea from @sayuri from the Portuguese Community*

• Formatting capabilities in Interface tools: Ability to add an embedded new line in questions

*This is an idea from @fmvizcaino  from the Portuguese Community*

• Global DateTime support

*This is an idea from @fmvizcaino from the Portuguese Community*

• Fuzzy Match tool in Portuguese

Please add official support for newer versions of Microsoft SQL Server and the related drivers.

According to the data sources article for Microsoft SQL Server (https://help.alteryx.com/current/DataSources/SQLServer.htm), and validation via a support ticket, only the following products have been tested and validated with Alteryx Designer/Server:

Microsoft SQL Server

Validated On: 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2016.

• No R versions are mentioned (2008 R2, for instance)
• SQL Server 2017, which was released in October of 2017, is notably missing from the list.
• SQL Server 2019, while fairly new (~6 months old), is also missing

This is one of the most popular data sources, and the lack of support for newer versions (especially a 2+ year old product like Sql Server 2017) is hard to fathom.

ODBC Driver for SQL Server/SQL Server Native Client

Validated on ODBC Driver: 11, 13, 13.1

Validated on SQL Server Native Client: 10,11

• ODBC Driver 17+ is not mentioned, even though it was released in February of 2018. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/odbc/windows/release-notes-odbc-sql-server-windows?view...
• SQL Server Native Client is deprecated. It is being replaced by Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server. However, there is not a mention of Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server. The latest version of this is 18.3.0. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/oledb/release-notes-for-oledb-driver-for-sql-server?vie...

I love the example workflows.  If I've already added a tool to the canvas that I need to reconfigure, however, it would be easier to simply right click the tool that's already there rather than finding the tool on the ribbon at the top to open the example workflow.  Please add the ability to launch the example workflow for each tool on the right click menu.

When I perform an average aggregation the data type changes to increase the precision.  While I could see this is useful sometimes, it is not when I have a currency based field and I want to keep the precision fixed at two decimal places.  The result is I have to either add another select tool to update the data type or find an embedded select in a tool that exists post summarizing.

When calculating distance from a single point (or a list of points) to many other points, it can require a lot of processing time to append the single point into the same table as the multiple points (especially with very large datasets).  Seems it would be more efficient to allow the single point as in input to the distance tool and bypass the timely append step.

Under the join ribbon, could there be a new tool added called Minus?

This would behave similar to how SQL Minus works.  I think this tool could closely resemble the setup found in the union tool and provide the following functions:

• Ability to manually configure fields
• Automatically configure by name
• Automatically configure by position
• Ability to (de-select extraneous columns)
• Option to either include ALL rows, or just the distinct (similar to the minus and minus all behavior in SQL)

When doing validations in a workflow, this would provide a useful dq measure to use as a sanity check to ensure that for example loan numbers haven't been dropped from one point of the workflow to the next.

Figuring out who is using custom macros and/or governing the macroverse is not an easy task currently.  

I have started shipping Alteryx logs to Splunk to see what could be learned.  One thing that I would love to be able to do is understand which workflows are using a particular macro, or any custom macros for that matter.  As it stands right now, I do not believe there is a simple way to do this by parsing the log entries.  If, instead of just saying 'Tool Id 420', it said 'Tool Id 420 [Macro Name]' that would be very helpful.  And it would be even *better* if the logging could flag out of the box macros vs custom macros.  You could have a system level setting to include/exclude macro names.  

Thanks for listening.

brian 

Wondering why  I have to change 100s of my workflows every time password changes . system should read the latest password like Tableau can do embedded passwords on data sources automatically from active directory 

If you forget to put a name on a new column in the formula tool - the error message is 

The field "" is not contained in the record. (Expression #1)

Please could you replace this with a user-friendly message which is self descriptive like:

"Please provide a name for the new column created in expression 1"?

Hi there,

We often get the following error message from the download tool 

"00:00:23.555 - Error - ToolId 106: Error in libCURL: You have found a bug.  Replicate, then let us know.  We shall fix it soon."

Unfortunately this seems to be a transient error so we've not been able to replicate this in a useful & repeatable way.  However - we see this happening at least a few times per week on one of our servers, so this is a continuing issue.

Please could you provide more detailed error messaging on the download tool so that this error can be debugged and/or replicated?

Many thanks

Sean