Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

It looks like we can choose which fields to include in a workflow with the Listbox interface + Select tool., but we cannot ORDER or REORDER fields.

I did stumble across this post, it looks like it can be done but it isnt very elegant.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/User-Dynamic-Reorder-Columns/td-p/7437...

In working through challenge 77 it became apparent that here are a few useful formulae that would help with work like this:

OffsetFromPosition

Input: Point; Bearing; Distance; Units

Output: New point

Degrees to DMS:

Input: Degrees as floating point

Output: string with Degrees; minutes & Seconds

DMS to Degrees:

Inverse of the above

Table names seem very similar to named ranges in Excel. However, my workflow bombs when I try to read in a named table. Instead, I have to open the workbook, find the range of the table, and then type the range in the input tool. Alternatively, I could name the range that the table is in. However, I don't want to have a table name and a range name that are both referring to the same thing. So, I'd like to be able to read in a table I have in an excel workbook based on the name of the table. Does that make sense? Anything I can do to make the question clearer? Thank you!

I'm just submitting @neilgallen's idea from here. The labels in the results window are still white, which is no longer visible. You can barely see that they're indeed still there when you hover over them.

If I have a .zip file with multiple files of the same format and layout included, would like to be able to have those read in with 1 input tool.  I also have several large national files split by state that are zipped separately in a folder, so it would be nice to have the ability to use the wildcard functionality in 1 input tool to read all separate files.

Most people who have been around for more than one version change of Alteryx will be familiar with the standard dreaded error pop-up box:

"There was an error opening [workflow X]. This workflow was created by a more recent version of Alteryx..."

The pop up box is generated as many times as there are assets potentially affected. You click once to acknowledge you're aware there is a problem with asset 1A, then you click again when the 1B pop up appears, then you keep clicking until you reach W76. Or that's what the software expects you to do and seem to figure is the graceful way to handle potential problems associated with missing assets (it's far from certain there are even any problems with running the specific code referred to on the older version, this is a warning-level notification where stuff might not work which has been 'promoted' to a full-fledged error that you are requested to address at the asset level). 

If you work somewhere where there is a large community of Alteryx users sharing assets widely with each other (all making use of large shared macro repositories) the software's choice of notifying you at the asset level is, not to mince words, completely insane. You could do everything right, have exactly the recommended version from the perspective of Alteryx sys-management, the one that corresponds to the corporate server version executing the scheduled workflows, and still be bombarded with 15 notifications at start-up if you're away for a few days and in the time you were away one or two new guys at the (very large) company decided to create a few new assets with the latest version of the software and share them with their colleagues (the latest version was not yet implemented server-side, so some of those tools might fail for those users - but the tools become everybody's problem the second they're stored in the shared location).

The notifications at startup make no distinction between relevant and irrelevant messages, you can start an empty new workflow and still get messages related to macros you don't care about, because they're located somewhere where Alteryx has been told to look for them even if they're not loaded/included in the workflow.

Every single asset Alteryx might in theory make use of during the session that is starting up will spark an individual message that cannot be ignored or skipped without acknowledging its existence, even if many of the assets will work just fine with an older version. This setup scales ...badly.

I can think of at least two solutions which would in many ways be preferable to the current structure. One would be to 'batch' the notifications prior to creating the pop-up box (one pop-up per start-up, not per asset). What might be included in such a pop-up could for instance be a grouped output with the Alteryx versions that did not match the active version ('workflows developed in version 'XX56' and 'XX57' were identified and these may fail to load', or whatever). Another option would be to have a setting in Designer where you tell Alteryx you don't want to see these notifications at start-up.

We often build very large Alteryx projects that breakdown large data processing jobs into multiple self contained workflows.

We use CReW Runner tools to automate running the workflows in sequence but it would be nice if Alteryx supported this natively with a new panel for "Projects"

Nice features for Projects could be:

• Set the sequence
• Conditional sequence
• Error handling
• Shared constants
• Shared aliases
• Shared dependencies
• Chained Apps
• Option to pass data between workflows - Input from yxmd Output - no need to persist intermediary data
• Input/output folder/project folder setups for local data sources in dependencies window
• Ability to package like "Export Workflow" for sharing
• Results log the entire project

I'll admit it, I'm a coder, a keyboard guy, a sublime text typing junkie; but I love Alteryx.  Currently if I open a new workflow and start typing what happens? nothing... Wa wa.  Now lets imagine I'm already pretty familiar with Alteryx and I'm 5 moves ahead of my click and drag. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could click a whitespace and start typing?  Typing would bring up a context menu search with tools found by the search (similar to the "search all tools" in the upper left corner, but next to the cursor, and vertical).  I could continue typing until one tool was left or select a tool using my cursor keys. Hitting 'Enter' would insert the tool where I had originally clicked and open another tool search window, selecting the next tool would automagically connect the two and on down the line (if multiple leg outputs exist for the tool the context menu would appear allowing me to select the leg I want it to connect to, hitting Enter would again bring up the tool search...

Now get this, go back to just after my first search... if instead of Enter I hit the "Tab" key, boom, it would take me to the configuration panel and allow me to fill in/tab through the configuration.  Hit enter again and I'm off to the races with another tool search.

All you click and draggers don't lose any functionality, and we keyboarders can swiftly race through development with ease.  How about that?  (the standard syntax check/path validation would need to be paused to keep development quick until I clicked again on the workflow which would execute the Rapid development mode.)

Business problem

Alteryx's block until done tool is a terrific way to sort which records go to which stream first.  However, during the last couple of years my team has experienced several times where there are gaps in functionality.  For example, we output data into a relational database (SQL Server) with foreign key constraints.  In this manner, one output tool must be completed (the dimension tables) before the others (fact tables) to properly load data.  Block until done doesn't always work in these cases, and our team has frequently relied on using chained apps or other clunky workarounds.  This creates unnecessary complexity for a simple problem.

A potential solution

Allow an optional setting in the output tool that waits for another tool in the same workflow to complete first.

Would like to use arrows and other shapes for documentation. Moreover, having "anchors" (i.e., like in a wiki) would really facilitate moving about large workflows. I imagine the former is not hard to implement, though uncertain about the latter.

Check out the mock-up workflow for an admittedly bad example.

Connect to PowerPivot data model or an Atomsvc file 

@MarcH I'm putting your name on this one:

Yesterday I was working with @Cedric via WebEx and we were building a macro together.  We were making several field substitutions and and Cedric stated the obvious, "Alteryx should make this easier".

Contains([Field_X],"XYZ")

He would double click [Field_X] and the result is a partial selection:  [Field_X].   The brackets don't get selected.

I'm sure that there is a good explanation for why this happens, it just doesn't make the UX wonderful.

Cheers,

Mark

We would like some enhancements to the Salesforce connectors (input and output) to allow:

- Either the Batch or the Bulk API to be used. Batch API is much better for smaller jobs while the Bulk is better for larger jobs (larger numbers of records). It would be very useful to allow the selection of which API was used by the tool to use the most efficient API.

- The number of records per batch to be defined in the tool. I know this can be achieved using a batch macro but it would be far easier (from a user point of view) to be able to enter this value in the Salesforce connector and have it manage the batch size. We frequently have issues with the batch size being too large and Salesforce having errors (and records not updating).

Alternative data sources namely #altdata are key for enriching data. One source is social media.

I believe Alteryx lacks in social media analytics.

• I would like to propose a Instagram connector...
  
• Crawl comments, tags(useful for text analytics)
  
• Impression and likes... (time-series data)
  

If you are into #media, #advertising, #marketing analytics, #influencer analytics please support the idea by seconding...

https://www.instagram.com/developer/authorization/ is the link for the graph API updated after the latest acebook scandal... now fixed...

Alternative data sources are key for enriching data. one source is social media.I believe Alteryx lacks in social media analytics.

• I would like to propose a YouTube connector...
  
• Crawl comments and video definitions (useful for text analytics)
  
• Impression and likes/dislikes... (time-series data)
  

If you are into #media, #advertising, #marketing analytics, #influencer analytics please support the idea by seconding...

There is an API called YouTube DATA API

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started

Hello,

A lot of time, I would like to manipulate data between my interface tool (let's say a dropdown or a control parameter) and the action tool.

This can be things like parsing (text to column..), regex, multifield, etc...

As of today, we can just write formula and this is really poor.

Best regards,

Simon

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.  

When I publish using the tabcmd publish command in an event or using the Publish to Tableau Server Macro, the extract becomes LIVE. I do not want it to become LIVE, because when it does, I cannot refresh the extract using the tabcmd refreshextracts command or setup a refresh schedule in Tableau Server. Is there anyway to make this tde stay an extract after Alteryx rewrites the file? When the extract is live it will not refresh until I manually select Refresh in Tableau Server when I am in the Workbook that is connected to the data source I am publishing.

I posted the above question and was told this would be good to add to the New Idea module. Thanks!

It was great that Alteryx that read all the worksheet include hidden tabs.

but, in some situation, people just hide the unused worksheet like last month data.

Hence, It is good that Alteryx able to have a option to remove those hidden worksheet.