Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Connecet-to-an-Orcale-Database/m-p/12575#M956

When use Sql-Server build Stored Procedure where list in the Input Data Tool. So able to work with SPs.

When I use Oracle build Stored Procedure where not list in the Input Data Tool. So not  able to work with SPs.

Oracle, Sql-Server and MySql you can build Stored Procedure.

It would be great if when Alteryx for this Databases have implemented the same functionality.

So it can not be made dependent on the using Database to decide for Alteryx. 

Mathias

Today I have some workflows which have certain steps that occur after files are output.  I have these set up inside of Tool Containers so that I can easily enable/disable them as I am working if I do not want to produce output for this particular run.  However, sometimes if I need to troubleshoot on a workflow that I haven't worked on for awhile, I can neglect to disable these, which can cause errors.  This is usually harmless, but annoying.

Having two more options on Tool Containers could really help to improve this!

Disable When Browse Tools Disabled would be useful for any analysis/debugging steps that I only want to run when I am browsing to find data, but should not run otherwise.

Disable When Output Disabled would be really useful to ensure that these tools are turned off alongside the "Disable all tools that write output" option in Workflow-Configuration-Runtime.

This would save me a lot of unnecessary error messages and moments of panic, and would make these types of workflows easier for other users to debug without extensive notes.

In Alteryx Designer, under Workflow Configuration >  Events, there is an option to send email based on the events.

It would be great if this functionality can pick up smtp username that has been set in the server when the workflow is

executed from Alteryx Server. So user does not need to enter username and password anymore on each workflow.

Pretty much only time I add Browse tools during development now is to get access to the Cell Viewer to examine values better. 

Would love to be able to do this on the output window

For the purposes of troubleshooting/optimization, it might come in handy to have a timestamp column in the Results Pane. Especially with processes time-consuming enough that I let them run in the background, I would like to know which steps are particularly time consuming, and seeing when the messages were generated would at least be a start.

Many times; ideas for new ways to use Alteryx come to me while I'm not at work.

Most of the time that happens, I can use RDP via VPN to get to my work desktop.

But sometimes it isn't easy to do that.  Like when I'm driving, outside for a run, in the shower.. you get the idea.

My point is that there should be a mobile app for Designer (iPads and Android tablets).  The mobile app wouldn't necessarily need to be connected to the actual sources live (maybe require a template used for input for ODBC; but allow connections to HTTP/FTP/local sources). 

The user would design the workflow, and then have the option to email the schema to themselves (or others) so that once back at work, one could pick up where they left off.

Although I would prefer to use it on an iPad, it could technically be used on an iPhone as well.

For an example of how that could look, see the iOS app "Workflow".  That, in combination with the now defunct "Schemes" was a great way to do visual programming similar to what we do in Alteryx.

Just like there is search bar for Select Tool, there should be one for Data Cleansing tool also.

Hi Alteryx Designer Dev Team,

There are times where you want to create a variation of a particular pipeline and the data transformations in the beginning of the pipeline are similar but need slightly different configurations. To save time, can we have a right-click context option for each tool to be able to copy/paste or duplicate tool with existing configuration. This saves time by only having to change a few options in the duplicated tool. This is common for tools like, input, output, joins, groupings and reporting tools. An example where this functionality is handy in reporting: you may have a particular way that you always do your charts and instead of configuring the chart options from scratch each time, you copy paste the chart tool with current configuration and then you only have to make minor changes such as the data connections. 

Thank you

It would be great to have an outbound connector on output tools for 2 reasons:

a) if this outbound connector can carry key results of the output process, this can be saved in an audit log.  For example - rowcounts; success/failure.   This kind of capabiltiy (to generate a log, or to be able to check the rowcount of rows committed to a database) is important for any large BI ETL process

b) this woudl also allow the process to continue after the output process and also act as a flow of control.   For example:

- First output the product dimension

- once done - then connect (using the outbound connector) to the next macro which then updates the Sales fact table using this product dimension (foreign key dependancy)

I have a PDF of 27 pages and each page is identical.  The headers, footers and data are static in positioning on each page. It would be great if I could define the text to parse out on the first page, then that could be used to parse out all of the pages in the PDF.  It would make the tool far more useful.

It would be nice to have an option to distribute tools with the fixed default space of three in between each tool. Now it just distributes based on the available space, which can be inconsistent throughout the workflow.

When developing in Python using custom objects - you often use print( object) or str(object) to see what's in this object quickly.

For example 

myDictionary = {
'CarType': 'Ford',
'Cost': 20000}

this defines a dictionary.   If I want to quickly look into these to see what's there I can use:

print(myDictionary)

# gives {'Cost': 20000, 'CarType': 'Ford'}

str(myDictionary) 

"{'Cost': 20000, 'CarType': 'Ford'}"

This is incredibly useful for debugging and to understand how these custom objects / classes work.

Please could you add an overload to the str() method to allow this kind of simple debugging and understanding for all the classes used in the Alteryx Python SDK (https://help.alteryx.com/20193/developer-help/sdks/build-custom-tools/python-engine-sdk/classes)

For example:

str(record_info_in) which is of type <class 'AlteryxPythonSDK.RecordInfo'>) gives you <AlteryxPythonSDK.RecordInfo object at 0x000001A2C48C3190> which is not very helpful.

Much more useful would be to flatten this into a string format or dictionary so that users can see what's in the RecordInfo object that they're working with to make delivery and debugging easier.

cc: @Ozzie @BlytheE 

In the designer - when you attempt to open a canvas from your company server - you're given a search screen to find your canvas.

This search sometimes does partial string match and sometimes not - this inconsistency is confusing (full worked up solution in the screenshots below).

For example - if you search for the word "full" it will bring back "main - full download" but will not bring back "main - checkFullDownload".

Please can you change this search process to work on any substring of the canvas name - that is the intuitive behavior that users would expect.

Thank you.

I should be able to find this one if I use the word "Full" right?Nope - Full only returns canvasses where Full is at the beginning of the name; or after some whitespaceIt would be better if this worked with any substring

When developing HTML GUI for an alteryx tool - it has to be done in hand-code.

There are 2 main challenges here:

a) it is not approachable for new folk.   If we want the HTML SDK to be adopted more broadly, then it needs to be a graded learning curve where people without coding experience can use it and grow in confidence

b) it's not efficient.   the only way to know if you've done something right or wrong is to type it up in notepad, and then try it in Alteryx and see what breaks.

Could we instead move to an IDE type approach like Visual studio (screenshot below)?

Here:

• the user can drag & drop tools from the toolbox (left)
• position them visually in the design surface (center)
• while still having the ability to set custom properties or behaviours (right)
• and jump straight into code if you're comfortable (bottom)

And when you're ready to test it, you hit "start", and any errors or issues are reported at the bottom of the screen.

cc: @BlytheE 

We're not too happy with the Gallery Data Connections not being available for the IN-DB data input tool but that will hopefully be a feature to be looked at in future product improvements; Let us know if there are reasons not having this feature already.

Thank you.

I'm Left handed and use my mouse in my left hand.  As such I use the following right-hand keyboard operations in the programs like Excel etc; CTRL-INS (Copy), Shift-INS (Paste), and Shift-DEL (Cut).

In Alteryx Designer these don't work for me in the Workflow window (but do in say the meta Info window) - is there a setting so I can enable them for the Workflow Window, or can the feature be added.

This is a suggestion for improving the current Apache Avro output support. It would be nice to have a way to also output to a JSON file the Avro schema associated with the Avro data file.

- In the output tool, provide a file browse option to optionally write out the Avro schema JSON file

- Introduce a new tool or function to extract an Avro schema document from an existing Avro file and then save it to JSON

I am currently working on building self-serve Analytics apps for colleagues and I am using the Email tool for this. However, the credentials have to entered directly into the tool and whenever the password changes this needs to be again changed into the workflow by the workflow developer.

This means that:

A) Workflow developer needs to have access to the mailbox used in the From field
B) Only the developer's email address can be used in the From field
C) The developer needs to connect with mailbox user in person or over video-conference, share control of his own machine and have the user put in their credentials every time the mailbox user's password changes.

These are three major hindrances in using the email tool to its full potential.

Solution:

Provide an option in the Alteryx server to have a database where users can create a record of their credentials (hashed of course) and with each record a token number is generated. The token number can be shared with the developer who will update that in the email tool. Whenever the password changes, the user can directly retrieve his old credentials and change them using the same token number. This method will eliminate the above mentioned three constraints and allow for use of email tool to create complete self-serve apps.

It would be nice if we could resize the linked calgary tables box in the calgary input tool. It only shows 2 tables by default. I would like to be able to show more at times. I can change the size of the fields and query boxes, but the linked tables box is fixed at 2 rows by default.