Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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 building custom tools for Alteryx using the Python SDK, there is no current way to test these outside of the Alteryx Designer.

This means that your development process is:

- write some code (no code-sense; intellisense; auto-complete because Jupyter; VSCode; Visual Studio; etc cannot access AlteryxEngine or any of the other imports)

- hope

- copy that .py module into your C:\Users\<username>\AppData\roaming\Alteryx\Tools\<toolname>

- fire up Alteryx

- drop this new custom tool on a canvas

- run it to see if you get any errors

- then copy these errors out of Alteryx result window into Notepad to be able to read them

- then go back into your development environment to make changes

- repeat.

This is very painful, and this will directly scare most people away from learning how to create custom tools since it's not only inefficient - but also scary and frustrating for beginners.

Proposal:

Could we instead create mock python libraries; and a development harness (like Google does with Android development in Eclipse) in this SDK where:

- you have full code intelligence (intellisense, autocomplete)

- you can simulate engine events in a test harness (for example in the Android SDK; you can simulate the user rotating their phone, turning off GPS, hitting a volume button, etc).

- you can also write test cases which can run automatically

- then once you know that your tool will work - only then you drop it into the Alteryx Designer environment.

NOTE: This IDE way of thinking also allows you to bring the configuration pieces (like number of inputs; etc) out of raw code and into configuration options.

Although you may be able to do remote debugging by using platforms like PyCharm - that really does not give you the full ability to check in the code of your tool; along with all the test cases; in a harness that allows you to automatically check different events; or to make sure that your tool works in the test harness before deploying.

Thank you

cc: @BlytheE @SteveA @Ozzie @tlarsen7572 @cam_w @jdunkerley79 

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 

I see a huge potential for an IFTTT or Microsoft Flow Connector or Trigger.

Trigger: I have been part of a company that runs a great amount of Microsoft Flows to automate business processes. It would have been a nice addition, if we could start a Alteryx process when a certain event happens.

Output: On the other side, it would also be good to start a flow automatically when an Alteryx workflow is finished. E.g. it would be possible to create an analysis and automatically push it to several media / internal channels. It's also possible to bring twitter/facebook/etc output connectors to Alteryx, but it's definitely easier to build an IFTTT connector, that enable a huge amount of other tools.

Hi Alteryx 🙂

When I select fields within a BROWSE or Browse Anywhere, it would be nice to be able to highlight and deselect  a range of  fields instead of having to check/uncheck fields one at a time.  Yuck!  

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Alteryx 🙂

When you set maximum records per file, the filename gets _# appended.  Great!  But in reality you get:

Filename.csv

Filename_1.csv

Filename_2.csv

The first filename doesn't get a number.  I think that it should.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi to all,

I have seen one or two posts requesting ability to total up rows and/or columns of numbers, however this idea also requests the ability to subtotal data by a field and also produce an overall total.

This could be an extension to existing tools such as 'Summarise' and 'Cross Tab' or could be a stand alone tool.  Desired output of using a tool like this would produce something like this:

This would be incredibly useful for building reports within Alteryx as well as analysing the data, and cut down the amount of tools currently required to produce this.  I have seen a third party tool which does some of this but this adds the ability to subtotal.

thanks - Roger

I just want to be able to make the width of annotations customizable. Yes, you can use comment boxes, but those aren't tied to any tools in any meaningful way. There is all this room to write out an annotation in the configuration window, but eventually on the canvas, it will be cutoff. Also, this isn't exactly the most friendly way to read.

I think being able to customize a canvas setting for max width would be awesome. It could be under the canvas tab of the workflow configuration. Additionally, the ability to adjust the width tool-by-tool could also be really helpful.

Please let me know if I've overlooked a suggestion and I'll be glad to upvote that post.  

Just as we're able to right click a input and turn it into a macro imput for example, it would be helpful to turn formula into In-Db formula and the same goes for all the other tools that are available both inside and outside In-Db.

I created several fields inside a formula tool and later on, I had to do the same but In-Db, the field names and rules were the same, if I could I would just turn the one I already had into an In-Db tool.

Thanks.

Hi 

1:
I'm from Denmark, and like several other european countries we use commas instead of dot as decimal seperator. And we use dot as thousand seperator.

So if im working in a flow with loads of price fields, lets say cost price, amount per unit, amount and amount including vat i need to do a multi field replace. Else I dont get the output i can work with in excel or other programs.

So it would be great beeing able to set seperators on a flow level, like you can in excel when importing.

2.
Beeing able to set a date format on a flow level.
Lets say my input data is 12.12.2019 and i need 2019-12-12 in my output. If i work with several different date fields i need to use several datetime fields.
Alternate could be a multi field datetime ? 

3.
Having a search function when using the select ? And maybe a numbers order.

So if i scroll down, i could enter 3 - which means this would now be my 3. shown field? 

Hey @apolly 

You and the team have been doing a lot of innovative changes to the results window for data.

Could I ask for an uplift to the results window for Workflow Messages?

Summary: Error messages in the workflow results window cannot be fully viewed - have to be copied into Notepad and then reformatted before you can read.

Request: Allow user to double-click to see full readable version of a workflow result message

Detail:

If you have an error message in a workflow result - it gives you a message that is often longer than the window allows and there is no cell-viewer option

As a result, there is really no way to get to the important part of the error message to understand what's going on, other than to use Notepad

Step 1: Copy into Notepad

(you can see the end of line characters being misunderstood)

Step 2: Manually clean this up by breaking on the line breaks

And now you can see the important part of the result message..

Could we rather add the ability to double-click on a result message in the result window and bring up a modal window that formats the error message for you (similar to the modal window used for XML editing of a tool).   That would eliminate this entire wasteful effort of trying to read an error message and having to use Notepad?

Bring up a modal window, similar to this one; so that I can see the error without having to go to Notepad

It will be great to have the same columns filter option than Excel under the Browse view that display column content and allows to check/unchecked multiple data.  See picture before for references

AD

My idea is to have the AlteryxEngineCMD.exe to run a workflow as part of the standard Alteryx license.

Use case - be able to run Alteryx from the command line without the need to buy the entire Scheduler package (at $6,500/seat).

I understand why certain features are add on, but the ability to run AlteryxEngineCMD.exe (I feel) should be part of  the standard license which is already $5K+. For those who only need to be able to run a command line execution of a workflow $6.5K is a lot of money!

A great feature would be for CASS to provide the address type as Residential or Business.  Better yet, further breakdown of address type into single-family, apartment, retail, office, commercial, warehouse, etc.  This would be very beneficial when analyzing address data from the Tom Tom Address Points Calgary database and can allow a end-user to filter prioritize addresses in their analysis based on the type of address.

The new Paste Before/After feature is awesome, as is the Cut & Connect Around.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Paste-Before-After/idc-p/510292#M12071

What would be even better is to allow the combination of the two. E.G. It is not currently possible to copy or cut multiple tools and paste before/after, as this functionality only works for a single tool that's copied.

Thanks,

Joe

I see many posts where users want to view numeric or string data as monetary values. I think that it would be friendly to have a masking option (like excel) where you could choose a format or customize one for display.  The next step is to apply the formatting to the workflow so that folks who want to export the data can do so. 

cheers,

mark

When using the output data tool, it would save me and my cluttered organizational skills a lot of effort if the writing workflow was saved as part of the yxdb metadata. 

I've often had to search to find a workflow which created the yxdb. I tend to use naming conventions to help me,  but it would be easier if the file and or path was easily found. 

cheers,

 mark

@JeffA posted an awesome blog about how UI automation testing is being done within Alteryx using the Selenium library and the Python SDK.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works-Blog/Total-Automation-Badassery/bc-p/509096#M2105

This would be a TREMENDOUS addition to the core product - especially given that the alteryx team have already built these into a series of generic tools that can be dropped onto canvasses.

Example of where this would be super powerful for the Alteryx platform:

- the data I need to analyze is on a legacy system with no API; or behind a web login wall

- the data I need requires a user to hit a series of steps to download Excel or CSV (again, no API)

- I've found an outlier - can I submit this to an application so that someone can act on it?

This would be a very valuable addition to the core product; and really increase the scope of analytics capability - please could you consider adding this to the standard downloadable version as a brand new tab full of automation tools?

The performance profile option outputs a list into the results window. It is difficult to check the tools and continuously scan back to the profile. Make it easy! Put the times and percentages in the connection progress tooltips of all the tools.