Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Now that spell check is implemented ( https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Spell-Check-in-Documentation-Tools/idc-p/343... ), it doesn't work like I expected.

To quote Jpoz :

The language check is based upon the language you selected in the installer when you installed Alteryx.

However, on my computer, Alteryx is set in French. On some project, documentation is also in French, on some others, especially when I have to work with foreign coworker, it's in english.

Can we imagine a language by workflow file, with a default coming from the settings. Something like that :

UI language (User settings)

Default WF language (User settings, if not manually changed, coming from UI language)

WF Language (linked the ywwf/yxmd/yxmc file coming from Default WF)

Use case:  Person running app to select folder from limited list similar to how the tree tool allows for a user to select one or more files.  This selected folder would then be connected via an Action tool to a Directory tool (or by adding a formula tool to a Dynamic Input).  The Folder Browse Interface does not have the ability to restrict or provide a starting parent folder.  The app below pulls data from SharePoint site, which cannot be easily browsed to.  Currently I have the user select a file in the required folder, then use RegEx parse and a Formula tool to pull in all requested files from that folder.  It would be a better user interface if the user selected a folder.  A test sample of the workflow is attached (final version ends in an Alteryx database this is picked up in a chained app).

Loving the fresh new UI, but (there's always a but) I feel like the combination of font usage, (no) smoothing, and kerning in the 2018.4 user interface is very straining on your eyes and makes most of the text pretty hard to read:

On high(er) resolution screens, like laptops, the issues get worse. Working on a ThinkPad P51s, Windows 10, 1920x1080, no weird text and layout upscaling because I'm a sane person.

Description: I have configured a number of customized MapServer files rather than having to manually configure each layer in the ReportMap tool.

For reference, these are stored in the <Alteryx Data Install Folder>\AlteryxMap\TomTom_US_2015_Q3, for the TomTom US - Current Vintage reference base map. Below is a picture of the many versions of the .map configuration file I have created.

Rationale: Using these different files is cumbersome and inefficient. To switch out a map file, I have to rename the current .map file to a dummy name. Then I have to rename the desired file to be the name that the existing file was. Additionally, I can only have one .map file in use at any one time and all of the workflows running use the same one.

Idea: Allow user to choose which .map file to use from within the Report Map tool.

I'm adding a 'Dynamic Input' tool to a macro that will dynmaically build the connection string based on User inputs. We intend to distribute this macro as a 'Connector' to our main database system.

However, this tool attempts to connect to the database after 'fake' credentials are supplied in the tool, returning error messages that can't be turned off.

In situations like this, I think you'd want the tool to refrain from attempting connections. Can we add a option to turn off the checking of credentials? I assume that others who are building the connection strings at runtime would also appreciate this as well.

As a corollary, for runtime connection strings, having to define a 'fake' connection in the Dynamic Input tool seems redundant, given we have already set the 'Change Entire File Path' option. There are some settings in the data connection window that are nice to be able to set at design time (e.g. caching, uncommitted read, etc.), but the main point of that window to provide the connection string is redundant given that we intend to replace it with the correct string at runtime. Could we make the data connection string optional?

To combine the above points, perhaps if the connection string is left blank, the tool does not attempt to connect to the connection string at runtime.

Spark ODBC is really faster than Hive, at least for GUI.

However, two things are missing :
1/ Append existing for the write date (exists his way on Hive)

2/ability to put "overwrite" even if the table does not exist (it works this way on Hive)

These two drawbacks limit severly th

We would like to see more configuration options for renders to PowerPoint PPT. Specifically, we would like to be able to add headers, footers, and repeat column headers in the same way we can with PDF renders.

Refer to this unresolved question:

Powerpoint as an output of macro

@jaq734; @Prasanna921

Probably more of a bug. Not sure if this annoyes anyone else, but when a running workflow in a different tab completes, the current windows focus is gone, even you have the pop-up notification disabled. Check the video and see what happens at 0:11 when tab 105 finishes running while I'm typing a super complicated code 😉

Would be great if when copying and pasting tools onto the canvas they would appear next to the cursor, instead of near where they are being copied from. On large workflows it's annoying to copy the tool/s, paste, then drag to their new location.

I'm converting some old macros that were built in 8.6 for use in 10.6 and found something that could potentially be changed about the Alteryx .xlsx drivers. Specifically this refers to the field types passed from a Dynamic Input tool when the data fields are blank when using an .xlsx file as the data source template. 

When the new .xlsx file has fields populated, it works fine. If data is not populated in the new file, the field types are converted to Double[8]. This doesn’t cause a problem for the Dynamic Input, but it can cause problems for downstream tools. In the second case below, the field names are retained but the downstream Join tool errors when trying to join this now double field to a string (rather than returning no results from the join output as desired). This also occurs when a single field is empty, only that field will be converted to a Double[8] field. When the legacy .xlsx drivers are used, the field types are retained from the data source template.

File Source Template vs. file that is returned upon running

There are other solutions for this scenario such as using a Select tool with a loaded .yxft file of the correct field types, or selecting the Legacy .xlsx drivers from the File Format dropdown when configuring the Dynamic Input. However I thought this is something that could be improved about the Alteryx .xlsx drivers. 

I've had to look through a few logs recently and I had expected the information to match with what is displayed in the results window

Reference the tool name, type of tool (in/out, prep, etc).   Only the toolid shows up in the log where the results window shows the name

When running an app (not in the Gallery), the status bar appears to complete for each tool, then start over for the next tool.  It'd be great if while it was doing that, the tool name that it was running displayed.  Now, I know for most processes this will be instantaneous and your eye won't even catch it.  But if we have, for example, several join/sort tools with lots of data going through them, it would be nice to know which one it's on.

It was discovered that 'Select' transformation is not throwing warning messages for cases where data truncation is happening but relevant warning is being reflected from the 'Formula' transformation. I think it would be good if we can have a consistent logging of warnings/errors for all transformations (at least consistent across the ones based on same use cases - for e.g. when using Alteryx as an ETL tool, 'Select' and 'Formula' tool usage should be common place).

Without this in place, it becomes difficult to completely rely on Alteryx in terms of whether in a workflow which is moving/populating data from source to target truncation related errors/warnings would be highlighted in a consistent manner or not. This might lead to additional overhead of having some logic built in to capture such data issues which is again differing transformation by transformation - for e.g when data passes through 'Formula' tool there is no need for custom error/warning logging for truncation but when the same data passes through 'Select' transformation in the workflow it needs to be custom captured.

I'd like to see a tool that can take an input, then send it in different directions (similar to formula tool), but with many options... based on filters and/or formulas and/or fields.

Sometimes I need to perform actions on parts of my data or perform different actions depending on whether the data matches certain criteria and then re-union it later.

Right now, the filter tool only allows true or false. If we could customize further we could optimize our workflows rather than stringing filter tools together as if they are nested if/then.

So either the filter tool could have more options than true/false, and infinite ouputs, or the join multiple tool could be flipped, as shown below.

I envision something that says:

Split workflow:

• By Field: Field Name (perhaps with summarize functions such as min/max, etc.)
• By Formula (same configuration as current)
• By Filter
  • Field
  • Operator
  • Variable

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and reboot. Order shall return.

For those of us really old school, this would be a novel Easter egg to add

when using the R-Tool for simple tasks (like renaming files, for example) in an interative macro - there's a delay on every iteration as the R Tool starts up R.

The following are repeated on every iteration (with delays):

Can we look at an option to forward scan an alteryx job to look for R Tools, then load R into process once to eliminate these delays on every iteration?

This wasn't pretty (actually, it was challenging and pretty when I was done with it)!

My client receives files that include a static and dated name portion (e.g. Data for 2018 July.xlsx) within the file there are multiple sheets.  One sheet contains a keyword (e.g. Reported Data) but the sheet name also includes a variable component (e.g. July Reported Data).  I needed to first read a directory to find the most recent file, then when I wanted to supply the dynamic input with the sheet name I wasn't able to use a pattern. 

The solution was to use a dynamic input tool just to read sheet names and append the filtered name to the original Full Path.

[FullPath] + "|||<List of Sheet Names>"

This could then feed a dynamic input.

Given the desire to automate the read of newly received "excel" data and the fluidity of the naming of both files and sheets, more flexibility in the dynamic input is requested.

Cheers,

Mark