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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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 This might be something that people see as a feature, but if you've got an input tool on your canvas that isn't connected to anything, I'd like the engine (either) to ignore reading the data.  

 

I often put tools onto the canvas and build around the input and in reality (or when working with large files), the execution is slower than it needs to be with reading files that are not used.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

As we begin to adopt the AMP engine - one of the key questions in every user's mind will be "How do I know I'm going to get the same outcome"

One of the easiest ways to build confidence in AMP - and also to get some examples back to Alteryx where there are differences is to allow users to run both in parallel and compare the differences - and then have an easy process that allows users to submit issues to the team.

 

For example:

  • Instead of the option being run in AMP or run in E1 - instead can we have a 3rd option called "Run in comparison mode"
  • This runs the process in both AMP and E1; and checks for differences and points them out to the user in a differences repot that comes up after the run.
  • Where there's a difference that seems like a bug (not just a sorting difference but something more material) - the user then has a button that they can use to "Submit to Alteryx for further investigation".    This will make it much simpler for Alteryx to identify any new issues; and much simpler for users to report these issues (meaning that more people will be likely to do it since it's easier).

 

The benefit of this is that not only will it make users more comfortable with AMP (since they will see that in most cases there are no difference); it will also give them training on the differences in AMP vs. E1 to make the transition easier; and finally where there are real differences - this will make the process of getting this critical info to Alteryx much easier and more streamlined since the "Submit to Alteryx" process can capture all the info that Alteryx need like your machine; version number etc; and do this automatically without taxing the user.

 

 

 

It would be great to have the ability to use a word file as a template and create a pdf as the output which can be emailed to a list of emails through alteryx.

Please enable "Friendly Name" in the e-mail tool.

 

e.g. None <none@none.com>

 

When using this configuration, the workflow fails with error:

Error: Email (1): ComposerEmailInterface: Record#1 From Field contains 2 entries

 

"Fiendly Name" does work when sending a Workflow Event e-mail, but not in the e-mail tool.

Chris88_0-1594701263817.png

 

Currently I am running two version of Alteryx and some of the macros were created/updated in the newer version of Alteryx. I would like to see only one error message displayed for all of the macros created in a newer version rather than having a dialog box pop up a dozen plus times (one for each macro) every time I open an instance.

 

Macro Error MessageMacro Error Message

Alteryx gods,

 

Please can you include right-click options for select/de-select in all tools that have select functionality, including:

Select

Join

Join Multiple

Append

 

etc.

 

Currently this functionality is hidden in the menu which goes against the look and feel of the rest of the product.

 

I know this was raised by @MarqueeCrew back in the day, and I'm surprised this was never implemented.

 

Please, Alteryx Gods. It would make me very happy.

 

M.

The problem


When building macros or apps which require a user to update a value in a text input tool via an interface tool, such as text input, the field length does not currently update. This can cause issues when developing things like API calls, where the value can become truncated.

The current workaround to to put a select tool after the text input and update the size of the field to accommodate potential input values.

 

Suggested solution

As part of the configuration window for the text input tool add a check box which allows a user to specify whether a field size should update based on an interface tool input.

The ability to create Interface tools would be helpful. I would to edit multiple actions at the same time on a single tool, but it needs to be done dynamically. All of these tools exist within the standard tool set, but the standard action tool only allows for one action to be done per tool.  

 

Other Examples:

-Radio Button Groupings (only 1 scenario can be selected within a group instead of one radio button per designer interface)

 

-Replace textual selection with a graphic selection:

                       Please select a Park to run the report for:

 

                      Islands of Adventure     Universal Studios      Both        vs                IOAIOA          Universal StudiosUniversal Studios         UPRUPR

 

 

-Toggle List Box Options where: 

Include Field in Record (Horizontal)Transpose Field in Record (Vertical) Field Name
X  Record Date
 XProduct 1
 XProduct 2

 

Survey ImportSurvey Import

 

 

As Alteryx becomes more focussed on the Enterprise - it is important that we build capabilities that support the needs of large-scale BI.

 

One of these critical needs is dealing with heterogeneous data from different systems that use different IDs for every critical entity / concept (e.g. client; product)

 

Here's the example:

Problem:

- In any large enterprise - there are several thousand different line-of business systems

- Each of these was probably built at a different time, and uses a different key for specific concepts - like Client & Product

- Most large enterprises that I've worked at do not have a pre-built way of transforming these codes so...

- This means that any downstream analytics finds it almost impossible to give single-view-of-customer or single-view-of-product.

 

Solution option A:

Reengineer all upstream systems.   Not feasible

Solution option B: 

Expect some reference-data team to fix this by building translations.   More feasible but not fast

Remaining Solution Option:

Just as Kimball talked about - the only real way is to define a set of enterprise dimensions, which are the defined master-list of critical concepts that you need to slice-and-dice by (client; product; currency; shipping method; etc) in a way which is source-system agnostic

Then you need a method in the middle to transform incoming data to use these codes.   This process is called "Conforming"

 

What would this look like in Alteryx?

Setup

  • We would use the connect product to define a new dimension - say "Product".
  • Give this a unique ID which is source-system independant; and then add on the attributes that are important for analytics (product type; category; manufacturer; etc)
  • Then decide how to handle change (slowly changing dimension or SCD type 0,1,2, etc).   Alteryx should take full responsibility for managing this SCD history; as do many of the competitors
  • We then create a list of possible synonym types (within Connect).   For example - a product may have a synonym ID from your supplier; from your ERP system; from your point of sale system.  that's 3 different IDs for any product.
  • We then load up the master data - this is painful but necessary

In Use:

  • I read in data into alteryx via any input tool
  • I bring in a "Conforming" tool off the toolbox (new tool which is needed)
  • It asks me which column or columns I wish to conform
  • For each - it asks me which synonym type to use
  • It then adds a translated column for me to use which ties back to the enterprise dimension - and spits out the errors where the synonym is necessary.

 

Impact:

In BI in smaller contexts, or quick rapid-fire BI - you don't have to worry about this.   But as soon as you go past a few hundred line-of-business systems and are trying to do enterprise reporting, you really have to take this serious.   This is a HUGE part of every BI persons's role in a large enterprise - and it is painful; slow and not very rewarding.   If we could create this idea of a simple-to-use and high-velocity conforming process - this would absolutely tear the doors off enterprise BI - and no-one else is doing this yet!

 

@AshleyK @BenG @NickJ @ARich @patrick_digan @JoshKushner @samN @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller 

Currently with Find & Replace tool you can only select one field at a time. 

 

I have multiple fields for which I need to apply the same Find and Replace.

 

I'd find it handy to be able to select multiple fields at once, as you can in the Data Cleansing tool etc.

Can Alteryx create a native connector to connect to SSAS TABULAR Cubes.

Rather than giving the users a big list of different date formats to choose from, allow the user to construct their own format with syntax of the incoming date that they are dealing with.

Currently I need to do a string function moving dates around to match a predefined syntax...

Hi,

Add to the feature where you can open a workflow to show how to use a tool.  Allow a user (and share this within an organization) to add a tool template workflow to a tool so one can open the template workflow and then copy the tools in the template into the workflow being worked on.  There are instances where we use the same tool combinations like for dynamic file naming and output.

 

Regards.

Hi,

 

It would be great if the Intellisense features of the Formula tool could also be put into the Advanced Filter and Multi-Row tools. 

 

Thanks

On the “Multi-Field Formula” tool, the default is to “copy output fields and Add….”  I think the default should NOT copy. I’m using this tool to trim all of the blank spaces, and change the case in text fields. I often forget to uncheck it and end up with all these additional fields at the end. With regard to the tool container, I think the default margin should be small. I build huge workflows, and putting each section in a tool container. I have to go in and change each one to small margins to condense the workspace. Perhaps in the user settings, under document, there could be a default margin option, just as there is a container color option.

For more than 5 years It has annoyed me that numeric results in Designer are always awkwardly displayed as left justified. 

 

Nearly all conventional financial reports present numbers RIGHT justified with a vertical alignment of the decimal points and interval markers.   In Alteryx this convention is snubbed, at least in the Results Window, making it more work to interpret the results.

 

Given that Alteryx would like to sell more Designer licences 🤑 to those millions of accountants 🤕 still struggling in Excel hell , it would seem to be a smart move to concede on this small point. 

 

An easy way to deliver this enhancement would be either (1) via a user setting or (2) an enhancement of the   "Hide Numeric Separator" toggle in the upper right corner of the Results window:

 

derekbelyea_0-1639722988830.png

 

 

When building iterative macros and debugging I tend to copy an paste the calculation part multiple times underneath to see what the status would be on iteration 2, 3, 4... However when there are multiple inputs to tools in the calculation steps, for example join tools or unions, then for each step it need re-connecting. 

Untitled drawing-8.png

 

So the idea is two fold

1) Allow the user to 'lock' an input so that when that tool is copied the upstream connection point is always the same, e.g. the R input for the join tool is automatically connected to the D input macro whenever that tool is copied

2) For iteration outputs, recognise that the select tool is connected to an iteration input so when it is copied it takes the iteration output as the upstream tool.

The Remove Null Rows feature added to the Data Cleansing tool is really nice, however it doesn't work for a common use case for us where we have key metadata field(s) added to the data stream that make rows not null so we'd like to be able to ignore or exclude one or more fields from the Remove Null Rows output.

 

Here's a use case starting with an Excel file with multiple tabs where each tab holds the records for a different Province:

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-17 at 9.39.17 AM.png

 

 

Note that the 2nd record in Southern is entirely empty, so this is the record that we'd like to remove using the Data Cleansing tool.

 

Since the Province name is only in the worksheet name (and not in the data) I'm using a Dynamic Input tool with the "Output File Name as Field" to include the worksheet name so I can parse it out later. So the output of the Dynamic Input looks like this:

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-17 at 9.46.34 AM.png

 

With the FileName field populated the entire row is not Null and therefore the Remove Null Rows feature of the Data Cleansing tool fails to remove that record:

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-17 at 9.48.24 AM.png

 

 

Therefore what we'd like is when we're using the Remove null rows feature in the Data Cleansing tool to be able to choose field(s) to ignore or exclude from that evaluation. For example in the above use case we might tick the "FileName" checkbox to exclude it and then that 2nd row in Southern would be removed from the data.

 

There are workarounds to use a series of other tools (for example multi-field formula + filter + select) to do this, so extending the Data Cleansing tool to support this feature is a nice to have.

 

I've attached the sample packaged workflow used to create this example.

Before Designer 2019.4 there was a "bug" in the workflow statistics collection that under the "SampleModule" data from the UsageGallery collection the name of the workflow run from within Designer was available.  We used that information to determine the common workflows run in our community as well as generating a measure of community growth.  The "bug" was removed in 2019.4 and now we can only determine the number of runs, but not the number of distinct workflows that were run.  This idea to do return the workflow name run to the information stored in the Mongo database.

 

daviskb_0-1592313145407.png

 

Hi all,

 

As per the post here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Dynamic-input-not-respecting-data-sort/td... - there are situations where you need to use something like a dynamic input to query data, but need it to be brought back in the order that you specified on the input stream.

 

The Dynamic Input too sorts the input stream deliberately, to check for duplicate queries so that it doesn't waste time bringing back duplicate data.

 

It would be great if we can extend the dynamic input tool to allow users to specify that they wish the data unsorted, and that they are OK with the consequences of possibly running the same query twice.    Even if this is a setting that can only be set through XML, it would still be helpful.

 

Many thanks

Sean

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