Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I need support for outbound data streams to be gzip compressed.  Ideally, this would be done by a new tool that can be inserted into a workflow (maybe similar to the Base 64 Encoding tool).  Just including it in the Output Tool will not address my needs as I will be sending gzip payloads to a cloud API.  There are two main reasons why this is necessary (and without it, quite possibly a roadblock for our enterprise's use of Alteryx):

 

1. Some APIs enforce gzip encoding, therefore Alteryx cannot currently be used to interact with such APIs
2. When transmitting large volumes of data across the Internet, gzip compression will significantly decrease transmission times

I haven’t found a common spatial file format to use between Alteryx, MapInfo Pro and ArcMap.  The one file/db type that all 3 software packages have the ability to use is SQLite.  Problem is that each of these GIS packages stores data differently in SQLite. 
I propose the following…  Alteryx should have 2 new SQLite options to save output (and read from) in SQLite-ESRI and SQLite-MapInfo.  This does not get us to the holy grail of one common file format but does get us down to 2.  (If you guys could figure out 1 common format that would be better)

Having these new SQLite formats would fix a common issue shared by the Alteryx supported ESRI and MapInfo formats, namely 2G file limits, multiple files per dataset and short field names.  Currently, to save an output for ESRI and Mapinfo, I take a single yxdb and save multiple shape or tab files.  The conversion back is an aggregation of individual files into an yxdb.  SQLite, as a database, has the ability to store many tables which further reduces files (much like a file geodatabase).

Finally, I have been begging for Alteryx to have the ability to read and write to an ESRI file geodatabase, which seems to never come to fruition.  This SQLite solution would eliminate my need to write out to file geodatabases.
 

We have a number of clients now using Exasol databases and they would like to connect Alteryx to this data source.  There is currently some difficulty connecting using Alteryx and so it would be good if this could be fully tested please.

This appears to be a bug with either the Layout Tool or the Render Tool. When I setup two Tables using the Horizontal Layout Tool and export to Excel using the Render tool, the font size of the bottom-right cell of the first table is too large. No amount of changing the font properties within the Alteryx Reporting tools appears to fix this.

 

It would be very powerful to be able to multi-thread batch macros. Since the data for each batch is known and unrelated between batches, it seems like the processing of each batch could be distibuted to multiple processors without issue. This could dramatically increase performance in certain situations.

It would be great if we could output the coefficients of regression equation to a table so that one can use them in rest of the module. Currently, Alteryx can output the table/coefficients in charts/reports form which is not re-usable as such in the module. 
The values of coefficients/Residuals/Errors would be very useful in building macros for techniques like Missing Value Analysis which can't be done in Alteryx as of now.

Possibility to deselect fields directly in the input (shape, csv, tab, etc).

 

As of today, we cannot choose the field separator when we read a csv file. In France, the common separator for csv is the semi-colon (;)

 

It leads to this kind of thing in a filter :

 

It would be useful to have the count of rows show up under Browse icons once a module was run.  While debugging, I often have a number of Browse icons scattered about.  It would be nice if I didn't have to click on each to see how many records made it that far.

Thanks!

Probably a small request, but please consider updating the Output and Browse tool icons so they are easier to tell apart from one another.

When working with large modules, I often need to update Output paths or make sure I'm not overwriting data, and the two tool icons are so similar they are hard to pick out.

Thanks!

Both of these can be partially accomplished with the output of the directory tool:

- List Directories - Summarize unique list of directories from the directory tool output

- Exclude Paths - use filter tool to exlude files or directories based on patterns

 

 However, here are some scenarios that aren't addressed cleanly:

- Directories are not listed unless there is a file contained within.  The tool is called Directory, but it only lists files.  The directory has to be non-empty to be listed.  An option is needed to either list files and/or directories (including empty optionally)

- I can't figure out whether the file specification is a wildcard expansion only or supports regular expression for inclusion/exclusion. I see in the File Browse tool that you can list multiple formats e.g. Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt|All Files (*.*)|*.*.  Here is a use case where this is required.  Our network shares have Windows file restore snapshots stored in a ~snapshot directory.  We don't want the directory tool to traverse this directory (because it literally takes hours to scan), but there isn't an elegant way to exclude it.  If you filter it from the directory tool output, it's already scanned it. What we've done is generate the top-level directory list outside of the tool and fed it into a macro that has a directory tool (with sub-directory scanning enabled) inside. 

- Another way to address this specific scenario woudl be to have an option to exclude traversal of "hidden" folders.  But a more generic approach is ideal.

I think it would be a nice feature if a user were able to export the list of tools and annotations in a way to use as the foundation of a process memo (or simply listed sequentially in an appendix). We're using Alteryx for tax data prep processes and documentation of the process is important.  So I believe getting the workflow into words would be a great addition.

I have several modules that need to run in sequence.   Can a ksh or some other program be used to string the modules together?  

So that if I have Step1.yxmd, Step2.yxmd and Step3.yxmd.  2 is dependent on 1, 3 is dependent on 2.  I want to tell it the jobs to run and then to wait until that module completes, then run the next.  


run Step1.yxmd
Wait

run Step2.yxmd
Wait

run Step3.yxmd
Wait


Or, if I have a group of modules that can run concurrently but subsequent jobs are dependent on all of them to finish, i can let all those jobs run and have the next step wait for those to complete to begin.  

run Step1A.yxmd
run Step1B.yxmd
run Step1C.yxmd
run Step1D.yxmd
Wait

run Step2.yxmd
Wait

run Step3.yxmd
Wait


I know this is very simplistic, but hoping it shows the need.  Also, we do have the scheduler set up to use, so if there is a way to set dependencies between modules within Scheduler, that might be helpful.  Just haven't found anything.  

Thanks!

It would be nice to have the ability to double click the top area of a container to either show or hide the container's objects. Only being able to show or hide containers using the arrow icon in the top right is quite cumbersome for large containers because it requires a lot of horizontal scrolling in order to change the desired view of the modules workflow.

Currently when I open and run an app in designer mode im unable to access any other modules while it runs.  It would be nice to be able to work on other modules while an app runs without opening a debug.

Seeing how we use browse to tools to help build out modules, but they slow down the modules because they write out temp files, it would be awesome to have a "record count" option similar to the input tool. This would allow us to see the data as it's flowing through the module without slowing it down.  Adding a sample tool before every browse would be fairly cumbersome. 

When building an expression (e.g. [Store Type] in ("Supermarket", "C-Store", "Gas Station") ) when the user selects the field variable, provide all the unique values in that field so user can double-click and add them to the expression, without having to look and see what values are in the table, what data type (shows quotes if string) and manually type the values, which can lead to errors.

This functionality is currently available in GIS programs such as ArcGIS and Quantum GIS (QGIS).

 

There is MD5 hashing capability,using MD5_ASCII(String) and MD5_UNICODE(String) found under string functions

it seems to be possible to encrypt/mask sensitive data...

 

BUT! using the following site it's child's play to decrypt MD5 --> https://hashkiller.co.uk/md5-decrypter.aspx

I entered password and encrypt it with MD5 giving me 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99

Site gave me decrypted result in 131 m/s...

 

It may be wise to have;

SHA512_ASCII(String) and

SHA512_UNICODE(String)

 

Best

 

Altan Atabarut @Atabarezz

I've found that double-clicking in the expression builder results in varying behavior (possibly due to field names with spaces?)

 

It would be great if double-clicking a field selected everything from bracket to bracket inclusive, making it simpler to replace one field with another.

 

For instance:

 

Current:

IF [AVG AGE] >=5 THEN "Y" ELSE "N" ENDIF

 

Desired:

IF [AVG AGE] >=5 THEN "Y" ELSE "N" ENDIF