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Submission GuidelinesHello,
After used the new "Image Recognition Tool" a few days, I think you could improve it :
> by adding the dimensional constraints in front of each of the pre-trained models,
> by adding a true tool to divide the training data correctly (in order to have an equivalent number of images for each of the labels)
> at least, allow the tool to use black & white images (I wanted to test it on the MNIST, but the tool tells me that it necessarily needs RGB images) ?
Question : do you in the future allow the user to choose between CPU or GPU usage ?
In any case, thank you again for this new tool, it is certainly perfectible, but very simple to use, and I sincerely think that it will allow a greater number of people to understand the many use cases made possible thanks to image recognition.
Thank you again
Kévin VANCAPPEL (France ;-))
Thank you again.
Kévin VANCAPPEL
There are times where new versions of Alteryx come out, but there are situations where you cannot keep the Desktop and Server versions in sync.
As an example, at his time of the year, we are getting ready for year-end and al the workflows located on the server have been tested and signed off on. Now there is a new version of desktop with new features, but advise everyone to stay on the current version in case we need to make a fix. Typically, if we updated Designer desktop and try to publish the server -- you will get a versioning error.
I propose that when saving to the server, I can choose the compatible version and Designer/Server can let me know if there is any features I am using that will not work. If I don't use any features from a newer version, the workflow will publish.
So, let's say my server and Designer are at version 2022.1 and I decided to download version 2022.2. Typically, if I open and make any change with the new version -- I would get an error saving to the server - even if I am not using new features. However, what I am saying is that there is an option asking me what version I would like to save the workflow to the server as and I can choose 2022.1. Designer or server can check if I did or did not use any incompatible features, and if not, can save to the with the appropriate version.
Thanks,
Seth
Currently, Cache and Run Workflow cannot be used if there's a second branch of data which goes around the tool which you want to cache. This slows down intermediate runs especially in complex workflows with a lot of inter-dependencies.
For example:
If you want to cache at the formula "Do something", Alteryx will not allow this because a single temporary cache file at this tool will not be sufficient:
My suggestion is that Alteryx allows multiple cache files for one single cache event. In this case:
Proposed process:
This way, I could use Cache and Run Workflow much more often which would save me a lot of time.
When the user has no internet connection or when the Help > Source setting is set to "Offline", clicking on a custom tool's help icon will always navigate to
which is practically never desirable for custom tools.
Specifying an offline help URL
Developers should have a way to (optionally) specify an offline help URL. This configuration could behave the same as `help_url` which already supports specifying both URLs and local files. If the offline help URL is not set, it would fallback to the `help_url` configuration.
{
"tools": {
"MyCustomTool": {
"configuration": {
"help_url": "https://mywebsite.com/help/my-custom-tool",
"offline_help_url": "file://help/my-custom-tool.html"
}
}
}
}
All built-in tools have their names, descriptions, help URLs, etc. localized to the currently selected locale. Custom tools should also be able to do this.
Specify localized configuration values
Developers should have a way to specify localized values for any locales they choose to support. Similar to the deprecated .yxlang files, this can be done with supplementary `ayx_workspace.[locale].json` files that redefine a subset of configurations which support internationalization.
/* ayx_workspace.jp.json */
{
"tools": {
"MyCustomTool": {
"configuration": {
"long_name": "カスタムツール",
"description": "これは日本語です",
"help_url": "https://mywebsite.com/help/jp/my-custom-tool"
}
}
}
}
All built-in Designer tools have an associated example workflow that can be opened by right-clicking a tool and selecting Open Example. This feature is invaluable in helping users familiarize themselves with a tool and explore all of its features. Custom tools should be able to specify example workflows of their own.
It is currently possible to specify an example workflow, but
Specifying an example workflow
Developers should have a way to specify the example workflow associated with any custom tool. This would likely be done in the `ayx_workspace.json` file.
{
"tools": {
"MyCustomTool": {
"configuration": {
"example_path": "configuration\\MyCustomTool_1_0\\example.yxmd"
}
}
}
}
Note that a workflow may depend on some external files as well. It would be ideal if an `assets_path` could be defined to easily allow any arbitrary assets to be included with your tool. (This is currently possible, but must be done by manually modifying the .yxi archive; it isn't handled by the SDK). This would easily allow for example workflows to be specified as a path relative to `assets_path`, and if the workflow contains any relative paths to files within the assets folder, they can be resolved.
{
"tools": {
"MyCustomTool": {
"configuration": {
"assets_path": "configuration\\MyCustomTool_1_0\\assets",
"example_path": "example\\example.yxmd"
}
}
}
}
Localization of the example workflow would also be supported when localization of the plugin configuration is supported.
When a plugin is created, it can be labelled with any tool category, existent or non-existent. If the category does not exist, Designer will create it and give it a default icon. It would be nice if a category icon could also be specified, specifically for this case.
Specifying a tool category icon
Developers would have a way to (optionally) specify the tool category icon for their plugin. This would likely be part of `ayx_workspace.json`.
{
"name": "My Plugin",
"tool_category": "Custom Category",
"tool_category_icon_path": "configuration\\tool_category_icon.png",
"package_icon_path": "configuration\\package_icon.png",
...
}
Behavior when installing a plugin
If a plugin has a tool category icon specified, Designer should do the following when installing the plugin:
This prevents changing the icons of existing categories (including built-in categories), but would prevent subsequent plugin versions from updating their tool category icons.
Use case
The company Acme Corporation develops a plugin for interfacing with Acme-related products, and would like all its tools to be grouped in a new category called "Acme" whose icon is the Acme icon.
It would be nice to create our own custom categories to be able to organize tools. It would be similar to how the Favorites category works, but any number of additional categories can be created.
Creating a new category
The user would have a way to create a new category and enter the following information:
Adding and removing tools from custom categories
The user would have a way to add tools to or remove tools from the custom categories.
When working in the Designer, I sometimes have to undo changes. And this experience is quite often very confusing and annoying.
For every change in the workflow, you have to press undo once. However, quite often, one user interaction results in other actions such as automatic move of the donwstream tool, change of size of a tool container etc. In such cases, you have inserted a single tool but need to press undo a couple of times to get back to the original situation. It is, however, often not clear how often. In most cases, I fail using undo at the end and revert my changes by hand.
Please change undo towards undoing one user-action in one undo step.
In case there might be users who like the current behaviour, you might make this a user setting how to deal with the undo history.
One of the most frequent issues I have with my workflow is when the Join Tool reorders columns for no reason. There is an option in the configuration to have the columns revert to the incoming order. It would be nice if the workflow automatically had this set as a default, or provide a toggle option in the settings for this to happen. In many of my flows I've had to create macros to keep the integrity of the column order or remember to go into the settings of this tool and re order the columns before a workflow run.
I would really love to have a tool "Dynamic change type" or "Dynamic re-type" which is used just as "Dynamic Rename".
Col 1 | Col 2 | Col 3 | Col 4 |
Double | Int32 | V_String | Date |
123.456 | 17 | Hello | 2023-10-30 |
3.4e17 | 123 | Bye | 2024-01-01 |
Name | New Type |
Col 1 | Double |
Col 2 | Int32 |
Col 3 | V_String |
Col 4 | Date |
In many programming languages, errors can be thrown and caught so that the final program does not fail even if a procedure or function produces an error.
I would like to propose something similar for Alteryx, using the Control Containers. Already now, a Control Container outputs the log in the container to its output stream on the upper right corner:
Still, the workflow produces an error:
My idea is to optionally avoid the error output to the log but only report the error through the control container's output log. The error message in the output log should be "degraded" to a warning. The output log of the control container should stay unchanged. The configuration of the Control Container could look like this (addition in red):
This would help a lot if stuff produced by others is used (e.g., third party macros) which might fail while this might be normal behaviour for the workflow.
I would like a way to disable all containers within a workflow with a single click. It could be simply disable / enable all or a series of check boxes, one for each container, where you can choose to disable / enable all or a chosen selection.
In large workflows, with many containers, if you want to run a single container while testing it can take a while to scroll up and down the workflow disabling each container in turn.
The function isnumber(<arg>) (in formula-like tools) does not do what I would expect from it:
It returns whether the data format of the argument is numeric. It does not return whether the argument actually represents a number (even though it might be a string).
Currently, you would have to help yourself by something like
REGEX_Match(<arg>, "^[+-±]?\d*([.,]+\d*)?([eE][+-]?\d+)?$")
which is quite clumpsy.
From my perspective, the right setup would have been:
I understand if the functionality of isnumber(<arg>) needs to be preserved. Then, a new function could be called isfloat(<arg>): "Is the argument something which could be converted to a float?" That would still be misleading but better than nothing.
When I run a Standard Workflow in the Designer, I can continue to work on other workflows, I can even run two workflows in parallel.
In contrast, when running an Analytical App in the Designer, the entire program is blocked and neither another workflow can be edited or run.
I propose to allow access to the Designer GUI also when running Analytical Apps.
いつも大変お世話になっております。本日は、製品の動作環境についてご相談させていただきたく、ご連絡いたしました。
弊社のお客様の中には、Windowsのユーザー名やフォルダ名に日本語を使用している方々が多く存在します。
現状、こうした日本語環境でのAlteryx製品の動作保証が明確にされていないため、問題が発生した際の対応に困難を感じております。
したがって、Windowsの日本語ユーザー名、または日本語のフォルダ名を使用した環境における
Alteryx製品の動作保証について、再検討をお願いできますでしょうか?
これにより、お客様へのサポートがより円滑に行えると考えております。
お忙しいところ恐縮ですが、具体的な方針や計画についてご教示いただければ幸いです。何卒、よろしくお願い申し上げます。
All the input tools like Input Data and Dynamic Input will have a new flag "Skip on fail" that will process all the data, or none of the input data, or partial of the data requested and will return the data that could be read and do not return any error in the WFs.
If the 'Skip on fail' flag is false - the system should act like it is now.
if the 'Skip on fail' flag is true - the system should return the only the accepted or manager to read data on the default out put, and can have a second output connection for the error log, so we can parse it and do something with it, but the WFs should still run,
This should be for all tools where formulas can be written and should work for all formulas as well, but I will give you my specific pain point as a easy to understand example.
When I write any formula where I am using CONTAINS, i am always thinking through the issue and writing the formula at the same time so I think [Name] contains "Test"
and I write [Name] and have to go back and add the CONTAINS before it, but when you do that instead of automatically wrapping itself around the field it does this:
Contains(String, Target)[Name]
Can we get an enhancement that sees if you are writing a formula up against a FieldName it will automatically "ingest" the field name into the syntax and leave you with something like this:
Contains([Name] , Target)
That will leave all the other variables which still need to be completed, but it will save time of having to clean up the text of the formula itself.
****Hopefully this makes sense. If you need me to expand on this, let me know. Otherwise hopefully other folks feel my pain and can add their commentary in here as well.
Thanks
I am a big user of the browse tool and the filter option within the browse tool. In many cases I filter on multiple columns at the same time as I'm sure many users do. I am suggesting the following 2 enhancements to filter functionality in the browse tool:
1. After applying some filters, although I can see the filter icon activate at the top of the tool, it is difficult to know at a glance which columns have filters applied without clicking on every column heading and examining the filter settings. In the event a column is filtered, a filter icon could be provided at the top of the column to easily identify filtered columns, removing the need for users to memorise filtered columns.
2. After applying multiple filters, if a user clicks onto another tool with the workflow or anywhere else on the canvas - even accidentally - all filters will be removed and the user will need to reapply them. In my view it would make more sense to make the filters persistent, or at least give users the option of doing so. Doing so would be a big time saver.
In a previous lifetime I spent a lot of time developing data processing workflows in Microsoft Access before moving into Alteryx as my primary data processing tool. Although Alteryx is, on the whole, vastly more feature rich than Access, Access has a couple of very simple features which Alteryx could integrate into the Browse tool to significantly improve its usability. In particular, I am suggesting the option to add a totals/summary row to the browse tool to calculate basic statistics for columns on demand.
Attached is a screenshot of a totals row for a dummy table in Access. As you can see, a user can select from various summary statistics including sum, average, count etc.
Almost every day I export data from the browse tool to Excel multiple times, simply to calculate column totals. A totals row in the browse tool would remove a major source of reasons for me to export to Excel and would significantly increase the browse tool's usefulness.
It would be nice to have a visual cue for a detour tool's configuration. This is especially the case when testing with several detour tools in a workflow - see the cleanse.yxmc screenshot below. I added an annotation to one of the detour tools as a possible solution.
Any of these options that would save the additional click would be appreciated.
Personally, I prefer that the outgoing anchor and outgoing wire not in use be grayed out. But even the default annotation stating the direction would be helpful.
Does anyone else have a preference or other ideas on the visual cues?
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