Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The C API for e1 is included in the Designer Desktop installation. The new AMP engine must have a C API as well, but it has not been released publicly.

Let tool and SDK makers create custom tools that plug into the AMP engine by releasing the specifications of the AMP C API.

Session connection to Google Sheet exists for 60 minutes. If someone wanted to keep this for more time then "User Login" option requires re-entering credentials every 60 minutes.

However, we can use the Developer Login0 to bypass this limitation. This method requires sign-in using Google API credentials. This option requires obtaining a Client ID, Client Secret, and Refresh Token and does not require re-entering credentials to run a workflow.

My question - can you address this issue in next release of Alteryx?

Some say to mato and some say to_mato, but how about:  to/mato?

While working with my new friend, @Cedric we ran across a field in his data that contained a '/' character.  We were building a macro where we updated the value of the field [AB/CD] with another field selected from the incoming data.  Our error message was something akin to:  Field AB was not found.

We worked around the issue, but what remained was the fact that certain characters are permitted in field names within some aspects of Alteryx and not in others.  I don't know if you're aware of this limitation.  

Cheers,

Mark

Recursion is a common task that we perform while creating ETL process. There should be some way in the macro to allow recursion process, i.e. taking value from the output in macro and providing it as input to the control parameter. 

Adding this feature could improve ETL capabilities within Alteryx

When I'm working with a new data or tool set, I'd find it helpful to know which tools other analysts are using.

I'm envisioning an optional, dockable window where a list of tools (and possibly percentage/probability rank) exist to suggest the next tool most users add after the selected tool (or blank canvas).

For example, I open a new workflow and the window shows the following suggestions of tools:

Next, I add a File Input.  While the File Input tool is selected, the list updates to show the most utilized tool after a File Input:

If I click back onto the blank canvas though, the suggestion window reverts to:

Ideally, there would be the option of the Community stats and/or your local server/enterprise stats.

I would like to suggest the functionality of converting an In-DB tool to Input Data automatically as it is done with Input Data so that it becomes an automatic Macro input.

The reverse would also be interesting, converting the Input Data, when it is connected to the database, to In-DB.

Hi Alteryx Designer Dev Team,

There are times where you want to create a variation of a particular pipeline and the data transformations in the beginning of the pipeline are similar but need slightly different configurations. To save time, can we have a right-click context option for each tool to be able to copy/paste or duplicate tool with existing configuration. This saves time by only having to change a few options in the duplicated tool. This is common for tools like, input, output, joins, groupings and reporting tools. An example where this functionality is handy in reporting: you may have a particular way that you always do your charts and instead of configuring the chart options from scratch each time, you copy paste the chart tool with current configuration and then you only have to make minor changes such as the data connections. 

Thank you

Hi All,

Did you all experience when building a iterate macro this situation?

When you have no idea why the output is different from what you want,

hence, you remove the rows/ data to force the data run only 2 iterate, review the result.

then, you add back the rows/ data to force the data run only 3 iterate, review the result 

then 4, 5 and etc... until we found the issue.

so it was important that we can view how the result of each iterate to enable us to identify the issue quicker and more efficient.

Example output

The output may like below: (with a option to let user to choose of cause)

if input data is 3 and the macro is to multiply 2 and power of 2 every iterate. (1st iterate=3*2^2, 2nd iterate=12*2^2)

just add one column in front to show the iterate and rest is the result.

It seems like it is restricted to 255 characters using .hyper as an input (Alteryx designer discussion).  It would be great if we can read at least 2147483648 bytes which is the string limitation in Alteryx.

Hello

My problem: I've used the download-tool to download a 40mb XML. Parsing the DonwloadData-field containing this XML results in about 6600 records. The XML-Parse Tool passes the orginal DownloadData field to each record, resulting in quite a bit of memory usage:

XML-Parsing Problem

Suggestion: An option in the XML-parse Tool to not pass the parsed field in its output. 

Marco

Business problem

Alteryx's block until done tool is a terrific way to sort which records go to which stream first.  However, during the last couple of years my team has experienced several times where there are gaps in functionality.  For example, we output data into a relational database (SQL Server) with foreign key constraints.  In this manner, one output tool must be completed (the dimension tables) before the others (fact tables) to properly load data.  Block until done doesn't always work in these cases, and our team has frequently relied on using chained apps or other clunky workarounds.  This creates unnecessary complexity for a simple problem.

A potential solution

Allow an optional setting in the output tool that waits for another tool in the same workflow to complete first.

In a multi-person BI team; or where you have a multitude of different flows hitting similar data - it's easy to loose track of the right connections; the right data sets etc.

Could we please add to the Alteryx toolset, the ability to:

- Register a set of connections with readable names

- Register a set of data-sets which are community managed.

Connection Registration:

I frequently connect to 5 different datastores to bring together analytical results.   Because Alteryx remembers the connections once-used I don't have to keep on building these connections from scratch, but these don't have a human-readable name; and they cannot be shared among the team to make workflow creation easier.

Suggestion: 

• Create the ability in Alteryx Designer to set up a data-store connection, with a human-readable name (e.g. "Timesheet Server").   
• Allow me to share this connection list with my team
• Allow me to either do pass-through password (i.e. don't save a password in the connection); or embed a password but make sure it's masked & encrypted so that the receiver cannot use this to get the password for the DB
• For enterprise customers - it would be great if I can connect to the enterprise connection store and use known good connections that way too...

Known Good Data Sets:

The other part of this is the community effect once a large number of people in the company start to get data-savvy.    for e.g. One person has found a good way to query the actual timesheet data (username; project; hours) - and another person has found a good way to query the HR systems to get user demographic information (username; location; contracted working hours).   

• Can we add to the Alteryx server, in the same way as Tableau and IBM Cognos / Watson have done; to allow users to publish a data-set connector which is known to work.
• That way - if I want timesheet data - I just browse the known good data-sets through Alteryx designer, and if I have questions I can go back to the connector owner
• additionally - the central administration team can then identify the ones that are certified as "golden source" or "clean; valid; governed data", and which ones are in a state of "user supplied - use at own risk"

For enterprise customers - this would transform alteryx from a stand-alone tool where everyone is re-inventing the wheel every time - to a Data Platform where each additional piece of work done increases the net value of the full ecosystem in a virtuous cycle.   It would also MASSIVELY accelerate every workflow build.

Happy to talk through this live with the Alteryx team if that's appropriate and helpful.

Thank you

Sean

Our company requires a password change every 3 months, which wreaks havoc bc i have to manually change each workflows input data connection configuration every time this happens to put in my latest credentials. Not the most efficient process for all the automated workflows I have on the gallery.

Instead, it would be great if alteryx could load in usernames and passwords via a field from the workflow. This way, I could just update the one excel file with two fields for username and password and every workflow referencing it with an input data connection would automatically pass on the new credentials every 3 months, not disturbing any of my autoscheduled workflows.

When output is disabled, Alteryx's output tools are helpfully grayed out and include the message 'output has been disabled by the workflow properties.'

However, if a macro has an output, there is no visual indicator that output is disabled, even though the macro's output will also be suppressed by this workflow configuration.

Obviously, macros can be very complex, and could have both a file and a macro output, or have an optional file output, so these cannot be entirely locked out just because there is an output.

To that end, I suggest some other kind of color-coding/shading be applied visually to these tools, and that a message be added to the interface for these macros that says something like "output has been disabled, this macro may not perform all of its functions".

I just spent about 10 minutes debugging why a macro wasn't working properly in one workflow but was working in another, and it was because I had disabled output, which I wasn't thinking of because this particular macro uses the Render tool to produce a hyperlink.  I wouldn't have spent more than 30 seconds on this if there was some kind of visual indicator showing me what I was doing wrong!

When running an app on your desktop, nested radio buttons work wonderfully.  You can collapse groups and drill down to your heart's content.  If you promote the app to the gallery, it doesn't work.  I reported this as a bug to Client Services.  Their response leads me to believe that they designed it this way.  I'd like nested buttons to work both as a local app and as a gallery app.

Please star this idea if you agree...

Dear Mark,  

This email has been sent to confirm that your technical support ticket has been closed. Please contact us if you need any further assistance.

Case #: 00095540

Case Subject: Radio buttons- different functionality between Gallery and local version

Your comment:  

when using radio button to activate a sub set of questions that also use radio buttons then entire group has to be unselected then reselected to make additional change either activate/deactivate selectoins.

link to recorded webex that demonstrates issue: https://alteryx.webex.com/alteryx/lsr.php?RCID=740fd707be5e4654ba659f25713f8cdb

Would love to have a 'common used' tab, rather than a favourties box (as that lags what I am currenty using).

Would be nice to have it look at my usage and create sort by frequency of use table. Could also be done with all users as well (some kind of opt-in telematary data?).

Pretty much only time I add Browse tools during development now is to get access to the Cell Viewer to examine values better. 

Would love to be able to do this on the output window

It would be lovely if the Image tool supports GIFs when using the .PCXML and HTML options in the render tool.  Understandably, it would use it's .PNG format when using other render options, such as PDF etc.