Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

We are using Alteryx designer to bulk upload to Snowflake database. We also use Alteryx Connect to pick up metadata from Snowflake. It would be awesome if the designer can add table and field description and snowflake loader can pick up the description automatically. 

As of now, the metadata loader doesnt pick up metadata content in real time. This feature will motivate our analysts to document which will improve Connect adoption in our department. 

Many legacy applications that use Mainframes have certain data encoded in EBCDIC  in DB2 tables(variable length columns  that can have 0-100s of iterations in a single EBCDIC encoded compressed data). When this data is downloaded to a platform like Hadoop that does'nt understand EBCDIC data , It appears as junk characters . 

I solved this issue in my project  using an approach designed/implemented in PySpark script[ separate logic needed for COMP , COMP3, X(alphanumeric)  datatypes] .Having this functionality in a Tool can help many Organizations that  use data from Mainframes applications.

Sometimes on the "Join Tool" Interface in the Config screen.

You can not scroll down to read last item. The scroll bar is not at the bottom nor can be scrolled further down.

Improve "Select Tool" by by moving the select/deselect All from the Options and placing in the header.

The Data Cleansing Tool already has all/none posted in a better position.

Meanwhile you have to go to Option for this same feature in Select.

Hi Alteryx,

Can you add the search functionality in the dropdown (Apps) where the user enters specific text and the dropdown list gets filtered accordingly?

It would enhance the user's experience while using large lists in dropdown.

Hello,

Well, the title is pretty simple : it appears that the tendancy right now is to  have web version of any software on a server.

A few notes about that :
-a lot of Alteryx competitors are already in this mode and it's hard to sell you're still with a desktop-only mode for design, even if the product is far better.
-a good idea is the one used by Qlik with Qlik Sense : they still have a desktop and a web version of Sense but the desktop works mainly as an hidden browser plus an engine. The web version is cool too because you can make your own application, or your own data connection etc..
-the main interest of a web implementation of Alteryx would be to reduce installation on client computers (and that means packaging the installer, managing the data connection, the paths, the access to macros... etc) and to have a better control of the users.

PS : this idea is soooo simple and so obvious I'm surprised I didn't find it. It may be a duplicate.

One thing I have noticed is that for some of the end-users of the apps I have in the gallery is that running the app from server is enough of a barrier that they don't use it at all. I have had to send links repeatedly to gallery, to apps on server for them to run them.

What I would love is a way to create a custom desktop icon (bear with me - I don't have the lexicon.) that an end-user would open and it would launch the app in the server directly (I'm assuming this would be opening a browser of choice, opening the app/workflow to the screen where it gives you the option to 'Run/Download/Schedule'  rather than accessing it through a shared collection in the Gallery through a browser.

Possible extensions of this are the ability to create an app for a mobile device where they can access an app/workflow on server directly to run it from a phone/ipad.

When tools are closely aligned 

Rownum and data size cross with other tools.

I would suggest dynamically locating the information sometimes on top or under the tool instead...

There has been the idea of running tools in a workflow in parrallel...

It's a tough job becuse there are a lot of complex dependencies I get that...

but how about a lazy parallelization so that 

until the independent parts of a workflow merge, with a join or a union or an append, 

these clusters can be run in parallel I believe...

Referencing the previous idea: Inputs/Output should have the option to read/write a compressed file (ZIP or GZIP)

This idea has been implemented for inputting .zip files. However, we still need to use the run command workaround for outputs. It's very common for many users to want to output their .csv, .xlsx, .pdf to a .zip. The functionality would also need to extend to Gallery.

See the following links for people that are looking for this type of functionality:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Download-Multiple-Outputs-from-the-Galle...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Output-files-to-ZIP/td-p/163502

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Zip-files/td-p/151456

Feel free to merge this idea with the previous one for continuity.

Hello Altyerx Community, 

I wish there was a 1 page PDF that would list all the Alteryx Keyboard Shortcuts.  Save time and effort.  Anyone else agree? 

Keyboard Shortcuts @PaulT posted:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Keyboard-Shortcuts-in-Alteryx/ta-p/1188

I wish it would be similar to the document that @ianwi posted: 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Getting-Started-Resources/Designer-Cheat-Sheet/ta-p/371793#bottom

IanWi, would you be interested in creating this? If so, thank you in advance! 

Regards, 

Ryan Loshin 

Please create a way to swap or change the order of the inputs and outputs for tools with two or more inputs and outputs. 

For example: When creating a workflow a join tool can end up moving to a location on the canvas that causes flow paths to cross.  To fix the overlapping paths with a simple option of change order of input and output with a simple up and down would be much better than deleting the paths and reconnecting and redefining all of the join fields.

My employer just started with Alteryx, so I'm sure after a few months, this will be basic simple, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has made this mistake, so there you go...

I was running a larger workflow that ends with outputting a table with about 80 columns.  Everything was working fine, except for one column, which kept coming up as all 0s.  Took me a while to find it, but the error all traced back to an error I made with a "Contains" function in a Formula node.

The Alteryx "Contains" function takes two arguments, 'string' and 'target'.  I interpreted this as 'find this string in this target variable', and entered two arguments: the string of characters I was looking for first, and then the name of the column I wanted to search in second. 

I think I had this backwards.  You need to enter the column name first, then the substring you want to look for second.  So the column name is the 'string' and the search term is the 'target'.  Me getting these reversed did not produce any errors or warnings, which I understand (e.g. maybe you might want to pairwise search for the text in one column in the text of another).

I think the terms 'string' and 'target' are kind of vague labels in this case (in Excel, for example, the analogous "Search" function takes the arguments 'find_text' and 'within_text', which is a lot harder to misinterpret).  So I would suggest changing the argument names in Designer and the online documentation, or at least adding text to the Alteryx Documentation (https://help.alteryx.com/2019.2/Reference/Functions.htm) that clarifies which is which.

Normally, I'd say this is a pretty minor thing, but since this is a potential 'silent error', I'd argue it's worthwhile.

(Also, the online documentation seems to imply there is a "CaseInsensitive" argument you can pass to "Contains", however I don't think there actually is.  May want to edit that for clarity.)

Thanks!

I notice that at least my Output files are tied up "being used by another program" after the workflow is closed.  I have to actually close out of Alteryx to release the file.  The file s/b released as soon as the workflow using it is done running.  Failing that, as soon as the workflow is closed vs having to close Alteryx completely.

...or is this just my issue?

I suggest an additional tool that would allow adding columns to the data, if and only if they do not exist already.

Currently working with data that has a dynamic set of columns can be a bit tiresome as the Select tool will not allow to select columns that have not been witnessed in the data.

Adding a tool that would ensure that certain columns are available downstream can currently be achieved by:

1. 'Append Fields' tool with a 'Text Input' tool which will always append the fields, renaming them on the fly if needed
2. 'Union' tool with a 'Text Input' tool

Both options do not seem straight forward and I expect have a performance impact.

A separate tool to achieve this seems the more user friendly and performance oriented way.

Please extend the DateTime tool to parse ISO 8601 / RFC 3339 type timestamps as well.

These are quite commonly used in APIs nowadays and currently require manual RegEx parsing and DateTime calculations.

Hello,

I would like to make 2 suggestions in regards to the Table Tool.

1) The ability to format all of your tables in a workflow at once or the ability to set up a default theme for tables.  I may have many table outputs in one report and if I want to change the font in the header I have to go to each table icon and change the configuration one at a time.  Generally, I set up the first one then cut and paste it for all of the other tables in my report but if I have to go back and change something it is a real challenge.  I am working on a report with 20 table outputs and have to change the header font in each one.... not fun.  

2) The ability to change the header justification in the default table settings rather than have to change it in each column.  The same report I mentioned has a minimum of 5 fields in each table that is a minimum of 100 adjustments just to have centered field names.  A HUGE waste of time. An alternative would be to have centered field headings as the default.  I may be wrong but I think the majority of reports have centered field headings.

Thank you for a great product and for listening

Abi

You could create an area under the Interface Designer - Properties when editing a macro that allows users to select the order the anchor abreviations will appear on the final macro. This is useful if we want an input or output to be at the top, for example. Currently, the only way is by deleting and adding them again on the corect order. Not user friendly. Thank you!

in a scenario where i pass multiple files to the download tool (to upload to an FTP server), the data in the workflow gets cut off with the message "ended by a downstream tool". This leads to me only uploading one file (out of the two I am trying to upload).

based on community posts, this seems to be because i am not outputting anything in the workflow or do not have any browses (browses are automatically turned off because I am using Crew Macro's List Runner)

BUG: the download tool should count as an output tool because it is indeed outputting. 

BUG 2: if browses are disabled but they exist in the workflow, it should still create all the records.