Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

There is a web hosted trial that anyone can have a hands on experiance with alteryx tutorials  without even downoading the tool.

That's awesome... http://goo.gl/dpSoe2

 

It may be a nice idea to;

 

1) either start seperate "Alteryx-kaggle" instances with data sets specific to each kaggle competition so that anyone want to try out may have a go with those well known examples thru the Alteryx site, 

2) Or even better have a partnership with kaggle so that anyone can just have it's own Alteryx trial per specific competition on the kaggle website...

 

I'm sure this will draw a lot of attention...

 

Rationale;

You'll immediately have a greater reach in Kaggle community, some data hobbiyists and cs, ie students and acedemics (which will eventually end up doing lot's of data blending when ther are going to be hired by top notch firms...

In v10, I am using the summarize tool a lot and getting tired of selecting one or more fields and doing a sum function and having to revisit each summary tool when you add a numeric field upstream... I was hoping there would be a more dynamic method, e.g. select all numeric fields and then doing a SUM on _currentfield_.

Then I remembered the Field Info tool. (on a side note, I'd bet this tool is overlooked a lot). This tool is great because for each numeric field you get Min, Max, Median, Std Dev, Percent Missing, Unique Values, Mean, etc.

The one thing that's missing is SUM. Can you add it?

 

Also, can you give the user option to turn off layouts and reports so it runs faster? I only care out the data side.

 

or is there another way to do sum on dynamically selected numeric fields? (include Sum on Unknown field)

It would be great to have a spatial function that could be used to evaluate whether two spatial objects are equal/identical. I see this being available in at least three places:

 

1. An "ST_Equal" Formula function
2. A SpatialMatch "Where Target Equals Universe"
3. An "Equals" Action in the Spatial Process tool

Would be nice if could use something like $Field rather than repeating the field name in the Condition and Loop expression within the Generate Rows tool

 

 

Idea:

As a method of deploying preprocessing and ML models it would be awesome to be able to convert a workflow to java... 

 

Rationale:

models are needed to be deployed into Complex event processes or decision systems. Even for SAS there is a need to implement the datastep algorithms and procs to run in JVM.

 

 

Quickwin:

It is possible to convert a workflow into a PMML file and then use JMML package to convert that to Java. Yet the full workflow with all preprocessing alternatives and a series of ML methods may not be captured fully.

 

Competitor example:

For SAS case here is a similar solution: http://www.dullesresearch.com/carolina-features/

Idea:

In forecasting and in commercial/sme risk scoring there is a need for trying vast number of algebraic equations which is a very cumbersome prosess. Let's add symbolic regression as a new competitive capability.

 

Rationale:

Summations, ratios, power transforms and all combinations of a like are needed to be tested as new variables for a forecasting or prediction model. Doing this by hand manually is a though and long business... And there is always a possibility for one to skip a valuable combination.

 

 

Symbolic regression is a novel techinique for automatically generating algebraic equations with use of genetic programming, 
In every evolution a variable is selected checked if the equation is discriminatitive of the target variable at hand. In every next step frequently observed variables will be selected more likely.

 

SR comparison with linear regression neural nets and random forests

 

Benefit for clients:

This method produces variables mainly with nonlinear relationships. It is a technique that will help in corporate/commercial/sme risk modelling, such that powerful risk models are generated from a hort list of B/S and P/L based algebraic equations.
There is potential use cases in algorithmic trading as well...

 

There are 3 very interesting world problems solved with symbolic regression here.

A very relevant thesis by sean Wouter is attached as a pdf document for your reading pleasure...

 

R side of things:

I've found Rgp package for genetic programming, here is a link.

 

Competition:

I haven't seen something similar in SAS, SPSS but there is this; http://www.nutonian.com/products/eureqa/

Also there is Bruce Ratner's page

 

I have several .yxdb files that I’ve been appending to daily from a SQL Server table in order to extend the length of time that data is retained.

They’re massive tables, but I may only need one or two rows. 

I had hoped to decrease the time it takes to get data from them by running a query on them (or a dynamic query/input) as opposed to using a filter or joining on an existing data set which would have equal values that would produce the same result as a filter.

Essentially, the input of .yxdb would have the option of inputting the full table or a SQL query just like a data connection.

I would love to see the option to publish the description information from an alteryx workflow into Tableau tde files as the default comment field

It would be great if I could save a tool and its configuration for future use. I'm sure this could be done now with a macro, and that's possibly how I'll do it.

 

The scenario is that we have numerous data inputs that require some finessing to import. Because the field headers are not in the first row, they aren't recognized accurately as comma delimited. But some of our fields also contain commas within the field, so the solution is to add a multi-field formula to replace things like ", Inc." with " Inc." and ", Ltd." with " Ltd."

 

But on occasion I find new text strings that need to be added to the formula, like ", Inc" (without the period) for instance.

 

I use this replacement technique with several workflows, so it would be great to change it just one time and have the other instances updated automatically.

 

Maybe in addition to our Favorites toolbar we could have a Custom or User toolbar where we could save tools along with their configuration.

Hello,

 

Many mouses (mice?) allow you to tilt the mouse wheel either left or right. It would be great if this would scroll the canvas left or right, similar to rolling the wheel to scroll the canvas up or down. This would be especially useful considering that users have been nudged to create their workflows horizontally.

 

Thanks!

It is very difficult moving from Alteryx functions to SQL In-Database as a business user, I need to learn a whole new language.

 

In the short term Alteryx should provide a simple function reference, as similar as possible to the Formula tool, for building formula in the in-database tools.

 

Longer term I'd like there to be a parser from Alteryx Formulae to SQL so I can just write in my favourite Alteryx formula (or a subset thereof) and Alteryx handles the conversion to SQL. 

Idea:

Let's add the universal PMML predictive markup language to rapidly deploy our predictive models. 

 

Rationale:

Most of the predictive models created are essentially built to be deployed into well known enterprise level decisioning tools.

 

These decisioning tools are working at banks, non bank financial institutions, credit card issuers, insurers on a daily basis.

If Alteryx want's to replace SAS, SPSS and similar competitor this PMML addition seems to be a must.

They all have a common markup language and even with the newer version we can deploy almost all data pre-processing steps too...

 

Current status in Alteryx as I'm aware of:

Only case where Alteryx and PMML comes close is the following link; http://www.alteryx.com/topic/pmml promising including PMML in the upcoming releases in 2012. And then no word of it. The writer is retired already and no word since 2012 (3 yrs is a long time span). 

 

What to do:

 

On easy way is already done for R, this is a Java library for converting R models to PMML https://github.com/jpmml/jpmml-converter

 

Clients:

FICO is one of the well known credit bureaus worldwide and also the vendor of decisioning software. They also have an Analytics Modeler Suite. All FICO systems are PMML compliant. Chek it out: http://www.decisionmanagementsolutions.com/2014/10/17/first-look-fico-analytic-modeler-suite-jtonedm...

 

Also Experian is one of the other big software vendors in the Analytics space with decision management tools and they are actually a partner of Alteryx too... Their well known widely implemented Powercurve tool has PMML language import too... Check it out: http://jtonedm.com/2014/05/13/first-look-experian-powercurve-update/

 

IBM ODM is a nother vendor for decisioning tools in the enterprise level. They also have PMML integration, look; http://www.prolifics.com/blog/odm-integration-spss-predictive-analysis-suite-part-1-pmml-import

Competitor status:

SAS supports PMML export from SAS Enterprise Miner

IBM SPSS products (Modeler and Statistics) offer a great deal of support for PMML

KNIME is one of the leaders in processing PMML documents 

RapidMiner has a PMML extension

MicroStrategy strongly supports the standard

 

Hi all,

Just to give you some context, we have a customer that requires that for every Tableau workbook we deliver, we must add extra documentation, as for instance, for every calculated field, in which views it's used, and the formula of that field (yes, I know exactly what you're thinking right now :P)

So I decided to take a shortcut and do a workflow that extracts the basic (I mean VERY basic) data from the .twb file, so I can save a lot of time. 

 

Then I came with this idea...

 

Having a lot of Tableau's under the hood experts in this Community, It would be great to gather some of them and create a Tableau Documenter Macro.

 

I'd love tho hear what you think, and who's being able to help.

 

The challenge:

We have hundreds of SOAP based Salesforce (SF) connectors in our scheduled modules that were created with Alteryx 9.0-9.5. Alteryx 10.0+ is now using REST API based SF connectors. We have to replace all of these connectors when we move to 10.0+.

 

Proposed idea:

Alteryx creates an automated process for converting SOAP SF connectors to REST API SF connectors, so that when you open an old module in 10.0+, they are automatically updated.

 

This seems feasible as the information supplied by Alteryx users for the SOAP SF connectors is sufficient for the REST API SF connectors to work (i.e. URL, username, password, security token, table name, fields, WHERE clause, etc...).

 

Thanks,

Jeremy

Idea:

Some well known scoring methods use optimal binned variables for added robustness. Let's add this capability to Alteryx.

 

Retionale:

Here's a basic link on why to do that; http://documents.software.dell.com/statistics/textbook/optimal-binning

 

Current status in Alterys as I'm aware of:

Tile tool or Multi-field Binning tool for completing same task as Tile tool on multiple fields, splits the variables by 5 methods;

• Equal Records or Intervals or Sums

• Smart Tile

• Unique Value 

• Manual

Unfortunately "equal something" binnings are bad idea, as the values are categorized "blindly" irrespective of the effects on the predictive power of the models. 

 

What to do:

What's needed is to bin both numerical and categorical variables optimally such that the Weights of Evidences (WoE) should present a monotone increasing or decreasing pattern. Maybe at most a V or U shaped "convex" structure.

 

Quick win:

Without constraining ourselves with monotonicity or convex cases, the easiest practice would be running a C4.5 or CHAID tree algorithm (produces multiple splits rather than binary splits in CART) for a single variable and select the target as the dependent variable and all the resulting nodes will be the bins we are looking for. Doing this for multiple variables at once is the key to the tool to be generated.

 

Clients:

This capability is sought by risk management departments building robust, stable Basel compliant models in financial industry, especially by banks.

Currently the Throttle Tool allows control to a number of calls per minute. Some APIs include a limit to the calls per hour and a combination of throttles. I would love to see the option to choose the number of calls per hours and have 2 limit controls (eg 100calls per minute and 100calls per hour)

I need to consume a web service that uses a “0-legged” OAuth transaction. I contacted Alteryx tech support and found that this was not possible with the current feature set of the Download tool. Please add it.

I use detours to bypass areas when I do not need them in the loop and it would be great if i just had a enable button (kind of like how you would control in a macro).  That way i dont have to disable 3 detours but just disable "button."

Same button should work with tool container 'disable' and/or collapse.

I know you can add a field for "today" and then use that field to append the filename, so the output ends up as Ouput_Date.xlsx, but it would be great to be able to do that without adding a new field for the current date. If it were simply an option in the filt output settings dialog, that would be great.