Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

After using the Text to Columns tool, I generally find myself using a Select tool to get rid of the original field that I split up. Could an option be added in the config to automatically delete this field once it is split to columns?

Please add ablity to globally, within a module, forget all missing fields.

when you render out to an excel file, the excel file is created as a new file.  You cannot render to an existing excel file.

I'd like to see this functionality.  I have a client who has a workbook with multiple formatted sheets and they'd like to render an addiitional sheet of formatted data out from Alteryx into the existing workbook.

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

 

The dynamic input tool is useful for bringing in multiple files / tabs, but quickly stops being fit for purpose if schemas / fields differ even slightly. The common solution is to then use a dynamic input tool inside a batch macro and set this macro to 'Auto Configure by Name', so that it waits for all files to be run and then can output knowing what it has received. 

 

It's a pain to create these batch macros for relatively straightforward and regular processes - would it be possible to have this 'Auto Configure by Name' as an option directly in the dynamic input tool, relieving the need for a batch macro? 

 

Thanks,

 

Andy 

 

 

Hi all,

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-RegEx/tac-p/74936

@AlexKo did an excellent article on RegEx, and Mark @MarqueeCrew Frisch has helped me out of many pickles with Regex - and one of the things that I've discussed with a few folk on the community is that Regex is super-powerful ( @Ken_Black made this same comment) and can do way more than we initially understand.

 

The problem is not one of the power of the tool, but rather the onramp to using it (it's painful to do/experiment/run/try etc, it doesn't give you any visual guides or hints when you've got it right or wrong, etc)

 

My method is to hop straight on to http://regex101, paste in sample text, and figure out the right RegEx in their AWESOME UI which really make this into a 5 minute job, and makes me feel like I've scored at least one victory today (it is so easy, you actually feel more powerful and competent).

 

Could we bring some of this great User Interaction design into the RegEx tool?   I honestly believe that if the RegEx tool was as easy and approachable as RegEx101.com (or why not go one better than them), we'd see an explosion in usage and creativity.

 

Thank you all

Sean

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

 

Right now, if the dynamic input tool skips a file (which it often does!) it just appears as a warning and continues processing. Whilst this is still useful to continue processing, could it be built as an option in the tool to select a 'error if files are skipped'? 

 

Right now it is either easy to miss this is happening, or in production / on server you may want this process to be stopped.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy 

 

 

Given the prevalence of XML - it seems that it's worth adding a native XML capability to Alterxy (similar to the discussion with @CharleyMcGee and  @KaneG in the discussion forum).    Currently XML is treated mostly like a big and oddly behaved text field, which really undermines the usefulness of XML in real applications.

 

What I'm thinking is:

- Add in a component, which acts like a join, but what it does is validates an XML file vs. an XSD file so that you can see if your XML file matches the schema definition.   Tremendously useful if you've ever had to hand-craft XML.

- Add in a native data-type for XML (like you have a data-type for Centroids)

- On this XML data type - you can then do interesting things like walk the document object model, or iterate through all children (which fixes the issue of deeply nested XML being such a pain).     This would bring XML parsing into the level of usefulness that programmers in Java & Visual Studio have enjoyed for years

- Finally - an ability to construct XML data files without having to text-hack this.   i.e. something similar to the transpose tool, where for a given node, you can add children etc.

 

These four things would really really assist with getting Alteryx to be able to deal with modern data sets like JSON; XML and even web-page scrubbing.

 

As always - very happy to commit time to helping shape this - please feel free to reach out if that would be useful.

 

Thank you all

Sean

CC: @JoeM; @mceleavey; @MarqueeCrew; @NeilR; @Ned; @dawid_nawrot; @TaraM; @GeneR

The expression editor in the RegEx tool is only a single line, which makes it really hard to edit long regular expressions. See attached photo comparing the expression editor in the RegEx tool compared to the formula tool for the same expression. Please make the RegEx editor box either wrap to multiple lines, have a pop-out expression editor, or something so we can see long expressions.

 

I really like that I can scroll -- using my mouse -- between the tool groups in Alteryx. Can this UX be added to scroll through my workflows? I usually have a bunch open, and this functionality would be awesome to have there, too! 🙂

 

PS: Yes, I know I can do Ctrl+Tab...but mouse scrolling is more efficient.

 

Hi there,

 

Just got a new 4k UHD monitor, and found that Alteryx Designer doesn't scale well in default settings in Windows.    Fonts are blurry but icons are the right size.

If instead you change compatabilty mode to allow the application to force scaling, then the fonts and icons end up all different sizes.

 

Could you change the fonts and icons to scale gracefully in Windows 10 to full 4k UHD HDR - especially on the large size monitors (30 inch plus)?

 

 

 

 

Shot 1: default mode - blurry text - badly scaled by Windows 10.    It's not easy to see here because the image is small - but all the text is blurry like a badly blown up BMP file.

 

 

Shot 2: Override Windows 10 DPI scaling and set to "Application" mode

You can see in the picture below that text is now super-sharp but the the play button; save button are all tiny; the fonts are different sizes (look in the properties tab on the left) etc.

 

Thanks you to @JoeM for recent training on macros, and @NicoleJohnson for pointing out some of the challenges.

 

when writing an iterative macro - it is a little bit difficult to debug because when you run this in designer mode, it only does one iteration and stops.

Could we add the capability to the designer itself to be able to run the second and third iteration using the test data built into the macro input tool?   Even something as simple as an option to run X iterations; or when it's run the first iteration allow me to look at what happened and trigger iteration 2 (or to trigger a run-through to completion) would be immensely helpful.

 

While you can do this with a test-flow wrapped around a macro, macro development is a bit of a black box because Alteryx doesn't natively have the ability to step into a macro during run-time and pause it to see what's happening on iteration 1 or 2 or n and why it's not terminating etc.   So putting the ability to run in a debug mode would be HUGELY helpful.

In order to debug a call to a REST API - it is often necessary to take the web call, and pop this into a web browser. Can you add a second output to a RestAPI tool (a derivative of the Download tool) that has a second output that provides the full web call that was made, including the full parameterised URL. This would make it MUCH easier to debug rest API calls.

 

 

cc: @TashaA

 

Similar to this idea https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Download-tool-Request-and-Response-details/i...

except my preference would be to pull Rest API calls into a more specific tool and give a second output for the responses

Hi All,

 

Data security is very important nowadays. There is no encryption for the output file from Alteryx Designer. 

Imagine, anyone who has Alteryx designer can open any yxdb even with the sensitive data. 

 

Suggest to add an encryption option in the Output Data tool.

 

Best Regards,

Samuel

As a developer I want to Cache & Run all/selected inputs in a Workflow with one command. Maybe even with a keyboard shortcut?

 

See the discussion on this page: 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Batch-macro-only-iterates-one-time-expect...

Hi there,

 

The download tool is currently very cryptic, and difficult for most users to grasp..   This is due, at least in part, to the fact that it tries to be generic and serve all needs instead of being broken into smaller tools which fit the need.

 

Could we please break the download tool into:

- Input FTP tool.   This would allow you to download from FTP or SFTP sites, and work in a wizard fashion to get you to the file / files you wanted and take you through FTP authentication

- Input: Web API call.   This would be much easier if there was a wizard where you could put the API you wanted to call, and then you could add the parameters using a wizard

- Input: Web-download:   This would allow you to download frames or pages from the web.   this would be a good place to do what so many users have asked for and which Excel does natively - i.e. allow you to see the site in a wizard in a browser, and pick the elements you want to download.   Must allow for authentication and walk you through this with the wizard.

- Output; FTP put.   AS above - splitting this out makes it more sensible

 

There are probably other variants, and we can keep the Download tool for super-complex or bespoke uses - but if we break this down into smaller tools with simpler capabilities, we'll get a higher usage.

 

Thank you

Sean

At the moment if a part of your python code takes more than 30s to run, Jupyter times out and Alteryx cancels the workflow. This makes the Python Tool unusable for anything intensive and the timeout should be removed by default or be configurable per workflow.

 

I've made this idea as none of the solutions in these threads feel satisfactory:

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-tool-NbConvertApp-Timeout/m-p/3...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-Tool-Timeouts-When-Running-Work...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-SDK-timeout-error-cell-executio...

I would like to be able to use the join tool to join on inequalities.  We could join two tables, A and B on A.value is >= B.value1 AND A.value <= B.value2.  This would replicate the "between" function in SQL.  The equvalent feature in Tableau is pictured below.

@AdamR_AYX,

 

Limit conversion warning allows for a minimum of 1 message.  Can we set the minimum to 0 to completely ignore the message?

 

Perhaps we can allow warning messages a similar function as ERROR messages and allow the designer to Ignore, Warn or Cancel?

 

ConvError: Imputation (441): Tool #104: No demand: 0.200000000000031 had more precision than a double. Some precision was lost.

ConvError: Summarize (456): Data&colon; 0.360000000004675 had more precision than a double. Some precision was lost.

 

End: Designer x64: Finished running FP Model - Marquee Crew v3.yxmd in 32.3 seconds with 16 field conversion errors and 4 warnings

 

Thanks,

 

Mark