Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi there,

 

When you use DB connection aliases that are saved in Alteryx, it's currently not easy to edit them when you move a database to a different location.

 

Can we do something simliar to the "Edit Password" function, but which allows the user to also edit the database or server, so that this applies to all workflows using this alias?

Would be extremely useful if the Summarize Tool had an option in the numeric menu to Standardize the data.  More often than not, data sets will not have the same count of variables which makes the comparison analysis meaningless.  Currently, there is no easy way to Standardize the data without using the K-Centroids Cluster Analysis tool or standardize_unit interval supporting macro. 

This functionality won't be mission-critical to anyone, I'm sure, but a lot of IDEs and upgraded text editors (lookin' at you Notepad++) have the ability to customize the colors of text, the background, and other various tabs/objects that may appear on the screen. I understand that this is more important for code-based systems where the coloring improves readability so much, but I thought it might be a neat feature. I think leaving the tool colors standardized is a good idea though, just the canvas and outerlying windows. It could include the colors for the formula syntax highlighting too?

 

The icing on the cake would be the ability to save and share your settings or create a repository for them in the public gallery or something.

In some of our larger workflows it's sometime tedious to run a workflow in order to see some data, when adding something in the beginning of the workflow. Running und stopping it as soon as the tools gets a green border is sometimes an option.

 

It would be convenient to have an option in the context menu to run a workflow only until a specific tool.

In effect, only this specific tool has an output visible for inspection and only the streams necessary for this tool have been run - everything else is ignored and I'm fine to not see data for the other tools.

 

This would speed up the development of small parts in a larger workflow much more convenient.

 

Regards

Christopher

 

PS: Yes, I can put everything else in a container and deactivate it. But a straight forward way without turning containers on and off would be preferable in my opinion. (I think KNIME as something similar.)

I love the new right click and duplicate workflow feature, but I think the duplicated workflow that opens, should open next to the original workflow and not at the end of all of your already open workflow tabs...

 

cc: @jpoz @jeffv 

When inputting a CSV file via the Azure Data Lake File Storage tool the default behaviour is for the first row to be interpreted as data.

 

When reading the same file locally using the File Input tool the default behaviour is for the first row to be interpreted as headers.

 

Since the majority of files will include headers on the first row, it would be helpful to have the "First row contains field names" option selected by default in the Azure Data Lake File Storage tool, and this would also bring the defaults of this tool in line with the standard File Input tool.

 

Illustration below showing the issue:

 

 

At present - to identify the dependencies of your workflow - you have to go to to "Advanced Settings" to find this critical capability.

(see @MattB 's great post here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Workflow-Dependencies/ta-p/49696 )

 

 

 

Could we instead move this to the workflow properties on the left hand side - this would be a more logical place to keep this info.

 

 

 

 

CC:  @rijuthav; @jithinmony; @HengHe; @RajK; @ydmuley; @revathi; @Deeksha; @MPistone; @Ari_Fuller; @Arianna_Fuller; @JoshKushner; @samN; @avinashbonu; @Sunder_Sriram; @Rahul_Thakur; @Rahul_Sing

Pardon the length of this post, but I have been working with Alteryx since version 2.0 (11 years) and have been accumulating a wish list ever since.  Some of these suggestions have been made in the past but have yet to be embraced.  This is the first post for the first 'idea' but, as I said, this is a wish list that has grown since I was first introduced to Alteryx. More posts will follow.

 

I will break this into sections to hopefully make the suggestions easier to categorize and digest.

 

Application interface - Since I was introduce to Alteryx, the application interface (what is presented to users) has remained rather stagnant and, with the rumored push to adopt HTML as a replacement for pcxml, could benefit from the following additional settings. I suggest these based on the fact that dot Net classes for interface controls are readily available in Windows which allow for manipulation of each of the controls attributes.

 

1. The ability to set 'style' attributes for each of the interface tools in the application interface (font-family, font-style, font-size, font-weight, color, etc. This could be presented to the developer as an additional (perhaps optional button) in the Configuration panel for each interface tool as below:

These settings would be specific to the type of interface tool and to how the individual tool would layout and/or be styled relative to the application interface window. One layout option, applicable to most interface tools, would be where the label would be relative to the object itself (top, bottom, left, right). The CSS could be stored in and interpreted from the XML of the yxwz file referencing the ToolID of the Node in a section of the XML hierarchy called <CSS> or something standard.  An option to alter the default CSS could be displayed with a radio button control so that if not selected, the tool would fallback to the default system CSS of the tool.  This default could also be set in System settings so that a consistent interface could be defined across the enterprise.

 

2. Moving to the actual window that displays when the application is opened, a lot of the same concepts could be applied to the Interface Designer pane.

Attributes that could be set could include position on screen when opened, width and height of the window, and all the attributes of a dot Net form.  The same radio button strategy used for individual interface tools could be employed to use or not use system defaults.

 

3. In the UI, it would be nice if there was additional flexibility in how the interface tools could be laid out.  Along with the relative position of labels for each control, being able to layout controls horizontally as well as vertically would allow for a more organized interface.

 The Radio buttons would work as normal with the Text Box controls inside each Radio button and only displaying when the button is selected.

 

I realize a lot of the current development in Alteryx is focused on the new Alteryx Connect and being able to attach to more data files and services. But, if there is still also a concerted effort to move from what could be considered a legacy proprietary mark up language, pcxml, to a more robust and universally accepted mark up, html and css, then, in my humble opinion, expanding the options for developers to design more user friendly and customizable applications to a standard 'style' across the enterprise, both on the desktop and in the gallery, is a worthy endeavor.

 

Thanks for your attention.  More to follow.

 

Dan

I have need to Unique my data on all fields. However, I do not know all the fields that will be in my data because of a Dynamic Select tool (or in some cases a Cross Tab tool). The Unique tool defaults to having any new fields be unchecked in its configuration. Without finding some work around, I will be unable to schedule this workflow or turn it into an app for use on the Gallery without risking duplication caused by the Unique tool that fails to capture new/different fields that may come through the data.

 

To solve this problem and be consistent with other tools in Alteryx, the following features need to be added to the Unique tool:

1. The user should be able to check a "Dynamic or Unknown Fields" option that will enable Alteryx to include any new fields in the data as part of the Unique (or any fields that have their names changed).
2. If a field that was checked in the Unique tool before no longer exists, it should appear yellow (like the missing fields in the Select tool) and produce a warning in the Results window. The option to "Forget all missing fields" will also need to be added.

The v10 formula configuration window had two very small advantages.  First, it always had an extra 'line' for another output field (no pressing '+' required).  Second, it defaulted to letting you immediately begin typing the name of the next column (no need to press 'Select Column' then 'Add New Column').   I know these are minor, but every little thing counts when you're doing heavy development.

 

It has been brought up that the following comments were given during the beta.  While I appreciate the reasoning of requiring 'obvious intention,' my personal opinion is that it is overkill in this scenario.  Even for new users, the old design was quite intuitive.

 

 

"Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback! This touches a conversation topic that has been ongoing here at Alteryx. While we want workflow development to be as fast as possible, we also are  trying to address the overall usability of the tool and make sure it is very clear what we intend the user to do. We decided to have the UI ask for an explicit action (pick an existing field to edit or click to add a new field) to help make those options clear, as we have found that users don't always understand from the existing tool that this is the first decision they should make when using the tool. That being said, your feedback is definitely valuable. I will be sure to bring this up as we are making improvements to the new tool and see if there's a compromise that we can make on speed vs. obvious intention. Thanks for taking the time!"

I have reviewed a number of batch macros that work well for mirroring the "NetworkingDays" excel calculation but it would be great to add an interval type for "weekdays" to the DateTimeDiff formula ie

 

 DateTimeDiff ( [Date01],[Date02], "WorkDays")  where any Saturday or Sunday between the dates would be discounted.

It would be very helpful if Alteryx allowed us to manually configure the IP and port number of a web proxy in instances when we are accessing online services. 

We often build very large Alteryx projects that breakdown large data processing jobs into multiple self contained workflows.

 

We use CReW Runner tools to automate running the workflows in sequence but it would be nice if Alteryx supported this natively with a new panel for "Projects"

 

Nice features for Projects could be:

• Set the sequence
• Conditional sequence
• Error handling
• Shared constants
• Shared aliases
• Shared dependencies
• Chained Apps
• Option to pass data between workflows - Input from yxmd Output - no need to persist intermediary data
• Input/output folder/project folder setups for local data sources in dependencies window
• Ability to package like "Export Workflow" for sharing
• Results log the entire project

porWYSIWYG - What you see is what you get...

 

WYSIWYG implies a user interface that allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document is being created.[3] In general, WYSIWYG implies the ability to directly manipulate the layout of a document without having to type or remember names of layout commands.[4]

 

Looking forward to have such a Reporting layout designer, embed all pictures, tables, graphs, legend, header, footer...

Just like in Qliksense and tableau...

 

 

 

 

 

Adobe analytics api current version is 2.0 but the connector still uses 1.4. This works for log in access but does not for automated access since the end points are changed and 2.0 uses a new key structure

Per my initial community posting, it seems that in environments where the firewall blocks pip the YXI installation process takes longer than it needs. My experience was 9:15 minutes for a 'simple' custom tool (one dependency wheel included in the YXI).

 

Given the helpful explanation of the YXI installation process, it seems the --upgrade pip and setuptools is causing the delay. Disconnecting from the internet entirely causes the custom YXI to install in 1:29 minutes.

 

My 'Idea' is to provide a configuration option to install the YXI files 'offline'. That is, to skip the pip install --upgrade steps, and perhaps specify the --find-links and --no-index options with the pip install -r requirements.txt command. The --no-index option would assume that the developer has included the dependency wheel files in the YXI package. If possible, a second config option to add the path to the dependencies for the --find-links option would help companies that have a central location for storing their dependencies.

In alterxy BI teams, we often need to hit the same data-store - however if shared connections are not adopted in the server environment, there's currently no easy way to share the connections among the team (none that I know of)

 

Would be great if there were a "share" button on the data connections tab in the designer, so that we could share connections with a team, or export known good connections to a file that can be kept under config-management / version control.

 

Thank you

Sean

It would be very useful to be able to add trendlines (linear, power etc) to charts (particularly scatter graphs) as in Excel.

Whilst not quite as efficient, the ability to overlay a line graph onto a scatter would enable the user to achieve a similar result as the points for the line can be calculated.

When creating a formula with the formula tool, it would be useful to be able to quickly tab into the data type column, then press D for Double and select this quickly.

Right now, you cannot use the keyboard to quickly type-ahead in this field, so every double field requires you to select, drop down, move the mouse to the bottom of the scroll window, click scroll down, then mouse back up to D for double.

 

(or "S" for Spatial etc - this is standard for most drop-down boxes)