Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi all,

Currently, only the Sharepoint list tool (deprecated) is working with DCM, it would be amazing to add the Sharepoint files input/output to also work with DCM.

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

When I first started using Alteryx I did not use macros or the Runtime Tab much at all and now I use both a lot but...I can't use them together. 

When working in a macro there is no Runtime Tab. While working on a macro and testing it you can't take advantage of any of the handy features in the Runtime Tab.  I am assuming a macro will inherit any settings from the Flow that calls it, can't find anything in the community or "help" to confirm that though, but this is not helpful while developing and testing.

The autorecover feature should also backup macros. I was working on a macro when there was an issue with my code. I have my autorecover set very frequent, so I went there to backup to a previous version. To my great surprise, my macro wasn't being saved behind the scenes at all. My workflow had its expected backups, but not my macro. Please let any extension be backed up by autorecover.

Thanks!

Please let me know if I've overlooked a suggestion and I'll be glad to upvote that post.  

I think it would be great to be able to convert a Browse tool to an Output tool.  I always work with browses until I have the product that I want, at that point I'll bring in the output tool.   The ability to right click and convert, would be great.

Pretty simple one here - I would like to have an option in the UI to clear all Input Data caches or even a right click/properties option to clear an individual Input Data cache.  Often when developing, I use the Cache Input Data option to speed up development iterations.  However, if I modify the source data during the development, I am unable to easily clear the cache and often turn caching off to avoid stale data.  The "easiest" way I have found to do this is to pull the temp yxdb file paths out of the log after a recent run, clean them up using notepad++, put a del statement before each file, and paste them into a Command Line.  This inefficiency often offsets the development speed realized by caching.

In normal output tool, when file type is csv, it is possible to custom select the delimiter.  It would be great to be able to have the same option in the Azure Data Lake output tool, so for example you can write a pipe delimited file to your ADLS storage account.

In a future release, I'd love to see the whole concept of browsing for and installing new macros/apps brought into Designer itself.  It's always great finding new macros, but the expereince is inconsistent- sometimes you have to run an installer file, sometimes run a package, sometimes just put the file in a directory and add a 'watched macro' directory to your preferences.

I'd like to see a cleaner expereince where you can choose to 'Add Tools', browse the gallery, check the thing i want, and click the tools group I want to put it under, then have Alteryx take care of the rest.  There would also be the need for a 'Manage tools' screen where could could uncheck and remove them later if you no longer need them.

For inspiration, check out the way MS handles 'Adding Apps' via their catalog to build out your Sharepoint 2013+ site

When creating annotations in the new image template tool as part of intelligence suite, a feature improvement would be the ability to modify the annotation, to change the dimensions of it.

Currently the only option is to cancel and redraw but being able to edit and drag the existing annotation would be a great addition. This is because the sizing and position of the annotation is important in the OCR process, and when there are many annotations on a page a user is likely to only need to make minor adjustments instead of deleting and redrawing. A mock up is below.

Many times we create and work on multiple workflows that are similar or are tied to the same project, but when it comes time to save them we must save each workflow as an individual file.I think it would be great if we can mimic what MS Office/Tableau have done; allow user to save multiple tabs or reports/dashboards under the same file. It would be great if Alteryx will allow us to create multiple workflows under the same workbook which can be renamed, be tied to their own workflow schedules without having to be saved separately and can be tied under the same 'project' or 'workbook'. 

When I have AMP enabled, I can no longer performance profile my workflows. I get that there may be issues with calculating this across multiple threads but it'd be great to have Performance profiling available for the new engine. 

The one single feature I miss the most in Alteryx, is the possibility to restart the workflow from wherever I want by using a built-in cache functionality. I have used the 'Cache Dataset V2' macro, but it really is to inflexible and really doesn't make me a happy Alteryx user. I would like to se a more flexible, quicker way of working with cached data.

On a single tool in the workflow I want to be able to set the option to:

• Enable cache
  This would enable me to always use cached data from this node when possible
  
  
• Run to this node
  Run from start OR from node with enabled cache to this node.

There should be lots of workflow options regarding the creation/deletion of cached data. Examples:

• Enable data cache on all nodes
  This would enable functionality to always use cached data on all nodes in the workflow
  
  
• Enable data cache on end nodes
  This would enable functionality to cache data on all 'Run to this node'-nodes.

...and so on. These are just a few examples, but there should be lots of options and shortcut keys revolving the cached data functionality in the workflow.

Sometimes I want to copy just the Name and Type fields from the metadata in the Results window. Even when selecting this option, however, all 5 available fields still get copied and pasted. I would like to see this change to work as expected and only copy those cells selected.

Copy only the first two columns

All of them get pasted

Cc @DultonM 

I would like to see some functionality that would allow the user to select a specific tool(s) and run them. It looks like the workflow caches data at each tool so it should be doable to make it where i can run a specific tool from any point.

I know for me, i often run my new workflow and have forgotten a browse somewhere then have to add it and run the whole thing. Instead it would be ideal to be able to insert my browse like normal and select the tool before that browse and run just that one.

Do you guys think this would also be a useful capability?

It would be cool if a connector line would turn red when you select it, making it easier to trace the path (similar to how the lines turn red when you click on a join tool).

When you add a tool in the canvas, the annotation is automatically set (for example the formula, or connection configuration etc). You can then customize the annotation text in the "Annotation" tool's tab. But sometimes it can be useful to revert to the "automatic" annotation, and it doesn't seem possible once you set it to something different.

Apparently there is currently no way to reset a tool's annotation text to the automatic value.

I've found a way to do it by editing the xml content of the file : as far as I know you just have to delete the <AnnotationText>[...]</AnnotationText> tag and reload the file, and the annotation gets back to the default "automatic" value, which is still present in the <DefaultAnnotationText> tag.

I think a simple button in the tool's annotation tab to reset it would be nice.

Thank you!

As a security enhancement, the default passwords setting should be encrypt for user. Although this is critical for security my users have overlooked this even with training. They truly aren't culpable if they forgot. If it is the default then they must consciously change the it to an insecure setting.

From a security perspective the current default setting is backwards.

Grant Hansen

Under the new licensing system (licenses.alteryx.com), I don't have the ability to truly release a license seat without user interaction. Currently, I have to revoke the license and then have that user start up alteryx on their machine to complete the process. Until the user starts up alteryx, I cannot reallocate that license. 

I would like the ability to obsolete a license where as soon as I click the button in the licensing portal, I can immediately reallocate that license to somebody else. This functionality existed in the previous licensing system and is not available in the new licensing system.