Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I found what I think is a bug.  Usually the bug maker is me, but on this occasion I really think that it could be Alteryx (version 10.1.6.60263).  Maybe we could add a category for posts as:  Is this a bug?  Currently, the idea labels allow for a "BUG".  But is bug reporting really part of New Ideas?

I'm going to report my findings to clientservices@alteryx.com.

For those interested in what I'm observing:

Try creating a INTERFACE using an ERROR MESSAGE tool.  Once you've got a formula and an error message, check the ANNOTATION.  Do you see one on the canvas and do you see it in the configuration?  Try putting a brief annotation into the Annotation box.  I believe that the Annotation should appear in the annotation box as it does with other tools. Check the canvas and see what happens.  Here's what mine looks like:

We waste a lot of time to search a field to join it in join or to deselect it select or to summarize in summarize. This mainly happens when we have long list of fields.

As search bar to find the field on top of any of these tools will be really helpful. 

Specially, for join tool if we can type the field name while joining would really help. 

Thank you,

Sanju

When opening an Excel workbook or Word document, the Microsoft start screen enables users to minimize or cancel opening. These would be convenient features to add to the Alteryx start screen. Because the Alteryx start screen appears in front of everything you have open, I feel the ability to minimize it would add a lot of value. Additionally, the ability to close it would be beneficial for those times when you accidentally click the wrong workflow, for example.

Formula tool expression editor is very useful. However, I have remeber the syntax when I write expressions in other expresion editor like custom filter, multirow formula etc..

Generate an output to a database store.  Tell it you want to have a custom mapping.  You cannot resize the box.  If you have verbose column names, you wind up scrolling a lot.  I've done all of this super amazing work to aggregate data from N datasets, work I never would have thought to try to code, and at the last inch am resorting to scrolling back and forth like a chump!  

This is an easy, easy, easy fix.  

/endrant

I know we have the capability to copy a Tool, and paste it into a Connection. This step requires having to right click on the connection to select the option Paste In Connection. I don't know how many times I've tried to copy tool, click on connection, and do Ctrl + V to paste just remember that it does work that way. It sure would be nice if it did.

I paste data into text input tool, then i have two choices 1) rename each field manually according to my data source 2) add the dynamic rename to take the headers from the first row.

The first way is time consuming and prone to mistakes.

The second way breaks the downstream configurations (workflow needs to be run first), and affects how the text input tool auto-detects the field types (all strings)

Text input would be improved with a button that automatically takes the first row and turns them into headers, as if i typed them in myself.

Thanks!

I version all of my Alteryx work professionally and personally using git. Positions seem to be stored as floating points in XML and this can lead to unwanted behaviours in git. Containers can float around the canvas over time across many commits. There is also plenty of noise while diffing workflows. The noise is all of the "changes" in tool and container positions actually resulting from floating points. Is it possible to store positions in XML without floating points?

We use several Files that are fairly large (canvas size). To traverse around to try and find where we last left off or to examine a specific X, Y at a specific zoom....one would need to either remember the tool number to search for or search for a keyword that returns several choices.

My suggested solution would be to create a bookmark(s). This would allow you to save a named bookmark that would save exactly where (X,Y) you are in the canvas and the Zoom level (Z). This way you could easily switch back and forth with in a canvas just back clicking the bookmark.

If anyone has ever used a CAD program that allowed the creation of 'Views' within the same diagram...this would be similar.

Thank you

I would like to see the Publish to Tableau Server tool updated to allow appending an extract with Encryption at Rest enabled.  As data security requirements become more stringent, this would be a beneficial option.  Right now, I'm only able to create or overwrite an extract if I've turned on server-wide encryption at rest enforcement in Tableau Server.

Dear Alteryx,

You know the thing I used most in the old Formula tool? The "Operators" section under "Formulas" that reminded me of Alteryx's particular syntax for things you can use in formulas but that aren't formulas themselves. (I switch between Alteryx, Tableau and Excel for writing formulas, and they all have slightly different rules for this stuff - having a quick syntax reference right where I needed it in Alteryx was SO HANDY!!.) There is no operators section in the new "fx" section. Please add it in. As it is, I've taken to opening a second instance of Alteryx with nothing but a loose filter tool so I can look at the operators section there when I'm trying to use the new formulas tool in my working instance. This is not ideal.

Thank you!

As you may be aware localisation is the adapting of computer software to regional differences of a target market, Internationalization is the process of designing software so that it can potentially be adapted to various languages without engineering changes.

The idea is to make Alteryx designer tool, the web help content and example workflows to be multilingual (Possibly with the use of "lic" language files or similar) Hopefully the sotware and tutorials will all be localised by crowdsourcing initiatives within the Alteryx community. 

I sincerely believe this will help the tool get a lot of traction not in US and UK but in other parts of the world,

Highly likely Mandarin and Spanish would be the first two language versions...

Top languages by population per Nationalencyklopedin 2007 (2010)Language Native speakers(millions) Fraction of worldpopulation (2007)

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!

Sometimes a dependency with a macro breaks, or I am local 'versioning' a macro and want to replace it in another workflow, without losing all of the connections.

If we could replace a tool, or if it is missing upon opening a workflow select a tool to take the missing one's place but keep the same connections, that would be incredibly helpful.

Currently, you can right click on an input file and convert into a Macro input. however, in order for a fellow user to see what file was used as input, one has to click on it output anchor, copy the data and paste it on a new canvas. It would be nice to right click on the input macro tool and be able to bring up the original input or convert it into a regular input in one step. Thanks

User.DevInputPath  \\Server\Path\Input

%User.DevInputPath%\myInputFile.yxdb

When I define a constant and then use it to reference an input dataset it makes it very easy for me to switch paths.  It also creates a little headache for me if I copy that input or create another workflow.  When I create another workflow, I must re-type and create more user constant entries.  It would be nice to be able to + (create new workflow) and to generate it via a copy of the current open workflow (copy ALL preferences set plus the user constants) from the workflow.  Even the ability to copy/paste the constants would be an improvement.

Cheers,

Mark

It would often be very useful to have the ability to search for a field in a browse too.

At the moment i don't think there's an easy way to manually trace data through a workflow

For example you have created a workflow with various Joins, filters, etc. and notice that the final output is missing data for "ABC limited". The only way to find at what step ABC limited dropped out of the workflow is to add 10 filter tools branching out from before and after each step in the workflow's logic then re-run the workflow (which might take 5-10 minutes) to see if where "ABC limited" has gone. You fix the problem "ABC ltd" didn't join to "ABC Limited", but now you want to also check for XYZ limited so you have to manually edit all 10 filter tools. It seems you have fixed the problem, but now your workflow is a mess of 10 filter tools.

Alternatively you could copy and paste the data from every browse tool into an excel workbook and use their search function instead, but that's obviously a cumbersome and unhelpful process, particularly as the excel sheet will have to be remade with every run of the workflow.

You could also use sort tools throughout before a browse tool, but that is still slow and doesn't help with cases where "ABC Ltd" is matching to "The ABC Co ltd"

Perhaps it would be much easier to just have a small search box in every browse tool?

Or is there a feature that I'm not aware of that makes this process of quality checking your workflow easier already?