Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Similar to being able change the parameters of a tool using the interface tools, it could be very useful if Alteryx Designer had an option where the configuration of a tool can be modified by another tool's output (which can only consist of one row & column and may include line breaks/tab characters, only first row is used if there are multiple rows) while the workflow is running, therefore reducing the need to chain multiple apps.

This feature could be made possible as the "Control Containers" feature is now implemented, and it could work like below:

Suppose you need to write to a database and may need to specify a Pre-SQL statement or Query that needs to be dynamically changed by the result of a previous tool in the workflow.

In this case, as the configuration of a tool in the next container needs to be changed by the result of a previous formula, there would need to be an additional icon below the tools, indicating that the tool's result can be used for configuration change.

This icon which will appear below the tools will only be visible once at least one Control Container and an Action tool is added to the workflow, and will automatically be removed if all the control containers are removed from the workflow. User can change the configuration of the destination tool using an action tool, which must be connected to a tool in a container that will be run after the one it is contained in has finished running, as a tool (or several tools) that is contained in the next CC in the workflow needs to be dynamically modified before the container it is contained in is activated.

If a formula tool containing multiple formula fields is added to the action tool, the user will see all the formula outputs similar to connections (i.e. [#1], [#2]...) that can be used as a parameter.

The screenshot below demonstrates the idea, but please note that this is a change where adding an action tool may not mean that this workflow will need to become either a macro or an analytic app, so a new workflow type may or may not have to be defined, such as "Dynamic Configuration Workflow (YXDW)". Analytic Apps and Macros which utilize this feature could still be built without having to define a new workflow type.

When making any type of macro, it's important to test the functionality of the macro via a debug.  This is accomplished successfully with normal tools, however there's a bug that will not allow the user to debug In-DB macros that use either of the following standard Alteryx tools:  

• Macro Input In-DB
• Macro Output In-DB

If either of these tools are included in the macro you are building, an error message will appear not allowing you to open a debug.  

Error message: Question Tool Load Error:  A question tool with a tool id of XXX is missing the associated question data.

Of course, Macro input and output tools do not require any specific action/question tool associated with it.  This is a bug.  A user pointed out the XML issue almost 3 years ago here:

In summary: "It appears that the tool itself inserts a hidden Question attribute into the XML which can also be seen in Workflow Configuration"

Source:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/In-DB-Macro-Input-and-Output-t...

Examples....

A normal macro, using standard tools:

After debugging a standard macro, the Macro Input/Output tools correctly change to a Text Input and a Browse tool.  This allows the macro author to test the macro.

However, when trying the same thing with In-DB tools in a macro, an error message appears:

In-DB macro 1:

In-DB Macro error message (after clicking "Open Debug"):

Why we don't add the search feature in the Multi-row formula same as the formula tool?

I have been very excited about Dark Mode.  Its arrival in 2023.1, whilst only in Beta and with plenty of work to do, means it's party time at my house.

It made me think we need a switch on the main Alteryx page to make it easy to flip between light and dark modes. 

Alteryx is not able to read generated Excel sheets which have the prefix "x:" within it's XML tags.  Often this occurs when an xlsx file is created from a bot or rpa process.  Example file attached.

it would be beneficial to add the same action available in the message result window to be added in the brows tool for the distinct value.

like the copy options. 

Hi there,

When creating a database connection - Alteryx's default behaviour is to create an ODBC DSN-linked connection.

However DSN-linked connections do not work on a large server env - because this would require administrators to create these DSNs on every worker node and on every disaster recovery node, and update them all every time a canvas changes.

they are also not fully safe becuase part of the configuration of your canvas is held in the DSN - and so you cannot just rely on the code that's under version control.

So:

Could we add a feature to Alteryx Designer that allows a user to expand a DSN into a fully-declared conneciton string?

In other words - if the connection string is listed as 

- odbc:DSN=DSNSnowFlakeTest;UID=Username;PWD=__EncPwd1__|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Then offer the user the ability to expand this out by interrogating the ODBC Connection manager to instead have the fully described connection string like this:
odbc:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=Username;pwd=__EncPwd1__;authenticator=Snowflake;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=xnb27844.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user

NOTE: This is exactly what users need to do manually today anyway to get to a DSN-less conneciton string - they have to craete a file DSN to figure out all the attributes (by opening it up in Notepad) and then paste these into the connection string manually.

Thanks all 

Sean

Creation of a gradient based background which correspond to where records drop throughout the workflow to identify issues or potential anomalies based on the initial dataflow. It could also certain tools flash when the record counts are 0 for example filter tools, joins, unions etc. 

Sometimes there are hundreds or even thousands of tools in very complex workflows so it would be helpful to track the data lineage. 

It would also be nice to have a tool that summarizes the number of records per each input and how many make their way in to the final tool/output or browse. 

The gradient can be adjusted based on the threshold and it could be added to connections in this case the red indicates there's been 0 records and the filter tool could flash or glow

Hello there

I'd like to suggest if we can add some metrics near the results area that would show the user the the Count of Unique, total count, SUM and etc of the selected records in the results area, to avoid copying selected records and pasting to excel to get these metrics

It's a small enhancement but could improve the user experience when investigating the data and trying to do some validation immediately rather than pasting to excel or adding other tools to get the answer.

Thanks 

Hi there,

the Snowflake documentation only refers to connection strings which use a DSN such as this page Snowflake | Alteryx Help which refers to the connection string as odbc:DSN=Simba_Snowflake_JWT;UID=user;PRIV_KEY_FILE=G:\AlteryxDataConnectorsTeam\OAuth project\PEMkey\rsa_key.p8;PRIV_KEY_FILE_PWD=__EncPwd1__;JWT_TIMEOUT=120

However - for canvasses which need to be productionized on Alteryx Server - it is critical to use dsn-less connection strings so that the canvasses can be deployed and run on any worker node without having to set up DSNs on every worker node.

A DSN-less connection string looks like this: 

ODBC:DRIVER={SnowflakeDSIIDriver};UID=UserName;pwd=Password;WAREHOUSE=compute_wh;SERVER=server.us-east-1.snowflakecomputing.com;SCHEMA=PUBLIC;DATABASE=NewTestDB;Staging=local;Method=user|||NEWTESTDB.PUBLIC.MYTESTTABLE

Please could you consider making an update to the help texts to provide and describe a DSN-free connection string as well as the DSN driven connections?

Many thanks

Sean

I would like to raise the idea of creating a feature that resolves the repetitive authentication problem between Alteryx and Snowflake

This is the same issue that was raised in the community forum on 11/6/18: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/ODBC-Connection-with-ExternalB...

Can a feature be added to store the authentication during the session and eliminate the popup browser?  The proposed solution eliminates the prompt for credentials; however, it does not eliminate the browser pops up. For the Input/Output function, this opens four new browser windows, one for each time Alteryx tests the connection. 

Hi!

Under User Settings, if you could add options to change what Alteryx shows in the tool configuration window. Currently, it shows Field, Type, Size, Rename, Description. I've been using Alteryx for almost 20 years, I've never used the Description field for anything. If Alteryx provided the option to remove it from the view for users who never use it, then the Rename field would no longer get truncated, which is a field I think is more widely utilized.

My team always run into the issue that two people running two workflow at the same but those workflow using the same excel flat file, then it clash into each other. 

I want Alteryx to develop a feature to allow read only capability to a input excel, that way two workflow use the same input file will not clash into each other, it's very good for running workflow in parallel, this way really increase our efficiency. 

I know this feature is not easy to achieve, we have had chat with Alteryx team before. 

I am opening to alternative solution to this problem. 

Thanks! 

My Team Heavily rely on Dremio. 

It would be great for Alteryx team to add Dremio as a dedicated data source Input for Alteryx, it would be so much easier for us to configure and run things in the future. 

Thanks! 

As an Alteryx Designer user I would like the ability to write .hyper files to a subdirectory on Tableau Server to keep make my Tableau site easier to manage.

When a macro that is not "installed" is inserted to a workflow (from a folder), its dependency can also be modified (including the macro inputs, if there are any) from the Workflow Dependencies settings.

I would like to suggest that the macro tools and the relevant files have separate buttons for dependency configurations.

One use case for this would be when a user saves a workflow in a specific location after configuring the paths as All Relative and moving the workflow to an entirely different folder afterwards, making it difficult to find the original location of the macro used in the workflow, also introducing the chance of breaking the workflow when opened and saved with the undefined (question mark sign) macro tool if the underlying workflow XML is not examined by a text editor.

There are currently many encoding options (see also: Input Tool Has Limited Varieties of Code Pages) that are available for use with Alteryx Designer (https://help.alteryx.com/2018.2/CodePages.htm), however only a certain number of them can be directly accessed from the interface. Providing the user an option to enable all possible encoding options (from User Settings) for the applicable tools could eliminate the need for building an analytic app just to pass the output encoding parameter to i.e. the Input/Output/Run Command tools.

One case this could be useful is when there are file/folder names with non-English characters and a Run Command tool is used to execute an operation regarding moving something from/to the folder, where the only option is to use an OEM encoding to be able to correctly pass the file/folder name information, otherwise the characters are not read correctly by CMD.