Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When the user has no internet connection or when the Help > Source setting is set to "Offline", clicking on a custom tool's help icon will always navigate to

• [AlteryxInstallDirectory]/bin/RuntimeData/HtmlAssets/help.alteryx.com/AlteryxCurrent/en/[helpURL]

which is practically never desirable for custom tools.

Specifying an offline help URL

Developers should have a way to (optionally) specify an offline help URL. This configuration could behave the same as `help_url` which already supports specifying both URLs and local files. If the offline help URL is not set, it would fallback to the `help_url` configuration.

{
  "tools": {
    "MyCustomTool": {
      "configuration": {
        "help_url": "https://mywebsite.com/help/my-custom-tool",
        "offline_help_url": "file://help/my-custom-tool.html"
      }
    }
  }
}

All built-in tools have their names, descriptions, help URLs, etc. localized to the currently selected locale. Custom tools should also be able to do this.

Specify localized configuration values

Developers should have a way to specify localized values for any locales they choose to support. Similar to the deprecated .yxlang files, this can be done with supplementary `ayx_workspace.[locale].json` files that redefine a subset of configurations which support internationalization.

/* ayx_workspace.jp.json */
{
  "tools": {
    "MyCustomTool": {
      "configuration": {
        "long_name": "カスタムツール",
        "description": "これは日本語です",
        "help_url": "https://mywebsite.com/help/jp/my-custom-tool"
      }
    }
  }
}

All built-in Designer tools have an associated example workflow that can be opened by right-clicking a tool and selecting Open Example. This feature is invaluable in helping users familiarize themselves with a tool and explore all of its features. Custom tools should be able to specify example workflows of their own.

It is currently possible to specify an example workflow, but

1. The workflow must be specified by modifying a tool's `Config.xml` file, where changes may be overwritten by the SDK.
2. All paths are relative to `[AlteryxInstallDirectory]\Samples\[locale]\02 Learn_one_tool_at_a_time`, and there is no easy way to install workflows into this directory.

Specifying an example workflow

Developers should have a way to specify the example workflow associated with any custom tool. This would likely be done in the `ayx_workspace.json` file.

{
  "tools": {
    "MyCustomTool": {
      "configuration": {
        "example_path": "configuration\\MyCustomTool_1_0\\example.yxmd"
      }
    }
  }
}

Note that a workflow may depend on some external files as well. It would be ideal if an `assets_path` could be defined to easily allow any arbitrary assets to be included with your tool. (This is currently possible, but must be done by manually modifying the .yxi archive; it isn't handled by the SDK). This would easily allow for example workflows to be specified as a path relative to `assets_path`, and if the workflow contains any relative paths to files within the assets folder, they can be resolved.

{
  "tools": {
    "MyCustomTool": {
      "configuration": {
        "assets_path": "configuration\\MyCustomTool_1_0\\assets",
        "example_path": "example\\example.yxmd"
      }
    }
  }
}

Localization of the example workflow would also be supported when localization of the plugin configuration is supported.

When a plugin is created, it can be labelled with any tool category, existent or non-existent. If the category does not exist, Designer will create it and give it a default icon. It would be nice if a category icon could also be specified, specifically for this case.

Specifying a tool category icon

Developers would have a way to (optionally) specify the tool category icon for their plugin. This would likely be part of `ayx_workspace.json`.

{
  "name": "My Plugin",
  "tool_category": "Custom Category",
  "tool_category_icon_path": "configuration\\tool_category_icon.png",
  "package_icon_path": "configuration\\package_icon.png",
  ...
}

Behavior when installing a plugin

If a plugin has a tool category icon specified, Designer should do the following when installing the plugin:

• If the tool category already exists and has an icon, no changes are made
• If the tool category already exists and does not have an icon set, the category is updated with the specified icon
• If the tool category does not exist, the category is made and its icon is set to the specified icon

This prevents changing the icons of existing categories (including built-in categories), but would prevent subsequent plugin versions from updating their tool category icons.

Use case

The company Acme Corporation develops a plugin for interfacing with Acme-related products, and would like all its tools to be grouped in a new category called "Acme" whose icon is the Acme icon.

It would be nice to create our own custom categories to be able to organize tools. It would be similar to how the Favorites category works, but any number of additional categories can be created.

Creating a new category

The user would have a way to create a new category and enter the following information:

• The category's name
• The category's icon
  • There could be a number of premade icons to select from

Adding and removing tools from custom categories

The user would have a way to add tools to or remove tools from the custom categories.

In many programming languages, errors can be thrown and caught so that the final program does not fail even if a procedure or function produces an error.

I would like to propose something similar for Alteryx, using the Control Containers. Already now, a Control Container outputs the log in the container to its output stream on the upper right corner:

Still, the workflow produces an error:

My idea is to optionally avoid the error output to the log but only report the error through the control container's output log. The error message in the output log should be "degraded" to a warning. The output log of the control container should stay unchanged. The configuration of the Control Container could look like this (addition in red):

This would help a lot if stuff produced by others is used (e.g., third party macros) which might fail while this might be normal behaviour for the workflow.

いつも大変お世話になっております。本日は、製品の動作環境についてご相談させていただきたく、ご連絡いたしました。

弊社のお客様の中には、Windowsのユーザー名やフォルダ名に日本語を使用している方々が多く存在します。

現状、こうした日本語環境でのAlteryx製品の動作保証が明確にされていないため、問題が発生した際の対応に困難を感じております。

したがって、Windowsの日本語ユーザー名、または日本語のフォルダ名を使用した環境における

Alteryx製品の動作保証について、再検討をお願いできますでしょうか？

これにより、お客様へのサポートがより円滑に行えると考えております。

お忙しいところ恐縮ですが、具体的な方針や計画についてご教示いただければ幸いです。何卒、よろしくお願い申し上げます。

All the input tools like Input Data and Dynamic Input will have a new flag  "Skip on fail" that will process all the data, or none of the input data, or partial of the data requested and will return the data that could be read and do not return any error in the WFs.

If the 'Skip on fail' flag is false - the system should act like it is now.

if the 'Skip on fail' flag is true - the system should return the  only the accepted or manager to read data on the default out put, and can have a second output connection for the error log, so we can parse it and do something with it, but the WFs should still run,

The default variable size is a V_WSTRING of size 1073741823.  If no one catches this, it uses up the memory on the server.  Could the default be smaller?

It would be very helpful to have a find and replace work in duplicated formula.  especially if it is long.

Having the ability to specify columns to be "coalesced" (essentially filled in automatically when records aren't present) across all inputs of the Join Multiple tool would be very useful, and save lots of tedious setup. In fact, I avoid that tool if possible, currently, because of the extra steps necessary in maintaining key column integrity after the join.

In the screenshot below "RecordID" is present in all 4 inputs. When they are joined together, however, not every record is present in all inputs, therefore each of the 4 "RecordID" columns has nulls. We then have to go through an extra step to find the first "non-null" record ID, and put that in a new column (or in the first "RecordID" column).

This could be simply fixed by adding a menu to specify columns that should be coalesced, or auto-filled from other inputs if it's missing in the first one.

The columns in the menu could be based on the first input, and then alteryx would look for columns with the same name in all other inputs and complete the logic below, for instance:

If isnull([RecordID]) then

      if isnull([Input_#2_RecordID]) then

           if isnull([Input_#3_RecordID]) then

                    [Input_#4_RecordID]

           else [Input_#3_RecordID] endif

     else [Input_#2_RecordID] endif

else [RecordID] endif

Hi,

I was thinking that this might be nice addition - while Joining two inputs at the bottom there is always possibility to check if we want to include Unknown columns. Maybe we could specify if we want to join Unknown columns only from Right Input or Unknown only from Left Input. I know I would use this in my workflows. 

Thanks

Alicja

Wouldn't it be great to be able to pick results from a drop down, based on the up-stream tools in the workflow? I had this situation many times, where I had to create a complex, chained app, just because the tools connected to the interface can't run before the interface tools are displayed to the end user.

For example, imagine an app, that based on what column it sees, it lets you drop one by just picking it from a drop down. It would open many development opportunities, and decrease the number of chained apps we need to build.

It will very good to connect multiple 2 or more tools by rightclicking and join. similar to cut and connect around.

I think double clicking. a tool will automatically take it to canvas is a good idea and hence a shortcut with it will be nice to have.

In our environment, we often have to replace a table.  It would be nice if there was a tool that could pull out all of the input or output tools that referenced a given dataset.  Someone wrote a XML file that we parsed, but it doesn't seem like all workflows are included.  

As mentioned in detail here, I think that the addition of a "run as metadata" feature could be very helpful for making the analytic apps more dynamic in addition to enabling the dynamic configuration of the tools included in analytic apps chained together in a single workflow using control containers, therefore mostly eliminating the need to chain multiple YXWZ files together to be able to utilize the previous analytic app's output (this of course doesn't include the cases where a complex WF/App would have to be built by the previous app in chain to switch to it, but Runner helps solve this issue to a certain extent provided you don't have to provide any parameters/values to the generated WF/App).

The addition of this feature would be somewhat similar to running an app with its outputs disabled, without having to run the entire app itself, but rather only certain parts specified by the user in a limited manner. Clicking the Refresh Metadata button (which will be active only if there is at least one metadata tool in the workflow) will update the data seen in the app interface (such as Drop Down lists, List Boxes etc.), provided the user selected the up-to-date input file(s) (or the data in a database is up-to-date) where the data will be obtained from.

To explain in detail with a use case, suppose you have two flows added to separate Control Containers where the second CC uses the field info of a file used in the first CC to enable the user to select a field from a drop down list to apply a formula (such as parsing a text using RegEx) for example. After specifying the necessary branch in the first CC where the field info is obtained, the user could select these tools and then Right Click => Convert to Metadata Tool to select which tools will run when the user clicks on the Refresh Metadata button. The metadata tools could of course be specified across the entirety of the workflow (multiple Control Containers) to update the metadata for all Control Containers and therefore all tabs of a "concatenated app", where multiple apps are contained in a single workflow.

With this feature, all tools that are configured as metadata tools (excluding the tools that have no configuration) will be able to be configured as a "metadata only" tool or a "hybrid" tool, meaning a hybrid tool will be able to be configured separately for its both behaviours (being able to change all configurations for a tool without any restrictions in each mode, MetaInfo would dynamically update while refreshing metadata). Metadata only configuration of a tool could be left the same as the workflow only configuration if desired.

For example an Input File marked as a hybrid tool could be configured to read all records for its workflow tool mode and only 1 record for its metadata tool mode. This could be made possible with the addition of a new tab named Metadata Tool Configuration in addition to the already existing Configuration tab, and a MDToolConfig XML tree could be added to reflect these configurations to the XML of the tool in question, separate from the Configuration XML tree, and either one of those XML trees or both of them would be present depending on the nature of the tool chosen by the user (workflow tool, metadata tool or hybrid).

This would also mean that all the metadata tool configurations of a tool could optionally be updated using Interface tools. You could for example either update the input file to be read for both the workflow tool mode and metadata mode of an input tool at once, or specify separate input files using different interface tools. As another example, the amount of records to be read by a Sample tool could be specified by a Numeric Up/Down tool but the metadata tool configuration could be left as First 1 rows, without being able to change it from the App Interface.

Hybrid tool (note how Configuration and MDToolConfig has different RecordLimit settings):

    <Node ToolID="1">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.DbFileInput.DbFileInput">
        <Position x="102" y="258" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <Passwords />
          <File OutputFileName="" RecordLimit="" SearchSubDirs="False" FileFormat="25">C:\Users\PC\Desktop\SampleFile.xlsx|||`Sheet1$`</File>
          <FormatSpecificOptions>
            <FirstRowData>False</FirstRowData>
            <ImportLine>1</ImportLine>
          </FormatSpecificOptions>
        </Configuration>
        <MDToolConfig>
          <Passwords />
          <File OutputFileName="" RecordLimit="1" SearchSubDirs="False" FileFormat="25">C:\Users\PC\Desktop\SampleFile.xlsx|||`Sheet1$`</File>
          <FormatSpecificOptions>
            <FirstRowData>False</FirstRowData>
            <ImportLine>1</ImportLine>
          </FormatSpecificOptions>
        </MDToolConfig>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText>SampleFile.xlsx
Query=`Sheet1$`</DefaultAnnotationText>
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
        <Dependencies>
          <Implicit />
        </Dependencies>
        <MetaInfo connection="Output">
          <RecordInfo />
        </MetaInfo>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxDbFileInput" />
    </Node>

Please also note that this idea differs from another idea I posted (link above) named Dynamic Tool Configuration Change While the Workflow is Running in that the configuration is updated while the WF/App is actually running and for example the Text to Columns tool in the second CC is dynamically changed using the output of a tool in the first CC, unlike selecting an input file and clicking Refresh Metadata from the App Interface before the workflow is run.

Attached is a screenshot and an analytic app to better demonstrate the idea.

Thanks for reading.

Hello, I believe this feature will be useful for many people.
The idea is to select multiple instances of the same tool and the configuration that we set will be applied to all the selected tools. Furthermore, it will be useful to be an easy way to select all instances of the same tool across a workflow with a shortcut in order to edit them more easily.

Not sure if API/SDK is the appropriate portion of the product that this enhancement would pertain to, but I thought that it was the most fitting option available.

I understand this is a long shot and would probably never happen, but I think it would be super cool if Alteryx had tools for blockchain development and web3 interaction.

The blockchain space is a complicated space, and every blockchain is a little bit different. So I am not sure exactly sure what this would even look like. But I imagine tools like connect wallet, query events, write transactions or other common blockchain actions.

I think as the blockchain space continues to grow, there is going to be an continued increase in interest in developing blockchain applications including companies that want to use blockchain.

With the state the blockchain industry is in at the moment, I am sure most people reading this would think its crazy, but if the blockchain industry does prevail in the long term, which I think it will, this could definitely be something to keep on the radar.

Think big!