Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

A client just asked me if there was an easy way to convert regular Containers to Control Containers - unfortunately we have to delete the old container and readd the tools into the new Control Container.

What if we could just right click on the regular Container and say "Convert to Control Container"? Or even vice versa?!

In some cases, the information about incoming columns to tools are (temporarily) forgotten, e.g. if Autoconfig is switched off, if the incoming connection is temporarily missing, or if column names are generated dynamically and the workflow has not been executed, yet.

Many tools deal with that situation well, e.g. Selection, Formula, or Summarize. In these cases, the tools tell the user that they cannot find incoming columns, but they preserve the configuration so that the user still can (at least partially) work on these tools and important information on the configuration is not lost:

Example Select Tool

1. First step: Connections present, configuration typed in:
   
2. Second step: Connection cut, confguration opened. The configuration looks screwed up but implicitly contains all settings:
   
3. Third step: Connection re-connected. The configuration is as before:
   

Other tools behave the opposite, for example Unique or Macro Input (an for sure many other tools). If the incoming columns are currently unknown to the Designer and you click once on the symbol, the entire configuration of this tool is lost. You might try to get the configuration back by pressing undo. This, in most cases does not work. Or, even worse, you find out what happened later when it's too late for undo. In this case, you either have an old version of that workflow to look up the configuration or you have to re-develop it. In any case, this is unnecessary and time-consuming software behaviour.

Example Unique Tool

1. Step 1: Connections present, configuration typed in:
    
2. Step 2: Connection cut, confguration opened. The configuration is empty:
   
3. Step 3: Connection re-connected: The entire configuration is permanently lost:
   

I wasn't sure whether I should report this as a bug or a feature enhancement. It is somehow in between. Two aspects tell me that this should be changed:

• Inconsistent behaviour of different tools for now reason,
• Easy loss of programming work, resulting in time-consuming bug fixing.

Please make sure that all tools preserve their configuration also if information on incoming columns is temporarily lost.

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"):

Hello! It would be great if I could "favorite" a tool when I search for it in the search bar in Designer. Currently, I can drag and drop it to the Canvas, but if I want to "favorite" it, I have to remember the icon and color, then go find it in the right tab. This would be a nice enhancement!

The Find Replace tool has a checkbox to do a case insensitive find. It would be fabulous if the Join and Join Multiple tools had a similar checkbox.

I frequently have to create a new field in each data stream, convert the data I want to join on to upper case, perform the join and remove the extra "helper" fields. Using the helper field is needed in my case in order to preserve unique capitalization (i.e., acronyms within the string, etc.). 

Hello all,

A few years ago, I asked for svg support in Alteryx (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/svg-support-for-icon-comment-image-e... ). Now, there is Alteryx Designer Cloud with other icons... already in svg !




So I think it would be great to have an harmonization between designer and cloud.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

Apache Doris ( https://doris.apache.org/ ) is a modern datawarehouse with a lot of ambitions. It's probably the next big thing.

You can read the full doc here https://doris.apache.org/docs/get-starting/what-is-apache-doris but to sum it up, it aims to be THE reference solution for OLAP by claiming even better performance than Clickhouse, DuckDB or MonetDB. Even benchmarks from the Clickhouse team seem to agree.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,


As of today, we use the good old alias in-memory to connect to our datasources in in-memory. We have several environments so we use constants in order to change the name of the in-memory alias during execution.

To illustrate :

Depending of the environment, the constant « v_gp_contexte » will take different values :

• GP_DS08_SIDATA for la dev.
• GP_EE_SIDATA for prod.

Sounds nice, right? But now, we would like to use DCM and the nightmare begins :

We can't manually change the name and set the question :

if we look at the xml of the workflow, we only find an id so editing it is useless :

(for informationDCM connections are stored in some sqlite db in C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Local\Alteryx

So, I would like to use the DCM inside the in-memory alias (the in-memory alias is stored and can be edited), just like for in-db connection alias.

Best regards,

Simon

This is a feature request based on my comment submitted here: Email Tool: Format "From" field to accommodate "Di... - Alteryx Community

It would be great to provide an option in the Designer Email Tool to allow us to specify a "Display Name" when sending emails.  The "Display Name" is a common part of the email specs listed here: RFC2822 - Section 3.4 (Address Specification) 

The email gateway/service that I'm using will send emails, but the "From" line will reflect only the email address.

For example, it will show an email as being from "john.smith@example.com" where I would love for it to show up as from "Smith, John".  This would make emails appear like other internal company emails in our company Outlook clients, and in general provides more useful flexibility for the Email tool. 

Many other email clients support using Display Name, but it appears that Alteryx currently doesn't.

The format of an email address with Display Name is something like "Smith, John" <john.smith@example.com> (with or without the quotes).

Hello,

Working on Dataiku DSS and there is a cool feature : they can tag tools, parts of a worklow.. and then emphasize the tools tagged.

Best regards,

Simon

How about a “Temporarily Disable Tool” feature where the tool is disabled?  Just the same as the "Disable All Tools that Write Output" but would only apply to the specific tool you select.   But, Instead of having to delete or cut the tool and connect around (as this can be tedious)!  The feature could be applied to various preparation tools (and potentially more) to help save time.

For example, there are occasions when I might have a filter applied and would want to temporarily disable the tool only to see all results.  This has been the case when I have wanted to include hospital wards (by temporarily disabling the tool) I was filtering out to review in the summarized totals.

The specific tool could have the same hashed marking as the "Disable All Tools that Write Output".   The "Temporarily Disable Tool" feature could be listed when the specific tool is right clicked on.   - The workflow could also prompt to show that the user has a tool "disabled" to highlight to the user.

Edit: Spelling

Ability to ‘name’ the point created in the “Create Points” tool.

Instead of sticking a select tool after it to rename it from ‘centroid’ to Starting Location or Store location or whatever.

Hello,

This is a popular feature on other tools, such as Talend (now Talaxie) : the ability to export the workflow as a vectorized screenshot in svg.

Why ? it helps to build documentation, svg being vectorized, it means the picture can be zoomed in without losing quality.

Of course, that would mean before that Alteryx use svg for icons as required here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/svg-support-for-icon-comment-image-e...

Best regards

Simon

Allow users the ability to add a delay on the connection between Control Container tools. I frequently have to rerun workflows that use the control container because the workflow has not registered that the file was properly closed on outputting from one output tool to the next. The network drives haven't resolved and show that the file is still open while its moved on to the next control container. Users should have an option in the Configuration screen to add a delay before a signal is sent for the next container to run. 

In the past I was able to use a CReW tool (Wait a Second) in conjunction with the Block Until Done tool to add the delay in manually. But I have since converted all of my workflows over to Control Containers. Since then half of the times the workflow has run I encounter the following errors.

For all Alteryx versions I can remember, when entering a connection string into an input tool (e.g., "C:\Users\mbarone\Desktop\ . . . "), you could just start typing and it would auto-complete.  This is no longer the case when DCM is enabled.  This is a huge efficiency hit we're taking, and is enough for us not to enable DCM (optional or otherwise), given the fact that current workflow connection manager works just fine (meaning the "akas").

Please bring back auto-complete/predictive text when DCM is enabled.

In the RecordID tool,  provide additional options for the creation of the ID, specifically allow for the ID to 'Intervals'. 

For example, Record ID every 10, meaning instead of creating an ID of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 .... you could create an interval of your choosing, the most obvious would by 10 or 100  thus your ID's would then be 10, 20, 30, 40 ....  or  100, 200, 300, 400, 500 ... etc. 

When a user wants to use the find nearest to say find the nearest within 200 miles the dropdown stops at 100.

Similar if they want a number in between IE 15 the interface is not intuitive.

While you can just type the number in the interface doesn't look like you are able to.

Simply adding a "Custom" selection at the bottom would make this much more intuitive.

Idea

I feel the necessity of the features to know the version of Alteryx Designer Desktop for each user within an organization. 

As well as some usage data of each user like 'Last Used' are available in License Portal, if 'Version of Alteryx Designer Desktop' for each user is also available in License Portal, it would be more manageable and could enhance the governance in organization.

Background

When the organization uses Alteryx Server and Designer Desktop, it is more challenging to make alignment of version of these products.

We frequently see our users install/upgrade to newer version of Alteryx Designer than that of Alteryx Server, and cause incompatibility issue when interacting with Alteryx Server.

Although we instruct our users to install the particular version, they sometimes upgrade to newer version later on by themselves, but it's not detectable.

I mean, even if they're using a wrong version of Alteryx Designer Desktop, we won't realize it until a problem occurs.

In order to identify such users and rectify their version, administrator shall be able to know which version they use whenever needed.

License Portal would be one of the best platform to make that information available in my opinion.

I’ve been using the Regex tool more and more now. I have a use case which can parse text if the text inside matches a certain pattern. Sometimes it returns no results and that is by design. 

Having the warnings pop up so many times is not helpful when it is a genuine miss and a fine one at that. 

Just like the Union tool having the ability to ignore warnings, like Dynamic Rename as well, can we have the ignore function for all parse tools? 

That’s the idea in a nutshell.