The Product Idea boards have gotten an update to better integrate them within our Product team's idea cycle! However this update does have a few unique behaviors, if you have any questions about them check out our FAQ.

Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Share your Designer Desktop product ideas - we're listening!
Submitting an Idea?

Be sure to review our Idea Submission Guidelines for more information!

Submission Guidelines

Featured Ideas

When I make the workflow, the font size on Result window is no problem.

But, when we show the contents of Results window on the presentation or online meeting, the font size is too small.

I want the function which is enlarge the font size. The important point is that the current font size is okay on making workflow and the large font size is only needed on showing to the another people on presentation or online meeting.

 

One more point to add, it would be helpful to be able to change the font size with Ctrl + mouse wheel.

 

AkimasaKajitani_0-1687061231585.png

 

Push the zoom button:

AkimasaKajitani_1-1687061247584.png

 

We all know and love the Comment tool. It's a staple of every workflow to give users an idea of the workflow in finer details. It's a powerful tool - it helps adds context to tools and containers, and it also serves as an image placeholder for us to style our workflows as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

 

Now, the gensis of this idea is inspired by this post and subsequent research question here.

 

The Comment Tool today allows you to:

  • Write your text and provide context / documentation to your workflow
  • Style its shape
  • Style its font, colour, and background colour
  • Align the text
  • Put an image to your workflow

image.png

 

But it would provide way more functionality if it had the capabilities of another awesome Alteryx tool that is not so frequently mentioned... the Report Text Tool!

 

What's missing in the Comment tool that the Report Text tool has?

  1. The ability to add active data records from the workflow to its text
  2. Its wider range of styles which allows for more functionality such as with its Special Tags functions
  3. Its ability to hyperlink
  4. Text mode options!

image.png

 

Now, whilst I understand that the Report Text tool is just that, a tool that needs to be connected to the data to work, so too does the Comment tool (to a lesser extent).

 

It would be awesome to have the ability to connect the data to the Comment tool as it was a Control Container-like connector. It can also be just like the Report Text tool with an optional input, thereby making it like a normal Comment tool.

 

To visualize my point:

image.png

 

The benefits of doing so:

  • Greater flexibility to the user
  • Styles are endgame
  • Users can use the comment box as a checksum or even a total count / checker to ensure everything is working as intended
  • Makes the comment tool more powerful as a dynamic workflow documentation tool

I think it'll be a killer feature enhancement to the comment tool. Hoping to hear comments on this! 

 

Kindly like, share, and subscribe I mean comment your support. Thanks all! 😁

 

-caltang

Please update the Render tool to allow users to name the Excel sheet for the output. Alteryx currently errors when using same naming convention that works in normal Output tool.

Hello all,

 

The reasons why I would the cadence to be back to quarter release :

-for customers, a quarter cadence means waiting less time to profit of the Alteryx new features so more value

-quarter cadence is now an industry standard on data software.

-the new situation of special cadence creates a lot of frustration. And frustration is pretty bad in business.

-for partners, the new situation means less customer upgrade opportunities, so less cash but also less contacts with customers.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

We all have experienced these last years the now famous concept of hide/unhide password :
Here a few examples of it

 

password-reveal-button.png

I would like this exact principle everywhere we have a password on Alteryx.

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.

 

image.png

image.png

Hello all,

 

ADBC is a database connection standard (like ODBC or JDBC) but specifically designed for columnar storage (so database like DuckDB, Clickhouse, MonetDB, Vertica...). This is typically the kind of stuff that can make Alteryx way faster.

 

more info in https://arrow.apache.org/blog/2023/01/05/introducing-arrow-adbc/

 

Here a benchmark made by the guys at DuckDB : 38x improvement

https://duckdb.org/2023/08/04/adbc.html

 

307583921-894b24c0-19ee-4900-b80c-7c7688ea9cd9.png

 

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.

 

image.png


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

Documenting your Alteryx workflow is important because it allows others to understand and modify it as needed. To document your workflow effectively, you should provide detailed information about your inputs, outputs, tools used, and any assumptions or limitations.

 

When it comes to documentation, annotations are often more practical than the comments tool. However, the comments tool in Alteryx offers a useful feature that allows you to customize the background, font, and border colors. These customizable colors can be beneficial when reviewing workflows, as they help draw attention to specific details or notes.

 

In the screenshot below, you can observe that the highlighted comment attracts more attention compared to the annotation on the left side, even though they contain the same comment.

 

It would be great if the color customization features available in the comments tool could also be added to the annotations of any tool.

 

SaadNaser_0-1684052340300.png

 

 

 

Hello all,

Here the issue : I have a workflow in my One Drive folder
image.png


In that workflow, I use a macro that writes a file with a relative path (..\6_Big_Data\EN\.csv ) :


image.png

Strangely, it doesn't work and the error message seems to relate to a folder that doesn't exist (but also, not the one I have set)
image.png

ErrorLink: Output Data (1): https://community.alteryx.com/t5/*/*/ta-p/724327?utm_source=designer&utm_medium=resultsgrid|Cannot access the folder C:\Users\saubert\OneDrive - Business & Decision\Documents\B&D_Market\6_Big_Data\EN\.


I really would like that to work :)

Best regards,

Simon

I want a feature to enable join by custom conditions. Currently, in Join tool, allowed condition is only equality of specific fields and specific position, however, in SQL, we can join data by much more flexible conditions like;

SELECT TableA.id FROM TableA INNER JOIN TableB ON TableA.id=TableB.id and TableA.value > TableB.value  

Of course, my idea can be easily realized by using combination of Appendix Field + Filter tool, but I meant to say is that Appendix-Fields is quite expensive operation in calculation cost, and it would generate many unnecessary records, which is annoying us in case of handling a huge dataset.

 

I suppose this kind of flexible conditions can be specified by using expression editor, thereby configuration window of this feature would look like the below image; Adding one more radio button option, and expression editor similar to one used in Filter tool.

 

Any positive/negative feedback on my idea would be appreciated. Thank you for your attention!

image.png

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 :

simonaubert_bd_0-1701895804110.png

 

 

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 :

simonaubert_bd_2-1701895988262.png

 

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

simonaubert_bd_3-1701895988262.png

 


(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

 

 

Sometimes I want to set up a filter to compare the values in two fields in my data set. The basic filter option would be much more powerful and configuration would be quicker if this option allowed this.

 

For example, currently I must use a custom filter to check if Field1 and Field2 are equal:

Kenda_0-1685475507231.png

 

 

I would love to have the option to either use a static value in the basic filter (as you can now) or select a field name from a dropdown:

Kenda_1-1685475605251.png

 

We currently have language support for a few major languages. I know Chinese is available, but the writing system is only Simplified at this moment. 

I was recently in conversation with a few people from Taiwan, and they are using the Traditional writing system of Chinese. 

If Alteryx can provide Traditional as an additional to their already available Simplified writing system, I think Alteryx can help capture the market in Taiwan better. 

The people I spoke with never heard of Alteryx before, and after a demo - they were impressed. If it has this language support, then I think it’ll be much easier to get more sign ups for Alteryx from the Taiwanese market. 

Right now, the List Box interface tool allows end users to select multiple options of fields for selections, filtering, and formatting/formulating. 

 

However, it doesn't do quite as good when a use case has over 1,000+ columns/fields. This is made even more complicated with each column/field having somewhat similar naming conventions thereby causing confusion. 

 

Having a search function, as made available in standard Select Tools, Join tools, and other tools that has filtering capacity, will be most helpful for developers to give maximum flexibility to end users.

For companies that have migrated to OneDrive/Teams for data storage, employees need to be able to dynamically input and output data within their workflows in order to schedule a workflow on Alteryx Server and avoid building batch MACROs.

 

With many organizations migrating to OneDrive, a Dynamic Input/Output tool for OneDrive and SharePoint is needed.

 

  • The existing Directory and Dynamic Input tools only work with UNC path and cannot be leveraged for OneDrive or SharePoint.
  • The existing OneDrive and SharePoint tools do not have a dynamic input or output component to them.
  • Users have to build work arounds and custom MACROS for a common problem/challenge.
  • Users have to map the OneDrive folders to their machine (and server if published to the Gallery)
    • This option generates a lot of maintenance, especially on Server, to free up space consumed by the local version when outputting the data.

The enhancement should have the following components:

 

OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool

  • Ability to read either one folder with the option to include/exclude subfolders within OneDrive
  • Ability to retrieve Creation Date
  • Ability to retrieve Last Modified Date
  • Ability to identify file type (e.g. .xlsx) 
  • Ability to read Author
  • Ability to read last modified by
  • Ability to generate the specific web path for the files

OneDrive/SharePoint Dynamic Input Tool

  • Receive the input from the OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool and retrieve the data.

Dynamic OneDrive/SharePoint Output Tool

  • Dynamically write the output from the workflow to a specific directory individual files in the same location
  • Dynamically write the output to multiple tabs on the same file within the directory.
  • Dynamically write the output to a new folder within the directory

Multi-Fill Tool

Please consider a new Multi-Fill tool, not for Apps, but for regular workflows, manually run or scheduled.

Similar to the Interface tool-combination of the Text Box & Action (Update value) tools, this Multi-Fill tool would enable the user to update, for example, the User Name and Password in one place for multiple Download tools. It could also be used to update other tool variables like Filter, Sort, Unique, etc.

So our company is relatively new to Alteryx Designer and Server and we recently found out that there's no official communication sent out from Alteryx on when there are patch releases for Designer and Server. We've encountered so many bugs that we later found on the release notes that would've been helpful to know about months before.

 

So my suggestion is to have an option for Administrators to opt in/out for communication emails on when the patches are released.

 

Thank you!

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.

 

Hello all,

As of now, you have two very distinct kinds of connection :

-in memory alias

-in database alias

It happens than every single time I use a in-database alias I have to create the same for in memory since some operations cannot be realized in in-database (such as pre-sql or interface tools)

What does that mean for us :

-more complex settings operations/training/tests

-unefficient worflows that have to deal with two kinds of alias.

What I propose :
-a single "connection alias", that can be used either for in-db either for in-memory,

-one place to configure

-the in-db or in-memory being dependant on the tools you use

simonaubert_bd_0-1682053466250.png

 


Best regards,

Simon

Top Liked Authors