Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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. 

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!

Alteryx gods,

It would make me even happier than I am now if it were possible to tailor the completion messaging in the Interface Designer when an analytic app completes.

Currently, we use rendering etc, but sometimes we simply want to be able to create a bespoke completion message.

My example is as follows:

In the app you have the option to download files, or have them emailed to you. If you choose download, the final display is the render tool with the documents listed, however, if you choose email I want nothing to show but the final window with the message "Please check your email" or something. There may be more than one option, and so being able to dynamically change these messages would be very useful.

Help me Alteryx gods, you're my only hope.

*beep boop boop*

Hi,

Would be helpful to have an Input and Output Tool for ProjectOnline like the SharePoint and OneDrive Tools.

This way we can read the projects in a tabular form and automate our project management tasks.

Thank you.

Hi

The action of the 'tab' key in configuration window recently appears to have changed from indenting to a navigation function. 

The user should be able to select which action the tab key performs. 

Alternatively, tab should indent and shift-tab (or alternative) navigate. I'm not the only one who would appreciate the choice.

PuffinPanic

Problem: In certain workflows, it becomes necessary to arrange columns in a specific order for the output. While achieving the desired order for a fixed number of columns is feasible using the select tool, difficulties arise when dealing with dynamic outputs that introduce new columns during each workflow run.

Example: Consider the following scenario: the INPUT data for the select tool includes a set of Question/Answer columns. However, with every run of the workflow, new columns of this type are introduced. The challenge is to ensure that Question N and Answer N columns are grouped together in the OUTPUT dynamically. Unfortunately, this task is not easily accomplished using the current capabilities of Alteryx.

INPUT:

DESIRED OUTPUT:

With Python/Pandas, this problem can be easily resolved by assigning index values to each column and then sorting the columns based on the assigned index:

So, based on the Python solution, if Alteryx could do the same, it would be great. I personally think that if the Dynamic Rename tool could held the Index Info, and the select tool could also held the Sort option, this would work.

Dynamic Rename: Already can hold Description info, could hold Index Info.

Select tool: Could sort by index and hold this info when the workflow is saved.

Hope this all make sense.

Thanks.

When you start using DCM - you may have existing canvasses which use regular old connection strings which you want to migrate to DCM.

Currently (in 2023.1.1.123) - when you select "Use Data Connection Manager" - it shreds the configuration of your input tool which makes it difficult to just convert these from an existing connection to a DCM connection

The only way to then make sure that you don't lose any configuration on the tool then is to use the XML editing functionality of the tools and copy across your old configuration.

Could you please add the capability to keep my current tool configuration, but just change from using a regular old connection string to using DCM?

Many thanks 

Sean

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

The idea behind encrypting or locking a workflow is good for users to maintain the workflow as designed. 

However, when a user reaches a level of maturity equivalent to that of the builder or more, or even when changes are required - the current practice is to keep a locked and unlocked version of the workflow so that it allows for a change in the future. 

It would be much simpler if we can have the power to lock and unlock workflows with a password. Users can then maintain and keep the passwords so that they can continue with the workflow. 

Not everybody is on Server yet so this feature is very helpful for control before Server migration. Otherwise it’s just password protecting a folder containing the workflow package, then re-locking a new save file each time a change is made or when someone new takes over on prem. 

Hi!

Just thought up a simple improvement to the US Geocoder macro that could potentially speed up the results. I'm doing an analysis on some technician data where they visit the same locations over & over again. I'm doing a full year analysis (200k + records) & the geocoder takes a bit to churn thru that much data. In the case of my data though, it's the same addresses over & over again & the geocoder will go thru each one individually.

What I did in my process & could be added to the macro is to put a unique tool into the process based off address, city, state, zip, then Geocode the reduced list, then simply join back to the original data stream using a join based off the address, city, state, zip fields (or use record id tool to created a unique process id to join off).

In my case, the 200k records were reduced to 25k, which Alteryx completed in under a minute, then joined back so my output was still the 200k records (all geocoded now).

Not everyone will have this many duplicates, but I'd bet most data has a few, & every little bit of time savings helps when management is waiting on the results haha!

As an international organization we deal with clients in multiple-countries.

Name matches for names including Chinese characters generate a unicode conversation warning and are excluded from the fuzzy match.

It would be good if fuzzy match could be enhanced to handle Chinese characters.

Sounds simple :

Best regards,

Simon

Hi all,

When preparing reports with formatting for my stakeholders. They want these sent straight to sharepoint and this can be achieved via onedrive shortcuts on a laptop. However when sending the workflow for full automation, the server's C drive is not setup with the appropriate shortcuts and it is not allowed  by our admin team.

So my request is to have the sharepoint output tool upgraded to push formatted files to sharepoint. 

Thank you!

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

Good morning!

This may be a very simple thing, but would it be possible to add a DateTimeQuarter() function? We have DateTime Second, Minute, Day, Month, and Year, and being able to have an easy formula for the quarter as well would be incredibly convenient. 

Thanks,

Kat

When creating a connection using DCM (example being ODBC for SQL) - the process requires an ODBC Data Source Name (see screenshot 1 below).

However, when you use the alias manager (another way to make database connections) - this does allow for DSN-free connections which are essential for large enterprises (see screenshot 2 below).    

NOTE: the connection manager screens do have another option - Quick Connect - which seems to allow for DSN-free connections, but this is non-intuitive; and you're asked to type in the name of the driver yourself which seems to be an obvious failure point (especially since the list of all installed drivers can be read straight from the registry)

Please could we change DCM to use the same interfaces / concepts as the alias screens so that all DCM connections can easily be created without requiring an ODBC DSN; and so that DSN-free connections are the default mode of operation?

Screenshot 1: DCM connection:

screenshot 2

cc: @wesley-siu  @_PavelP @ToddTarney 

I sometimes have to swap (change the order of) two tools in a flow. It is a bothersome task, especially when there are many connections around them. I would like to suggest two new features for such a situation. It would help if either could be realized.

Swap tools

Select two tools, right-click, and select "Swap" option. 

Move and connect around

Drag a tool holding down Alt key (or something) to move it from the stream and connect around. After that, we can drag and drop the tool to the right place.

Hello all,

Sometimes, when you have too much time to retrieve your tables metadas, you can have this message

Initialization Timed Out: Workflow must be run for field meta info to be accurate.

From what I understand, it's Alteryx and the source system that drives the time out value. However, I have some cases where the long time is "normal" and that really hurts the user experience.
So, I would like the ability in settings to change the default value.

Best regards,

Simon

We have lots of tools that create new column(s) from the Inputs, e.g., Generate Rows. It'd be very nice if the new column(s) is/are highlighted in the Output. This makes it a lot easier for users when developing the workflow.