Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

In a previous lifetime I spent a lot of time developing data processing workflows in Microsoft Access before moving into Alteryx as my primary data processing tool. Although Alteryx is, on the whole, vastly more feature rich than Access, Access has a couple of very simple features which Alteryx could integrate into the Browse tool to significantly improve its usability. In particular, I am suggesting the option to add a totals/summary row to the browse tool to calculate basic statistics for columns on demand. 

Attached is a screenshot of a totals row for a dummy table in Access. As you can see, a user can select from various summary statistics including sum, average, count etc. 

Almost every day I export data from the browse tool to Excel multiple times, simply to calculate column totals. A totals row in the browse tool would remove a major source of reasons for me to export to Excel and would significantly increase the browse tool's usefulness. 

It would be nice to have a visual cue for a detour tool's configuration. This is especially the case when testing with several detour tools in a workflow - see the cleanse.yxmc screenshot below. I added an annotation to one of the detour tools as a possible solution.

Any of these options that would save the additional click would be appreciated.

• Default annotation shows "Detour left" or "Detour right"
• Detour outgoing wire highlighted (mentioned in Detour dashing)
• Detour direction outgoing anchor that is NOT used is grayed out
• Detour direction outgoing wire that in NOT used is grayed out
• Detour tool has a left/right toggle
• Detour tool changes color when set to detour right

Personally, I prefer that the outgoing anchor and outgoing wire not in use be grayed out. But even the default annotation stating the direction would be helpful.

Does anyone else have a preference or other ideas on the visual cues?

Request: Google Drive Output Tool to be able to set the maximum records per file and create multiple files

For the regular Alteryx Output Tool, we're able to set maximum records per file. This is helpful in a variety of ways - we use it as part of a workflow where the output gets uploaded into SalesForce and we can only load 5,000 records at a time. I also use this to split up large csv files to be under Excel's ~1M line limit so my teammates without Alteryx can open their reports and not lose data. 

The Google Drive Output does not have this ability to split based on the number of records. If I use the RecordID Tool plus a Filter, it crashes Alteryx due to a Bug with RecordID + GDrive Output (it's currently in Accepted Defect stage)

It would be very helpful to have this same functionality that we can with the regular Output Tool

As I previously mentioned here, I think that CReW (Alteryx) Runner could hugely benefit from additional enhancements and documentation that would be made for it, especially by adapting certain functionalities found in AlteryxEngineCmd.exe to AlteryxRunner.exe.

Enhancements

Encoding

As you might have already noticed while using the Alteryx Runner (also documented in this page), the AlteryxRunner.exe executable that is being used by Alteryx Runner does not produce the log file in UTF-16 (default Alteryx log output encoding) or UTF-8 encoding.

Therefore, if there exists a tool in your workflow that could produce a message that includes characters that are not supported by the limited Latin code pages (not including Extended Latin) or only supported by UTF-8 / UTF-16 code pages (same applies to workflow/analytic app name, input file names, output file names and directory names), you will notice that the output log is cut off exactly at that character, even if you use an installer such as this, which modifies the input read options of the Read Results section in the Run Command tool in the macro to read the log file produced by the AlteryxRunner.exe in a UTF-8 encoding.

This limits the way in which users can name their files, directories and workflow names, produce custom messages, or render the Runner tool unusable in certain languages.

As the output encoding settings are directly stored in the AlteryxRunner executable, this is unfortunately not an option that can be changed by the end user and requires direct modification to the AlteryxRunner.exe executable file directly from Alteryx development team.

While not being sure if AlteryxRunner.exe is capable of executing workflows or analytic apps that contain characters in their names or their directory names only supported by Extended Latin / UTF-8 / UTF-16 code pages, I would expect that support to be also added in case it's not already there.

Parameters (Command Line Arguments)

- While trying to find if AlteryxRunner.exe supports any command line arguments, I noticed that it is not possible to run an analytic app with custom values (or even if there is, there's no documentation for it, something I have written about below) via AlteryxRunner.exe, so it would be great to be able to run a YXWZ file with custom values (either using an XML file generated while the workflow is running or a "raw xml data stream with no quotation marks or line feeds" provided in the Runner tool as a new option (a text box for XML File Full Path and another one for Raw XML Data Stream toggled by two radio buttons in a check box group named This workflow is an analytic app) added to the interface of the Runner tool in addition to the workflow full path, already included as a text box interface tool). This would save the users from having to generate an analytic app from a template analytic app (at least in some cases where no advanced modifications to the workflow XML would be necessary) just to be able to change the app values stored in the app.

As already specified in the Encoding section above, I would also expect (at least) the XML file (even if not Raw XML Data Stream) to be able to be read in using UTF-8 encoding.

- I think that users should also be able to specify whether to run a workflow or analytic app using E1 or AMP (overriding the workflow settings), just like in the executable AlteryxEngineCmd.exe. In addition to this, if the AMP flag is passed, there should also be an option (or a 3rd option in addition to E1 and AMP) to pass an Engine Compatibility Mode flag.

- As a final addition, I believe it should also be possible to optionally specify the Memory Limit if desired using an additional flag.

I also think that the two last features should also be added to AlteryxEngineCmd.exe, which could benefit from additional enhancements including but not limited to these suggested in this idea post.

Documentation

Parameters

As you might have noticed while reading the two documentations Run Workflows by Command Line and Runner Tool, while there is an advanced documentation on the use of AlteryxEngineCmd.exe, only the use of the Runner Tool itself is documented and not AlteryxRunner.exe. Some of the enhancement requests here are directly a result of this situation (these features could already exist in AlteryxRunner.exe but we would not be aware of it if these were not documented). While such a documentation would not be needed by the Alteryx Designer users (as those arguments could be passed by the choices users make in the macro interface), it might help better understand the capabilities of the executable that makes it possible for a macro such as Alteryx Runner to exist in the first place.

I am trying to add additional functionality to my existing workflow.

We have a common workflow pushed to the Alteryx server and there will be multiple people running this workflow.

Every time the workflow is run, the expectation is that an automatic email should be sent to the person who has triggered it(and won't be sent to multiple other people).

Currently, we have it set up using the Email tool but I do not see an option to dynamically update this “To” field to automatically use the email of a person running the workflow on the server.

I would like a new format option within the Designer function DateTimeFormat such that where a date is held in the database

e.g. 2023-01-01

DateTimeFormat([date],%o)

will return 1st not 1 or 01. 

Workarounds exist, but are fiddly given the different options....1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.....

I have tried to search for this Idea but not located one that is same or similar. 

When searching for tools to use rather than having to click in the search bar at the top, it would be nice just to click on a blank part of the canvas and start typing for the tool that you need, then a suggest tool list pops up and you just click on the one you want to it appear. 

Thanks

Dynamic macros that fetch the current version at every run time vs storing a static copy of the macro with the workflow at publish time are challenging to pull off using shared drives. 

This suggestion is to store dynamic macros in the gallery and secure their use with collections.

Right click + "Insert After" and Right click + "Paste After" should behave the same. In the picture below I show the two cases. Currently, the "Insert After" option inserts a tool between the selected tool and the tools after it. The "Paste After" creates a new branch with the pasted tool. I think the "Paste After" should behave the same as the "Insert After": paste the tool on the existing branches. In case we want to create a new branch, we will paste the tool and connect a new branch to it.

Providing access to the Oracle Cloud for OTM would allow users to connect to the API's to deliver data sets from the Cloud and use it for workflow and other data management activities.

Quite often, I would love to be able to use Browse tools already while the workflow is still running, if that specific Browse tool has completed (green box around). This would help to debug and save a lot of time.

In this case, the lower Browse tool would be enabled already now.

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. 

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! 

Being able to specify a name for the FileName field in the Input Tool configuration would be helpful for cases where a field named FileName is already present in the input data and has a different purpose than the newly added FileName field. Instead of having to use Field Info and other tools to rename the last field into something else (i.e. AYX_FileName), this would be an easier approach.

The C API for e1 is included in the Designer Desktop installation. The new AMP engine must have a C API as well, but it has not been released publicly.

Let tool and SDK makers create custom tools that plug into the AMP engine by releasing the specifications of the AMP C API.

Sometimes when creating a workflow, or a chained application I create fields or parameters in a formula tool and need to be able to quickly copy and paste the entire formula output column into another formula tool across a different part of the workflow / entirely different workflow.

This most often happens when standardizing fields across different data streams. We have the ability to save expressions, but if you save too many that can quickly get messy. We also have the ability to copy and paste a formula within a formula output column...so why not extended the functionality slightly to copy/paste the entire formula output column?

In this proposed enhancement a user could right click on the 3 lines at the top left of the formula section and copy/cut a formula output column between formula tools:

Hello team,

It would be really nice if user interface tool can be set with a default set up that will flow into the connected tool. Currently it will always been blank as no data flow in.

There are ways to bypass it as run the automation in Open Debug, but then if you want to amend the the automation you need to go back to the original WF and then run it again with Open Debug.

Of course you can set a static data for these fields however then you must remove them before saving it to the Gallery, which might create future errors if you are forgetting to delete the static data.

So if I added a Select Date, it will be nice if it will be possible to select a data in that tool and that date will reflected in the WF. It is less an issue at the development part as normally at that stage these tools will not be set up, however when you need to upgrade existing WF or amend one due to changes, that's were it will be very handy and will save a lot of time.

I would like to propose three feature enhancements for the Cross Tab tool under the Transform tool category.

1. Bringing Concat Unique functionality, which is an idea that is currently in Coming Soon status.

2. Adding Start and End in addition to Separator, similar to the Concatenate Properties found in the Summarize tool.

3. Changing the Default Size from 2048 to 1073741823 (max V_WString size). It is common for especially new users to ignore the truncation errors and potentially miss important data that may need to be processed downstream.

Improve the user experience by enable search filtering options in browse tool result just as in the canvas. See attached pics.