Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The field summary tool is an excellent resource to get an overview of the data and spot targets for analysis or data cleansing. 

Unfortunately it has limitations either in the number of fields included or some combination of the number of fields and one or more of its attributes.   There is nothing in the documentation I found to make a user aware of this. When you exceed N  fields selected the system just hangs, indicating it is running but there is no connection progress shown and nothing seems to happen, even if you limit input to 1 record.

Through trial and error I found an approximate limit in number of fields I can include and still have it work.

I request that Alteryx update the tool help info and devise enhancements to dynamically load balance the tool so it can scale to the number of fields requested or at least warn when the limit is reached or approached.  The latter warning could be similar to the red font warnings in the formula tool when you have a malformed expression.  However a load balancing version is most desired.

The issue as it stands results in users wasting a lot of time trying to make the tool work as expected, then report it to support as an apparent bug in the tool which can be argued both ways.

I realize in the real world there are limits but in this real world we are seeing the number of fields to analyze increase significantly, especially when you have a data license and integrate 3rd party data to you own native data adding a hundred or hundreds more fields.

By default output always print Headers as shown in item 1 below, I am looking to print item 2 as Header.  Item 3 is my output.

I tried item 4 below, doesn’t work.

Please consider this in your future releases.  It saves lot of time as the Outputs can contain hundreds of fields and output files are shared with User community who understands the Field description much more than Field name.  For example SAP Field-KUNNR does not mean nothing to a User than its description 'Customer'.

A check box on the Output Tool should able to toggle the selection between Field or its Description.

You might argue that the Rename column can be used, agree it would be difficult to manually type in hundreds of fields.  As an alternative you can provide automatic Rename population with Description.

Hi 

Sometimes when your using a filter you want to let everything pass through. Which means you have to remove the filter or go around it.

In stead of beeing able to out comment your filter. And the filter tool see's that as no filter.

How about adding the ability to split intersecting trade areas at the points of intersection to create two new spatial objects.  The two objects could then be used to process customer records and divide them into "territories" based on  the line of intersection.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/BigQuery-Input-Error/td-p/440641

The BigQuery Input Tool utilizes the TableData.List JSON API method to pull data from Google Big Query. Per Google here:

• You cannot use the TableDataList JSON API method to retrieve data from a view. For more information, see Tabledata: list.

This is not a current supported functionality of the tool. You can post this on our product ideas page to see if it can be implemented in future product. For now, I would recommend pulling the data from the original table itself in BigQuery. 

I need to be able query tables and views.  Not sure I know how to use tableDataList JSON API.

The look of the canvas is important. Being able to toggle between viewing classic icons (as seen throughout this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJwgYYP_xlA), to the extent available, and current icons would provide users with more variety. As a secondary benefit (when toggled to show the classic icons), users would be able to differentiate between the tools that are not classic (i.e., the newer tools that don't have an older design) and the classic tools.

Thank you very much.

Hi Alteryx,

I tried importing a file into my text input tool and I ran across this error.

Why is there a limit? Can we get rid of it since we're not living in DOS anymore.

Hi,

The imputation tool allows exchange of numbers. It would be great if we are given the option to impute string values and NULL value too

I am trying to use the Dynamic Replace to selectively update records in a set of variables from survey data. That is, I do not have all potential values in the “R” input of Dynamic Replace. Instead, I have a list of values that I would like altered from their current values by respondent (RespondentID) and question # (Q#).  Currently, when I run the workflow, any Q#/ResponseID combos that are not in my “R” input are replaced with blanks. However, I would like an option that maintains the original data if there is nothing to replace the data with. Without this option, there are few (I'm still working on some ways) workarounds to ensure the integrity of the data.

Matt

Recently, I posted one problem regarding on merging a column with same value using  the table tool. I do have a hard time to make a solution until @HenrietteH helped on how to do it. What she showed was helped me a lot to do what I want in my module, however it would be more easier if we are going to add this feature on the table tool itself. 

Thank you

A user may need to perform regression test on their workflows when there is a version upgrade of Alteryx. To save users time and effort, users can be encouraged to submit a few workflows in a secure area of the Alteryx Gallery. Prior to a version release, the Alteryx product testing team can perform a regression test of these workflows using automation. Thus when users receive an upgraded version of Aleryx it is more robust and with the added assurance that the workflows they had submitted will continue to work without errors.  

The Input Data and Text Input Tools are visually distinct, so it's easy to see when a workflow is inputting live (File) or static (Text) data.

The Macro Input tool has the same appearance whether it's inputting a File or Text data, so you have to open the tool configuration to see whether it's inputting live (File) or static (Text) data. It would be great if there was a way to visually distinguish these two cases, perhaps even separating the macro tool into two tools, one for Files and one for Text.

The current Export Workflow user experience is extremely frustrating and it sometimes takes me several attempts to export the workflow with all of the correct assets. Some ideas for improving the UX:

• Allow the width of the window to be expanded or maximized. I often have many assets that start with the same folder structure name and I have to scroll to the right for each one to decide whether to check or uncheck it. 

•  Have a display option for "Group asset by Type" (e.g., Input, Output, Macro). I typically only package up my workflows with the embedded macros, not the Inputs or Outputs. (This is especially important during development and testing, when interim yxdb's are saved to facilitate QC and trouble-shooting.) I would like an easy way to "Check all Macros" without having to go through the list one-by-one. I may have over 100 assets; with the current UX, it's really hard to get all the right assets checked.

• Add an option to filter the display to see only the assets that have been checked. 
• Add a way to copy the asset list (checked and/or unchecked) to the clipboard. This would allow us to confirm that all of the assets needed are included BEFORE EXPORTING. 
• Add an option Select All or Deselect All 

On the SELECT object - add a column "Value if Null".  This would work like a COALESCE in SQL.  For string fields, an empty string or "" would need to be an available option.

Debugging could be dramatically simplified if each canvas object had the ability to be disabled/enabled.  If disabled, the workflow would still pass through the object, but the object itself would be ignored.

The find and replace tool currently does not run row by row, and finds anything in the find column, and replaces it with anything in the replace column. I was under the impression and designed my workflow to use this as a row by row find and replace, not entire columns. 

A simple fix would be to allow users to group by RecordID, which should also speed up the find / replace tool for larger data sets I would imagine.

What I am going to do in the meantime is use Regex to replace the word out.

Thanks!

It would be nice if the fields which are selected for the Unique tool can be easily visible. (by way of grouping selected fields etc)

The issue is that if a few out of many fields are selected to be considered for Unique, it is hard to review/check which are the fields that have been selected in the Unique Tool configuration.

Here's an example. It is difficult to see all the fields which have been selected. (There are 7 fields selected in this example.)

I the current Output Data Tool, choosing a bulk Loader option, say for Teradata, the tool automatically requests the first column to be the primary index. That is absolutely incorrect, especially on Teradata because of how it might be configured. My Teradata Management team notifies me that the created table, whether in a temp space or not, becomes very lopsided and doesn't distribute the "amps" appropriately. 

They recommend that instead of that, I should specify "NO PRIMARY INDEX" but that is not an option in the Output Tool. 

The Output tool does not allow any database specific tweaks that might actually make things more efficient.

Additionally, when using the Bulk Loader, if the POST SQL uses the table created by the bulk loading, I get an error message that the data load is not yet complete. 

It would be very useful if the POST SQL is executed only and only after the bulk data is actually loaded and complete, not probably just cached by Teradata or any database engine to be committed. 

Furthermore, if I wanted either the POST SQL or some such way to return data or status or output, I cannot do so in the current Output Tool. 

It would be very helpful if there was a way to allow that. 

Many tab files lately (I am finding when they are created in mapinfo 16) Alteryx cannot read.  I have posted about this in other forums but wanted to bring it up on the product ideas section as well.