Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello, 

Please can we have some drawing tools, so we can add another dimension to our workflows.  I would like to draw arrows and lines across my workflow, so I can show the different stages of the workflow. I could use containers as an alternative, but feel lines would be better.

Also, is their a grid-line option, and a space equally (to spread tools evenly across work page), and an auto straighten!

Also, when you FIND, it would be nice if the Find box is allowed to stay on screen, whilst you work on the tool that has just been found; and if the founded tool can be highlighted more clearly so it can be seen. 

Also, a timer, so we can see how long the workflow runs for.

That's it for now. 

Thanks

Hello,

My issue is very easy to solve. I want to use the generic ODBC In database for a specific base (monetdb here but it isn't important).

The connexion works just fine. However, I cannot create table because the data types are changed and does not even exist. Here is my data with some Date type :

And here the error in my data stream in give me this very interesting message  :

Error: Entrée du flux de données (2): Erreur lors de la création de la table "formation.temp1" : [MonetDB][ODBC Driver 11.31.11]Type (datetime) unknown in: "create  table "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID"
syntax error, unexpected IDENT in: ""Freight""

CREATE  TABLE "formation"."temp1" ("AccountNumber" varchar(255),"BillToAddressID" float,"BusinessEntityID" float,"Comment
" float,"CreditCardApprovalCode" varchar(255),"CreditCardID" float,"CurrencyRateID" float,"CustomerID" float,"DueDate" datetime,"Freight" real,"OnlineOrderFlag" float,"OrderDate" datetime,"OrderDate_Month" varchar(255),"OrderDate_Year" float,"PurchaseOrderNumber" varchar(255),"RevisionNumber" float,"SalesOrderID" float,"SalesOrderNumber" varchar(255),"ShipDate" datetime,"ShipMethodID" float,"ShipToAddressID" float,"Status" float,"SubTotal" float,"TaxAmt" float,"TotalDue" float)

1/ My field is a date, why do you want to convert it in Datetime??

2/ Datetime is not even a usual field type in sql database (at least not supported by monetdb, vertica, postgresql, oracle, etc, etc...)... it should obviously be timestamp

Currently, this non-specific in database ODBC connexion cannot be used at all!

I recently came to know that Alteryx doesn't support Denodo Data sources. We at our company are using Denodo as a data virtualization tool and also Alteryx is used for data blending. The request is for Alteryx to start supporting Denodo as a data source so that our company can reach out to Alteryx for any support related issues with Denodo.

I reported this to the support team but was told it was by design and to post here.

In-DB Inefficient SQL

I would like to report that the In-DB tools are generating horribly inefficient SQL code for simple operations.  It seems no matter what tools you use every statement is starting with a nested 'Select * From'.

Example Simple workflow:

This is a simple Select and Group by but the SQL Generated is:

SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit"

FROM (SELECT * FROM "_SYS_BIC"."shell.app.gsap.FL000_LSC.FL002_CTS.INT.RPT/CA_CTS_RPT_MAIN_001") AS "a"

GROUP BY "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name"

This is taking a very long time to execute:

Statement 'SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit" FROM ...'

successfully executed in 15.752 seconds  (server processing time: 15.699 seconds)

Whereas if I take the same query and remove the nested Select *:

SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit"

FROM "_SYS_BIC"."shell.app.gsap.FL000_LSC.FL002_CTS.INT.RPT/CA_CTS_RPT_MAIN_001" AS "a"

GROUP BY "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name"

It is very quick:

Statement 'SELECT "ShipTo", "ShipTo_Name", SUM("ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit") AS "Sum_ECM_3PL_OVERHEADS_Unit" FROM ...'

successfully executed in 1.211 seconds  (server processing time: 1.157 seconds)

So Alteryx is generating queries up to x13 slower than they should be thereby defeating the point of using In-DB.  As you can imagine in a workflow where we have multiple Connect In-DB tools this is a really substantial amount of time.  Example used above is from SAP HANA DB has 1.9m rows and ~90 columns but we have much bigger tables/views than this.

If you look you will see its same behaviour for all In-DB tools where each tool creates another nested Select with its particular operator.

MY SUGGESTION:

So my suggestion is that Alteryx should combine the SQL of the first few tools and avoid using SELECT * completely unless no Select tools have been used.  So it should combine:

- Connect In-DB + Select

- Connect In-DB + Filter

- Connect In-DB + Summarise

Preferably it should combine/flatten everything up until the first join or union.  But Select + Filter are a must!

Note it seems some DB's can cope OK with un-nesting these big nested queries in the query plans for some Tables but normally not for Views.  But some cannot cope at all and so the In-DB tools cannot even be used to Browse 100 records (due to select *).

As we do more work analyzng the canvasses that our folk are producing - it's becoming more and more necessary to have a well documented definition and schema for the XML that is used for Alteryx Canvasses.

Please could you publish the full XML definition and schema for Alteryx canvasses - this will allow groups to perform deeper analytics on how people are using Alteryx, automate quality checks; look for learning gaps; scan for dependencies etc?

Note: this relates to an idea from @dataprep here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Documentation-tool-list-fileformat/idi-p/184...

cc: @revathi @LizaNemchynova @ydmuley

Scenario:

Upstream tools end in a Summarize Tool that has set of records with the following fields:  EmailAddress, AttachmentUNCPath.  So you get a bunch of recipients with various attachments.  Each recipient can have different attachments, and this will change each time it's run.  In other words, it's fully dynamic.  

If the same recipient has multiple attachments, then it would be nice to group the recipient and just separate the attachments with a semi-colon (or whatever) in the same field.  Essentially creating one record per recipient, and therefore one email per recipient, and having the Email Tool attach each file.  In other words, mbarone@paychex.com gets one email with 5 attachments.  And next week maybe only 3 attachments, and so on.  

Currently the only way I see to accomplish this is with a batch macro.  

Would be infinitely more convenient to just have the Email Tool by default accept multiple attachments in a field as long as they are separated by a semi-colon, much like occurs in the "to" field.

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:

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:

Tableau allows users to do three very useful things to make data more usable for end users, but this functionality is not available with the Publish To Tableau Server tool.

Foldering of dimensions/measures

Creating hierarchies out of dimensions

Adding custom comments to fields that are visible to users when they hover

This functionality allows subject matter experts to create data sources that can be easily understood by everyone within their organizations.  

Please "star" this idea if you would like to see functionality in Alteryx that would enable you to create a metadata layer in the "Publish to Tableau Server" tool or in an accompanying tool.

When saving an alteryx module (yxmd, yxmc, yxwz, yxzp), can we have a simple "SAVE AS" function that allows us to choose the version number?  Conversely, could we open a newer version module with a warning message rather than an error?

In either case there would be the logical CAVEAT that certain functions or features may not be compatible with the save/open function.

Thanks,

Mark

Could you expose a link to the Keyboard Shortcuts (which is here: https://help.alteryx.com/2019.4/HotKeys_Shortcuts.htm?Highlight=keyboard%20shortcuts) on the primary help menu (screenshot below)

This will allow people to get quicker in Alteryx by exposing these shortcuts to more users.

It would be great if you can add a function "eval". This would be similar to R or access where you would pass a string to the eval function and it would then evaluate the string. My made up use case would be something like this: I have 1 Million rows of data with 20 fields. The first 10 are value1, value2...value10, and the second 10 are value1_right, value2_right....value10_right. I would like to replace valuex with valuex_right if valuex is null. With a multifield formula tool selected I could write something like this with value1-10 selected: eval("IIF(ISnull([_CurrentField_]),["+[_CurrentFieldName_]+"_right],[_CurrentField_])"). Thanks!

Hi!

For a improved presentation of the GUI elements (Inteface Tools), may be to use for an Analytic App.

It would be great if it were possible to position the Interface Tools also side by side, instead of one above the other.

Best regards

Mathias

As of Version 10.6, Alteryx supports connecting to ESRI File GeoDatabases from the input tool but it doesnt support writing to a geodatabase.  This is something we would really like to see implemented in a future version of Alteryx.  Those of us working with ESRI products and/or any of the ESRI online mapping systems can do our processing in Alteryx and store large files as YXDBs, but ultimately need our outputs for display in ArcOnline to be in shapefile or geodatabase feature class format. Shapefile have a size limit of 2 GBs and limitation on field name sizes. Many of the files we are working with are much larger than this and require geodatabases for storage which are not limited by size (GDB size is unlimited, 1 TB max per feature class) and have larger field name widths (160 chars).  Right now, we have to write to one (or many) shapefile(s) from Alteryx, then import them into a GDB using ArcMap or ArcPy.  This can be an arduous process when working with large amounts of data or multiple files.

The latest ESRI API allows both read and write access to GDBs -- is there a way we can add this to the list of valid output formats in Alteryx?

This idea is an extension of an older idea:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/ESRI-File-Geodatabase/idi-p/1424

From Wikipedia

Druid is a column-oriented, open-source, distributed data store written in Java. Druid is designed to quickly ingest massive quantities of event data, and provide low-latency queries on top of the data.[1] The name Druid comes from the shapeshifting Druid class in many role-playing games, to reflect the fact that the architecture of the system can shift to solve different types of data problems.

Druid is commonly used in business intelligence/OLAP applications to analyze high volumes of real-time and historical data.[2] Druid is used in production by technology companies such as Alibaba,[2] Airbnb,[2] Cisco,[3] eBay,[4] Netflix,[5] Paypal,[2], Yahoo.[6] and Wikimedia Foundation [7] 

More and more companies are going from Hive to Druid for Dataviz needs, maybe it's time to look for Druid Integration with Alteryx?

At the moment if a part of your python code takes more than 30s to run, Jupyter times out and Alteryx cancels the workflow. This makes the Python Tool unusable for anything intensive and the timeout should be removed by default or be configurable per workflow.

I've made this idea as none of the solutions in these threads feel satisfactory:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-tool-NbConvertApp-Timeout/m-p/3...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-Tool-Timeouts-When-Running-Work...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Python-SDK-timeout-error-cell-executio...

Hi All,

Was very happy to see the Bulk Loader introduced for Snowflake during last release. This bulk loader is specifically available for Snowflake environments that are hosted on AWS, but does not provide functionality for those environments using Azure. As Snowflake continues to build momentum, I imagine this will be a common request. Is there something in the pipeline to add this functionality?

For an interim solution, we will be working toward developing some generic scripts/snowsql to mimic that bulk load, but ultimately we'd love to have this as part of the tool.

Best,

devKev

I think it would be incredibly helpful for Alteryx to include a "Fuzzy Join" operator, similar to what is described in this article: http://www.decisivedata.net/blog/alteryx-fuzzy-join-workflow/

Virtually every client/project I work on, there is a nead to clean up data.  Most of the time, that involved standardizing to some existing list of data.  However, as we all know, data from differnet systems or being manually collected will not match perfectly in all cases.  This is most often when I tend to use the Fuzzy Match tool.

However, I have to use a lot of weird steps to effectively create a "Fuzzy Join", which is something I've done using database functions in the past.  I think it would be great if a new tool were created that would do the following:

• Accept two inputs, one for the "raw" data and another for the "list" of data to match to.
• Perform a fuzzy join based on similar functionality to the fuzzy match, convert data to metaphone keys and then run Jaro/Levenstein matches.  By default, return only the highest matching result.
• Expand the pre-process functionality to include words to exclude from the analysis (beyond just "and", "the" and "in").  
• Match on the whole string.  No need to try and do joins based on partial words within a string.

This seems like a very common thing (I've created a macro for this anyway) that could be made to be simpler for everyday use.

Thanks!

I would like Alteryx to create an internship support program that provides a license similar to a trial but for an extended period, say 6 to 8 weeks, and tied to core certification. you could repackage much of the existing training into a curriculum aimed at educating new users sufficiently on the elements necessary to pass the Core certification within a short time frame.

Our organization just launched an internship program and had our first group of interns start 5 weeks ago.  I had to come up with a plan that provided the intern a valuable experience.  I decided to make Alteryx Core certification a key objective and put him on a spare license we had for the duration and worked with him to get his core. 

I think this could be a great marketing tool for Alteryx.  It would get more people entering the workforce educated about your product so that no matter where they end up they might already be a fan and suggest the tool as a solution in a new job that doesn’t currently know about you.   Conversely it gives interns a certification that shows they know more than the other applicants for a job where Alteryx is already a tool.  I am sure there are tax benefits to Alteryx as well for each license used.

This is kind of how we discovered Alteryx, we had issues with volume of data and technology limitations (Excel) and someone had used Alteryx at a prior company and suggested we try it out.  We purchased a couple licenses, then within a couple years we had 16 licenses.  You can’t sell someone who doesn’t know you exist…the internship type license is a good idea to expand the list of people in the workplace who know you exist.  Even better they will have have reached a level of knowledge, core certification, to have a basic appreciate your value.

Ok Alteryx, we totally love your product.  And I've got a super quick fix for you.  Why on earth would you Autocomplete the ubiquitous tick mark as "ReadRegistryString(Key, ValueName, DefaultValue='')"

?

I find myself in this situation constantly where, 'dummy' suddenly becomes 'dummyReadRegistryString('HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SRC\Alteryx\4.1', 'InstallDir')' the moment I strike the enter key.  

Pls help, I don't ask for much.