Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I don't know if you already changed it in the 2019 version, but I'm still using the 2018.4 and the font used in the results view makes the total number of rows impossible to read.

Luca

Greetings All,

I recently came across a workflow that has hundreds of tools and I need change a "variable" within several filter tools. There is prob 30-40 filters and they vary in what they filter.  A find and replace feature would be awesome, or even a simple find function that shows were the variable is located within a workflow/tool. Could use user constants but these workflows were already made when I joined and it would be more difficult.

So a feature similar to the MS Word feature of search/find/find all/replace/replace all would be great for the actual variables with the tools.

When Alteryx Designer launches, the splash screen forces itself in front of all other windows. For the 1 minute it takes to load it prevents me from doing other things.

Please allow it to be in the background when another application is selected or able to be minimized.

In the same way In-DB generates SQL, might it be possible to have an In-PowerBI and generate DAX?

Hi,

As per our project, we need to publish the image into a PDF file which will be downloaded from web URL. when we download the image from web URL that will be saved as TIF format in our local machine. This TIF format is not being supported by Alteryx.

The tool needs an enhancement (to support TIFF) which can be used for converting tiff format to other  format OR directly tiff image should be usable in the report.

Thanks,

Raju Miyapuram

My organization requires users to change their active directory passwords every so often. That's fine. That does create an issue with changing passwords on all workflows that contain a tableau server publish, but that's not the real issue here.

What's more annoying is that once that password is changed, the data source name and project is lost. When updating multiple data sources across workflows (or within the same workflow) this becomes quite cumbersome and annoying. 

I know there are limitations on the partner side as this is technically a tableau controlled thing, but is there anything that can be done here?

In previous version of Alteryx, when the user selected records in the Browse tool, a count for those records would show next to the display that shows the total record count. When you separated the windows (Browse map is in one window, Browse data in another) that feature went away on the data side (it still shows in the map view side). The only way to know how many records the user selected to is launch a whole other window showing just the selected records. Could you please bring back the selected records display, like in the attached image?

I´ve looked in the forums, and the idea is new. It would be great if there would be an option to make it possible to give tooltips when writing a formular yourself not only in the "basis-language of the installation", but also in e.g. english (as Lingua Franca). The reasoning: in Excel or Tableau I know many a command in only one language - and have to undergo a timeconsuming process of A) thinking AND B) looking it up in the language you have to use at that project.

Even Tableau does not offer this - and you have to create a lot of  calculated fields. Alteryx could gain in UI-friendliness...

I´ve looked in the forums, and the idea is new, although it has similarities to others. Since Alteryx already supports Crtl+c and Crtl+v - why not support "F4" as well. In ALL MS-Office programs it repeats the last step and thus eases the burden on mouse and user...

I realize that repeating a whole process might (!) not be feasible - but single steps (e.g. "Formatting to the similar size like the last item....") would already be very helpful.

Since Tableau does not offer this - and it has a lot more to format and repeat - Alteryx could gain in UI-friendliness...

In the Output Data tool, when the file type is YXDB, one of the options is to Save Source & Description.

Splitting these into "Save Source" and "Save Description" -- independent options -- would be useful.

Sometimes I don't want the file recipient to know how a field was derived but I want to include a description.

Right now there is no easy way of doing this.

Hi,

I recently started to take online trainings on Alteryx and came across Tile Tool. Though could understand the purpose to some extent, it would be great if the tool is explained in more depth along with more examples and also how the tile number is calculated for the examples.

Thanks,

Saipriya.

Occasionally, the Calgary Loader tool will not write out all fields passed to it.  This seems to happen after writing out a certain number of fields then later, when rerunning, adding a new output field.  Very annoying because you don't know it will happen until processing is complete and you examine the result.  I usually manually delete the calgary files prior to rerunning, to avoid the versioning, but it still happens.

Also, please make the versioning optional with a check box, default off.

Hello,

I work with alteryx databases a lot to store some historical data so I don't have to pull it in the future. It would be great if there was a way when creating the database, where I could lock them for editing and can only be edited by select usernames and passwords.

Thanks,

Chris

I often copy/paste chunks of workflow and paste it into the same workflow (or a different one).  It always seems to paste just diagonally below the upper most left Tool.  This creates a real mess.  I'd like to be able to select a small area within the work area and have the chunk of workflow I'm pasting drop there - instead of on top of the existing build.

Hello All,

I received from an AWS adviser the following message:

_____________________________________________

Skip Compression Analysis During COPY
Checks for COPY operations delayed by automatic compression analysis.

Rebuilding uncompressed tables with column encoding would improve the performance of 2,781 recent COPY operations.
This analysis checks for COPY operations delayed by automatic compression analysis. COPY performs a compression analysis phase when loading to empty tables without column compression encodings. You can optimize your table definitions to permanently skip this phase without any negative impacts.

Observation

Between 2018-10-29 00:00:00 UTC and 2018-11-01 23:33:23 UTC, COPY automatically triggered compression analysis an average of 698 times per day. This impacted 44.7% of all COPY operations during that period, causing an average daily overhead of 2.1 hours. In the worst case, this delayed one COPY by as much as 27.5 minutes.

Recommendation

Implement either of the following two options to improve COPY responsiveness by skipping the compression analysis phase:
Use the column ENCODE parameter when creating any tables that will be loaded using COPY.
Disable compression altogether by supplying the COMPUPDATE OFF parameter in the COPY command.
The optimal solution is to use column encoding during table creation since it also maintains the benefit of storing compressed data on disk. Execute the following SQL command as a superuser in order to identify the recent COPY operations that triggered automatic compression analysis:
WITH xids AS (
SELECT xid FROM stl_query WHERE userid>1 AND aborted=0
AND querytxt = 'analyze compression phase 1' GROUP BY xid)
SELECT query, starttime, complyze_sec, copy_sec, copy_sql
FROM (SELECT query, xid, DATE_TRUNC('s',starttime) starttime,
SUBSTRING(querytxt,1,60) copy_sql,
ROUND(DATEDIFF(ms,starttime,endtime)::numeric / 1000.0, 2) copy_sec
FROM stl_query q JOIN xids USING (xid)
WHERE querytxt NOT LIKE 'COPY ANALYZE %'
AND (querytxt ILIKE 'copy %from%' OR querytxt ILIKE '% copy %from%')) a
LEFT JOIN (SELECT xid,
ROUND(SUM(DATEDIFF(ms,starttime,endtime))::NUMERIC / 1000.0,2) complyze_sec
FROM stl_query q JOIN xids USING (xid)
WHERE (querytxt LIKE 'COPY ANALYZE %'
OR querytxt LIKE 'analyze compression phase %') GROUP BY xid ) b USING (xid)
WHERE complyze_sec IS NOT NULL ORDER BY copy_sql, starttime;

Estimate the expected lifetime size of the table being loaded for each of the COPY commands identified by the SQL command. If you are confident that the table will remain under 10,000 rows, disable compression altogether with the COMPUPDATE OFF parameter. Otherwise, create the table with explicit compression prior to loading with COPY.

_____________________________________________

When I run the suggested query to check the COPY commands executed I realized all belonged to the Redshift bulk output from Alteryx.

Is there any way to implement this “Skip Compression Analysis During COPY” in alteryx to maximize performance as suggested by AWS?

Thank you in advance,

Gabriel

I have a process that sends out about 1,500 emails. Every once in a while, it will get stuck at some Percentage and I will have to eventually cancel the workflow, figure out how many emails were sent, and then skip that many emails in order to avoid sending duplicate emails. The process of figuring out how many were sent is currently taking the % of the tool at cancellation minus 50%(since that is where it starts), Multiplying it by 2, and then multiplying that % by the number of lines to get the approximate line of data where it froze up, and then reaching out to individuals to see if they received the email to narrow down exactly where the error occurred. 

Example: 60% - 50%= 10% * 2 = 20% * 1249 = 249.8.

This has been pretty accurate in the past, but obviously is not ideal. Is there no way for it to show us how many were sent even if we cancelled the workflow mid processing of the tool?

Our company is loving the Insight's Tool, but I am constantly being asked by users if they can export the data behind the graphs that is feeding in. For example we have an inventory dashboard for vehicles that starts at a Corporate level, but is drillable down to a "Regional" and then even more focused "Managed Area" level. Once users get down to the "Managed Area" level they want to export the line level data that is feeding into the Insight chart to actually view, work, and action the data at a vehicle level. 

Essentially an option to export the data feeding into the graphs. 

Since we know Alteryx uses R for a lot of its predictive and data analysis tools. It takes a while to run the workflow whenever there is R based tool is involved. I was told by a solution engineer that its because its opening and closing R in the background.

Sometimes my workflow has a bunch of tools which are running R in the background and it takes forever to run the workflow.

I think there should be a user setting which allows user to choose if the want to start R along with Alteryx and keep it running in the background.

Thanks,

Hi there,

As a beginner in Alteryx with experience in other analytics software, I noticed that there may be a very simple thing that I think could be adjusted which I feel could improve the experience of a beginner in Alteryx. Also happy to know if this is already possible.

When I was doing a introduction training, I noticed that a lot of the questions were regarding not being able to see the right output, regardless of the usage of the right tools & settings. Luckily, we were provided with a good trainer that immediately saw that there was a very simple reason for this: the 'output' button (sometimes called differently, for instance in a select it is called 'true' or 'false') was not selected. Instead people were looking at the input or something else. I can even imagine that some more advanced users have spend a few minutes wondering what was wrong until they realised they weren't looking at the output.

It seems to me to be a bit random when output or input gets selected, and as someone with experience in (preventing) addiction in the gaming industry, I know that the first experience is crucial for someone to get 'hooked' :-), and this small inconsistency seems to break the flow a bit. Could you make the default setting such that a tool shows the output rather than the input by default? A possible addition would be an option that switches a tool back to input every time a button gets deselected. From a programmers/data science perspective, that would also make a lot of sense.

Regards,

Charles