Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I spend too much time repositioning tools by hand to minimize space between tools (especially when trying to parse messy XML documents).  It would be great to have a feature that automatically reduces the space between the set of selected tools, such as "Distribute Horizontally and Compact".   This would help free up canvas space.  

Dynamic Input is a fantastic tool when it works.  Today I tried to use it to bring in 200 Excel files.  The files were all of the same report and they all have the same fields. Still, I got back many errors saying that certain files have "a different schema than the 1st file."  I got this error because in some of my files, a whole column was filled with null data.  So instead of seeing these columns as V_Strings, Alteryx interpreted these blank columns as having a Double datatype.  

It would be nice if Alteryx could check that this is the case and simply cast the empty column as a V_String to match the previous files.  Maybe make it an option and just have Alteryx give a warning if it has to do this..

An even simpler option would be to add the ability to bring in all columns as strings.  

Instead, the current solution (without relying on outside macros) is to tick the checkbox in the Dynamic Input tool that says "First Row Contains Data."  This then puts all of the field titles into the data 200 times. This makes it work because all of the columns are now interpreted as strings.  Then a Dynamic Rename is used to bring the first row up to rename the columns.  A Filter is used to remove the other 199 rows that just contained copies of the field names.  Then it's time to clean up all of the fields' datatypes.  (And this workaround assumes that all of the field names contain at least one non-numeric character. Otherwise the field gets read as Double and you're back at square one.)

Since we use Mosaic extensively we would like for the colors used in the Interactive Chart tool to be assigned by a value in order to match Experian's color assignments.  For example, if [Mosaic] = “A01” then use RGB 77/72/ 133.

Thanks for the consideration.

I would love the ability to double click a un-named tab and rename it for 'temp' workflows.

eg - "New Workflow*" to "working on macro update"... 

Reason:

1. when designer crashes it is a huge pain to go through auto saves with "New Workflow*" names to find the one you need
2. I work on a lot of projects at once and pull bits of code out and work on small subset and then get destracted and have to move over to another project. With mulitpule windows and tabs open it gets confusing with 10 'new worflow' tabs open.
3. Allows for better orginaization of open tabs - can drag tabs into groups and in order to know where to start from last time.

The current SharePoint API pull tool does not support the pull of managed metadata columns. It would be great if Alteryx would update the SharePoint List tools to be able to read in managed metadata columns.  

I run a report generator that can leave you with having to save one at a time several files.

It would be nice to be able to save multiple files at once.  Whether using a check box or a shift select method.  If this method already exists, Great!  Where can I find out how to do it.  If not can it be an added feature?

Hello,

Many mouses (mice?) allow you to tilt the mouse wheel either left or right. It would be great if this would scroll the canvas left or right, similar to rolling the wheel to scroll the canvas up or down. This would be especially useful considering that users have been nudged to create their workflows horizontally.

Thanks!

I am trying to schedule something to run every 2nd workday of the month (which will not be the 2nd day of the month every single month because the first day of the month might land on a Friday which would make the second workday the 4th of the month). Is there a way to implement this in a schedule? 

For a few months we have used the custom schedule since we know the specific dates they would land on but it doesn't seem like the most efficient.

Thanks for you help. 

Think of a pivot table on steroids. In my industry, "strats" are commonly used to summarize pools of investment assets. You may have several commonly used columns that are a mix of sums and weighted averages, capable of having filtering applied to each column. So you may see an output like this:

Right now, I feel like to create the several sums and weighted averages, it's just too inefficient to create all the different modules, link them all together and run them through a transpose and/or cross tab. And to create a summary report where I may have 15 different categories outside of Loan Status, I'd have to replicate that process with those modules 15 times.

Currently, I have a different piece of software where I can simply write out sum and WA calcs for each column, save that column list (with accompanying calcs) and then simply plug in a new leftmost category for each piece of data I'm looking at. And I get the Total row as well auto-calculated as well. 

Idea:

Some well known scoring methods use optimal binned variables for added robustness. Let's add this capability to Alteryx.

Retionale:

Here's a basic link on why to do that; http://documents.software.dell.com/statistics/textbook/optimal-binning

Current status in Alterys as I'm aware of:

Tile tool or Multi-field Binning tool for completing same task as Tile tool on multiple fields, splits the variables by 5 methods;

• Equal Records or Intervals or Sums

• Smart Tile

• Unique Value 

• Manual

Unfortunately "equal something" binnings are bad idea, as the values are categorized "blindly" irrespective of the effects on the predictive power of the models. 

What to do:

What's needed is to bin both numerical and categorical variables optimally such that the Weights of Evidences (WoE) should present a monotone increasing or decreasing pattern. Maybe at most a V or U shaped "convex" structure.

Quick win:

Without constraining ourselves with monotonicity or convex cases, the easiest practice would be running a C4.5 or CHAID tree algorithm (produces multiple splits rather than binary splits in CART) for a single variable and select the target as the dependent variable and all the resulting nodes will be the bins we are looking for. Doing this for multiple variables at once is the key to the tool to be generated.

Clients:

This capability is sought by risk management departments building robust, stable Basel compliant models in financial industry, especially by banks.

It's really great that you guys have such clear communication about updates to the third party data, like CASS. 

But, would you consider sending out those update emails to just the contact person for an organization?

We are trying to keep all of our users in sync on the same versions of CASS and US Data; and the email blasts have caused some confusion.  Not to mention too that our IT security policy is to not download zips/exe's from the web.  We have a centralized way to bring it in, prep the download, and make available all at once to keep everyone up to date.

Hello,

From my experience, an SSD drive allows a big improvement of performance when the RAM is not sufficient and Alteryx has to swap on the temp storage location. It really changes the user experience. Also, I noted a correlation with the AlteryxProcessManager::Start : ConnectNamedPipe :  error : I think it happens less with a SSD.

Given that, shouldn't be a requirement or at least a recommandation?

The new Cache tool does not function if the 'Disable All Tools that Write Output' option is selected in the workflow runtime properties.  There is no indication of why the cache is not working and this may be confusing because many users won't associate the 'cache' as a normal output.  The interface should be changed to make this more clear or the cache function configured to ignore this workflow runtime option. 

My company does installs through a machine with admin rights, but the end user does not actually have admin rights to the laptop. Therefore, when attempting to add modules into the Developer tool for python - pip install fails. The failure is due to the install being in program files where a non-admin is unable to write, the normal workaround is also not possible since the version used is admin and not non-admi designer.

Can the tool be more flexible from the get go. As the only way out of this is to go through articles regarding SDK and creating custom requirements txt files. My goal was just to be able to use Python with Alteryx and add on modules as I need. Very cool updates in 3.5 I'm using but thought this conundrum might happen to others in same situation. Admin install with non-admin rights. Thanks.

Please allow the "Manage Data Connections" window to resize ... including changing the widths of the Columns (Name, Connection Summary, Type).

Thanks

ps. There may be other windows that may need to have resizing added to them ... it never hurts.

Hey everyone,

I'd like to suggest making use of Windows Taskbar progress feature to highlight running workflow status, it would be helpful for when you start a workflow and continue working on another application.

I made a workaround tool I append at the end of my workflows alongside with output tools to do the same thing, having the feature natively in the designer would be better.

the tool doesn't take care of other running workflows or different alteryx windows, it can't detect warnings and errors from other tools, although Alteryx Engine API might be better for this implementation, a quick python one is done for demo purposes.

Attached are the tool and a test workflow to demonstrate the feature, all the best.

A functionality that my team really needs is the ability to use update and delete statements through in database tools. We use Teradata on my team and I'm sure many other platforms also need this functionality. I am really shocked and disappointed that in the update to 2018.4 Alteryx decided that it would add this new functionality to it's Write In DB tool, but only added it for SQL server. Moreover, this functionality is a hole that has been missing in these tools for a long time. Patches in functionality like that need to be added to all platforms, not just one. So please add update functionality to the Write In DB tool for Teradata and other platforms. The original post where Alteryx decided to make only this small change is here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/In-Database-Update-and-or-Delete/idi-p/13153...

Please add the ability to interface with Oracle Siebel CRM. Preferably, this would be a built-in connector similiar to the SFDC Connector.

Current AWS S3 upload and download uses Long term keys with Access and Secret Key which sometimes causes security risk. 

Adding Short term keys to the tool - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_temp_request.html will help to use session keys that gets changed after specific duration .

Thanks