Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I would like to work with percentages in a format similar to Excel, where the number remains a double for input, exports, and formula calculations, yet has an option to show the number as a percentage on reports and rendered outputs. 

Please have Alteryx check the status of any output files for read-only or locked status.  This change would prevent processing a file for an hour then having the process fail because the file was open or had improper permission. 

Idealy, the output tool should ask the user what to do rather than fail and lose all the work.

When developing modules and looking to refactor/improve areas where tools should be placed into a macro (for re-use, or for module cleanliness), it would be nice if I could simply select all the tools that should be in the macro, right click, and have an option to "Create as Macro". The option would create a new module/macro, copy the tools to the canvas, and create the necessary macro inputs and outputs automatically. Additionally, the original module could be updated to replace the selected tools with the newly created macro.

I really like the new toolbar & tool palette. I think that the toolbar would be improved by a couple of (hopefully) minor tweaks:

1) The ability to 'lock' the Favorites toolbar so that it is always visible, no matter how far you have to scroll

2) The ability to move tool sets within the toolbar so that those less used are further off to one side

When I save records out of a browser tool, an info window appears when the file is finished saving. Please add a hyperlink to that window that will open the newly saved file. This should work the same way as the hyperlink in the Output message window.

I just had to put an Idea in the Developer category when really it should have gone into a User Interface category.

Add a button to the zoom tools toolbar that zooms the workspace to all selected tools.

Add a button to the zoom tools toolbar that zooms the workspace to all tools.

Add a tool to the right-click menu that would place all currently selected tools into a container.

A cahce tool would allow a user to temporarily store a snapshot of inline data from previous run of the module.

Imagine a browse tool that was inline as opposed to a terminus tool (input and output). Now allow that browse tool to persist its data after a run of the module. When an option on that tool was activated, it would block all of the dependent tools upstream from it and instead send its cached data downstream.

The reason I think this would be a useful tool is that I often come to the end of creating a module when I'm working on the Reporting tools. I run multiple times to see the changes I've made. When the module has a lot of incoming data and complex data transformations, it can take a long time just to get to the point where the data gets to the reporting tools. This cache tool would eliminate that wait.

I really like the Tool Container. I also really like to have neat and tidy modules. Sometimes though, the two are in conflict because the Tool Container automatically sizes itself so I end up playing around with tool placement to get my containers the same.

Could you please add the option to make the Tool Container a sizeable object (like the Explorer Box) or give width and height value boxes in the tool properties?

What if you had the option to connect tools without the lines going across the canvas?
This might be useful in cases where one connection is close but another is far away.
Of course, it would need to be easy to turn these on and off, and to jump from one end to the other.
The idea came up at a SoCal Alteryx users group this summer. Would other people like to see something like this?

For an email event, there are several defaults that are shown in the body (e.g., %User%, %ComputerName%, %WorkingDir%).

It would be nice to add a date in there, maybe %Date% or %DateTime% or something like that which would display the computer system time.

It would be nice to have Directory tool working for ftp. I would like to have the list of files on a ftp server including sub folders

After visiting with a new user who was not sure how to set up a filter, we came up with the following idea.

We would add a "simple" option to the existing Filter tool with some basic controls that would automatically create the expression for you.

Do others think this would be helpful?




Geoff Jones
Alteryx, Inc
Product Manager – User Experience

I have recently been building some reports and have some suggestions for later releases of Alteryx.
 
1.       Map tool – have option to put border around map within the properties window.  Currently, I have to use a layout tool to put a border on a map.
2.       Map tool – Same thing with legend (especially when legend is output as a separate field
3.       All tools – be able to put a browse tool after the tool using the Properties window.  I was thinking right above the “Apply” button (check mark bottom left corner)
 
Just some thoughts that would make life better.

Similar concept to how when you right click on a folder, computer icon, or file in windows. When you right click on any of these things you are able to pull up a properties link/tab which gives you relevant information and path of the file location.

For this particular idea the properties tab will give information on the Alias, such as server type, connection type; ie microsoft  provider or oracle provider, etc.

This would be helpful not only to go back and understand why you choose that connection type, but also when training others.

Thank you

We use the test tool extensively in our App and Macro authoring. It would be very useful to have the ability to label the tested values so that when the Test tool writes to the output window it’s more descriptive.
Example:
Currently this is the report
Error: Market (1): Tool #235: The test "The count of Columns does not match the count of Labels." failed: TargetNumRecords(#2)==102, NumRecords(#1)==106
 
 
A more useful report would be
Error: Market (1): Tool #235: The test "The count of Columns does not match the count of Labels." failed: Columns (#2)==102, Labels (#1)==106

Currently In tools like the select and join you have the ability to sort the field order by ‘Field’. As I understand if this sorts the fields by ASCII order from the smallest to the largest character that you can display.
 
The English-language ASCII sequence is consistent with the order shown in the following:
blank ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z[ ] ˆ_
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { } ~
 
I would find it very useful to have the ability to use a dictionary sort in these tools.