Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The Find and Replace tool currently replaces text or appends fields by reviewing the first word in the string and evaluating if there is a matching value in the lookup replace table. If there is, it returns the replace text or it continues onto the next word in the string and repeats until a match is found or not found.

However the functionality should be that the entire string is evaluated and the first match in the replace lookup table is returned. This is similar to how the VLOOKUP formula functions in Excel. 

This makes workflows easier to maintain as the ordering of the lookup table can be amended to return the appropriate value. The ordering of the source string is far trickier to automate/change. 

I have seen workarounds where append fields is used to append all lookup values to each row and then find rows which contain the string and use a sample tool to return the first row, however this causes processing issues when working with large number of records/ lookup values.

The functionality should either be changed or at least a setting which can be toggled to switch between the two options.

Hello,

We would like to have further options in the test tool. As of today you can only test if records matches (equality test) , we would like to be able to test also when it is greater (>) and smaller (<).

Thanks !

The idea behind encrypting or locking a workflow is good for users to maintain the workflow as designed. 

However, when a user reaches a level of maturity equivalent to that of the builder or more, or even when changes are required - the current practice is to keep a locked and unlocked version of the workflow so that it allows for a change in the future. 

It would be much simpler if we can have the power to lock and unlock workflows with a password. Users can then maintain and keep the passwords so that they can continue with the workflow. 

Not everybody is on Server yet so this feature is very helpful for control before Server migration. Otherwise it’s just password protecting a folder containing the workflow package, then re-locking a new save file each time a change is made or when someone new takes over on prem. 

Sounds simple :

Best regards,

Simon

Hi all 

Currently when you set your workflow to don't write outputs (disable all tools that write output) under runtime of the configuration of workflow- the render and green output tools become greyed out and do not write an output (as expected). 

However, this is not the case for connectors - for example, if you use the SharePoint output tool and click disable all tools that write output, it will not be greyed out and still write an output. Is it possible for these connectors to also not run when this is selected in the configuration? As otherwise currently, you have to add it to a container and disable it.

Hi is it possible to add sheet names (to spreedsheet files) to the output of a file directory tool

Hello,

I think I have neer wrotten an easier idea : the tooltip for the run workflow button should indicate the keyboard shortcut (ctrl+R). So simple, so intuitive..



Best regards,

Simon

I love the ability to cache data. Sometimes, I've cached too far and I need to go back and alter a tool's configuration or make some other cache-destroying change. I then have to recache somewhere and sometimes the dataset is so huge it is a pain. I'd love to create multiple cache points as a safety or backup.

The Append Fields tool will issue a Warning if/when the Source data stream has no records that reads something like this:

Append Fields (823) There are no records present in the source.

I can imagine many situations when this issue should be flagged as a Warning. However, I have use cases when both the Source and Target data streams are expected to be empty. Because it is a common, expected scenario, I do not want it flagged as a Warning for the user. 

My Idea: provide another option to suppress warnings for this situation.

Perhaps it could be a standalone checkbox, for example:

                 [x] Suppress Warning when both source and target streams are empty

Alternatively, the tool currently has 3 options to manage warnings or errors related to "too many" records. Perhaps this could be added as a 4th option to the dropdown list, although that would necessitate changing the label slightly.

In conjunction with the "First N% of Rows" and "Group by column (optional)" features, an additional option that would be great to have would be to tell the tool to take at least 1 record per group. If I am telling the tool to take the first 3% of records and grouping by a field, but one of the groups only has 5 records, it won't return any records for that group, as 3% of 5 is .15, so the tool rounds that down to 0. If I could also choose an option for the tool to always round up, that would also be sufficient.

In the formula tool, you can generate uniform random values using the RAND() function.

I would like to have similar functionality to get normal random values by calling RANDN().

As a workaround, the values can be produced from a Python tool using 

numpy.random.randn()

Python documentation on numpy.random.randn.

The full script below produces 100 random normal values in a column called 'Normal_Rand'.

The zip file has both a direct workflow and macro solution to produce the random normal values.

A client just asked me if there was an easy way to convert regular Containers to Control Containers - unfortunately we have to delete the old container and readd the tools into the new Control Container.

What if we could just right click on the regular Container and say "Convert to Control Container"? Or even vice versa?!

Would like to have the ability to filter to searched fields. Having the ability to search for already known fields, and then selecting those fields, temporarily, and isolating them for view. While there is the selection of fields under "X of Y fields", this still requires manual clicks and could be tedious when there could be a large amount of fields.

While you could also use the SELECT tool, that would still require manually searching for the field and isolating it for viewing. This could possibly be an enhancement for the SELECT tool or it could be an enhancement for the "X of Y fields".

I'd like to suggest that Alteryx make annotations able to be hidden or visible by right clicking or hovering over a little highlighted corner similar to comments/notes in Excel.  Have a highlighted corner of tools when there is an annotation. When hovering over the colored corner, user is able to view the annotation otherwise it is hidden and out of the way of the tool box. 

when you bring in a comment box or tool container to your canvas it should come in with your preferred defaults for  fill colors, font color & size, etc.  I have specific color schemes to identify what my comments are for and one scheme that I use most often has font size, position & color, and background color that I have to set every time i bring in a new comment box.

 I LOVE working in Alteryx it because unlike excel you set a "macro" to perform repeating operations once and then ignore them to do your real work.  This concept should extend to the little things within Alteryx, i.e. settings for preferred defaults for comment boxes & tool containers. 

I know y'all are working on data lineage for some future offering and it is very much needed. For highest quality results, please make logs a primary source of lineage information. Being able to use dynamic naming with some tools and macros makes the names in the workflows simple foobar placeholders and do not reflect what actually happened. Today Connect doesn't use logs and leaves many lineage gaps because of this

Please move this to a more appropriate category if needed. This future feature work is not part of Connect.

Hello all,

My idea is very simple, and this is most likely I'm used to do. After highlighting the fields in the select tool, the next action is to click Options and to apply what to do. My idea is just after highlighting, right click on mouse button to go exactly on Options menu. Just a simple right click. I think this behavior is most likely comes from Microsoft, I'm used to select multiple lines or cells and with right click to do the next action. It's a simple, but powerful. What do you think?

Albert

Idea

I feel the necessity of the features to know the version of Alteryx Designer Desktop for each user within an organization. 

As well as some usage data of each user like 'Last Used' are available in License Portal, if 'Version of Alteryx Designer Desktop' for each user is also available in License Portal, it would be more manageable and could enhance the governance in organization.

Background

When the organization uses Alteryx Server and Designer Desktop, it is more challenging to make alignment of version of these products.

We frequently see our users install/upgrade to newer version of Alteryx Designer than that of Alteryx Server, and cause incompatibility issue when interacting with Alteryx Server.

Although we instruct our users to install the particular version, they sometimes upgrade to newer version later on by themselves, but it's not detectable.

I mean, even if they're using a wrong version of Alteryx Designer Desktop, we won't realize it until a problem occurs.

In order to identify such users and rectify their version, administrator shall be able to know which version they use whenever needed.

License Portal would be one of the best platform to make that information available in my opinion.