Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I use the field name auto-complete feature whenever I can. One issue with it, however, is when there are parentheses in a field name. After auto-completing the field name, Alteryx highlights a portion of the field name after the first parenthesis. This is not ideal as I typically expect the cursor to be at the end of the field name so I may continue to type. In this scenario, unfortunately, I would begin to type over my field name and the expression gets messed up. 

For example, as shown below, I begin to type "st" and then hit the tab button to complete the field name in my expression.

In this case, because my field name has parentheses in it, however, some of the field name remains highlighted and the cursor does not go to the end of the right bracket, as one would expect.

If I were to continue typing at this point, the highlighted portion of the expression would get erased and replaced. 

Field names that do not contain parentheses continue to function correctly as shown below. 

Similar to the thoughts in this idea, it would be great if the parenthesis matching functionality could be added to the formula tool as well.

Hi, I was using the Image Template tool and I noticed that the icons for import and export are switched.

Currently when debug mode is entered in analytic apps and macros, the direct inputs to the app/macro when the error occurred are hardcoded into a workflow in debug mode, so that errors can be more easily detected.

However, inputs into analytic apps also create global variables which can be used in the more code-heavy aspects of Alteryx such as the Formula Tool. These are not updated in the same way which can cause workflows to break in debug mode - it would be really helpful if global variables could be updated in the same way as the inputs into tools are.

Is it possible to add a search feature to the Summarize Tool that is similar to the search feature in the Select Tool?  Selecting specific fields to summarize in small datasets is fine, but if I am dealing with a table that has 200 fields searching for a specific field can be cumbersome.  Type in a few key letters to filter the available fields would be helpful.

The DateTime tool is a great way to convert various string arrangements into a Date/Time field type. However, this tool has two simple, but annoying, shortcomings :

1. Convert Multiple Fields: Each DateTime tool only lets you convert one field. Many Alteryx tools (MultiField, Auto Field, etc.) allow you to choose what field(s) are affected by the tool.  If I have a database with a large number of string fields all with the same format (such as MM/DD/YYYY), I should be able to use one DateTime tool to convert them all!
2. Overwrite Existing Field: The DateTime tool always creates a new field that contains your converted date/time. I ALWAYS have to delete the original string field that was converted and rename the newly created date/time field to match the original string field's name. A simple checkbox (like the "output imputed values as a separate field" checkbox in the Imputation tool) could give the flexibility of choosing to  have a separate field (like how it is now) or overwrite the string field with the converted date/time field (keeping the name the same).

Alteryx is overall an amazing data blending software. I recognize that both of these shortcomings can be worked around with combinations of other Alteryx tools (or LOTS of DateTime tools), but the simplicity of these missing features demonstrates to me that this data blending tool is not sufficiently developed. These enhancements can greatly improve the efficiency of date handling in Alteryx.

STAR this post if you dislike the inflexibility of the DateTime tool! Thank you!

While I was trying to integrate Alteryx workflows into modern data catalogues got me thinking about the transformation lineage. To integrate the transformations into those applications, an understanding of what transformations are happening and in what order is needed. Why not take this one step further for documentation use?

So my suggestion is:

Create a natural language description of the transformations and sequencing of a workflow. This could be used as the default descriptions and exported as a readme file for reviewing (e.g. during workflow handover activities), adding workflows to version control or project plans. 

There are many circumstances when you have to build an interative macro where it's not just the iterating data set that needs to change every iteration, but also a second data set.

Think about this like a loop where two different variables are updated on every iteration, not just the control variable in the For xxx control variable.

The way that users work around this is to use a temporary yxdb file where instead of a macro input you input from the yxdb, and then write back to the same yxdb.    This allows you to pretend that you can adjust 2 different data sets on every cycle of the loop.    there are 4 downsides to this:
a) User complexity - this breaks the conceptual simplicity of macro inputs since now the users have to understand that in situation X I use macro inputs; and in situation Y I have to use some other type of tool.

b) Speed penalty - writing to disk is between 1000x slower and 1 000 000x slower than working with data in memory (especially if it's in cache) - so by forcing this to go through a yxdb file, you do incur a speed penalty which is just not needed

c) blocking penalty - Because of the fact that you can't write to a file that you're still reading from, you need to pepper this with Block until done tools - and you need to initialize the macro using a first write to the yxdb file outside the macro - which further hurts speed.    Given the nuanced behaviour of block-until-done, this also introduces user complexity issues

d) Self-contained - because you have to initialize these files outside the macro - the macro is no-longer self-contained and portable (which breaks the principle of Information Hiding which is a key pillar of good modular decoupled software design.

The other way that users work around this - is to serialize their entire second recordset into a field which then gets tacked onto the iterating data set using an iterative macro.   This is HIGHLY wasteful becuase then you have to build a serialize & deserialize process for this second recordset.    It fixes the speed and blocking penalites from above, but introduces a computational overhead which is generating no value; and makes this even more complex for users - and a further blocker to using macros.

Recommendation:

We could make this simpler by allowing users to create multiple pairs of macro input / macro outputs so that 2 or 3 or n different data sets can be updated with every iteration.

Below is a screenshot demonstrating this, from an Advent of code challenge - the details of the problem are not important - the issue at hand is that there are 2 record sets which both need to be updated on every iteration.

cc: @NicoleJohnson @Samanthaj_hughes @SteveA 

The expression editor in the RegEx tool is only a single line, which makes it really hard to edit long regular expressions. See attached photo comparing the expression editor in the RegEx tool compared to the formula tool for the same expression. Please make the RegEx editor box either wrap to multiple lines, have a pop-out expression editor, or something so we can see long expressions.

I was just responding to a post about the Make Columns tool, and I noticed that there is not an example workflow for this tool built into Designer. It is also missing from the Transform category, so I never think of it.

@peyton-louden @binuacs @Luke_C 

• moving or renaming a file after importing it
• deleting a file after importing it
• moving or copying a file after successfully exporting it
• writing a temporary file (i.e. batch file for RunCommand tool), then deleting it when finished

Hello,

As of today, the in db connexion window is divided into :
-write tab

-read tab

However, writing means two different thing : inserting and in-db writing. Alteryx has already 2 different tools (Data Stream In and Write Data).

Si what I propose is to divide the window into :
-read
-write
-insert

Best regards,

Simon

Hello,

Here a use case :

I work on the projects A and B with Alteryx inj IN DB mode.

My coworker works only on project B and have no rights to the data of project A.

When using temporary table in Alteryx, we both create the temporary tables in the default database. The issue is my coworker can see my temporary data of project A, which is not safe.

Solution : allow me to specify the database/schema when I create my temporary table.

Changing the Macro Input tool in an existing macro is dangerous and can result in unmapped fields or lost connections in workflows using the macro. For example, we have a widely used macro for which we'd like to change the name of an input field, change it's default type from Date to DateTime, make it optional while keeping other fields mandatory. Currently, we cannot find a solution which would not require us to fix each workflow using the macro after changing it. We should be able to change the field names, field types (e.g. String to V_WString, Date to DateTime), select optional fields and do other modifications to Macro Input without having to update each workflow using the macro. The new Macro Input UI could be enhanced with a window similar to that of Select tool's. Technically, the Macro Input fields could have a unique ID by which they would be recognised in workflows, so the field names would just be aliases that could be changed without losing the mapping. In summary, we are restricted to our initial setup of Macro Input and it is very complicated to change it afterwards, especially if the macro is used widely.

It will be really great if we add Single sign-on (SSO) in download tool. Many users are facing this issue when they're trying to download data from weburl. In some case the url will verfiy the sign-on and then redirect to link from where we can download data. Currently download tool fails to verfiy SSO or siteminder authentication.

Hi all,

In supporting our Alteryx users - we often have situations where users have had multiple different versions of Alteryx installed on their machines over time - and this leads to a situation where settings / configurations are carried forward from one install to another, and there doesn't appear to be an obvious way to force a full & clean reinstall and reset.    This creates a problem when something like the Python settings are broken, since the reinstall does not fix this.

In this line - it would be very useful to have the ability to perform a full & clean uninstall - potentially in 2 phases:

• Initially - a script (e.g. Powershell) which is available on community, which cleans out all files that are installed by Alteryx (any version); all registry entries; an any user settings
• Later - it would be valuable to build this into the uninstaller so that the user has the ability to uninstall and remove ALL traces of the software and user settings.

Many thanks

Sean

Hello,


As of today, when you connect o, a database, you go through a batch of queries to retrieve which database it is ( cf https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Smart-Visual-Query-Builder-for-in-db-less-te... where I suggest a solution to speed up the process) and then, Alteryx queries the metadata. In order to get the column in each table, Alteryx use a SHOW TABLES and then loop on each table. This is really slow. 

However, since Hive 3.0, an information_schema with the list of columns for each  table is now available. I suggest to use the information_schema.columns instead of the time-consuming loop.

PS : I don't know if it's linked to the Active Query Builder, the third-party tool behind the Visual Query Builder. In that case, it would be a good idea to update it as suggested here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Update-Query-Builder-component/idi-p/799086

Best regards,

Simon

Apologies if this has been suggested already - did a search and didn't see anything similar.

This is a quality of life/UX idea. The search functionality in the results pane essentially does a 'contains' search on all of the columns (see below screenshots for the filter inserted by the 'apply data manipulations button). As I build workflows and profile the data, it'd be helpful if I could click one or more columns and limit the search bar to just those fields.

Right now, depending on the dataset I could get rows returned by the search due to the search term appearing in columns that aren't relevant. To workaround this I could add select tools to limit the columns or do more robust filters in a filter tool, but having it built in would be very helpful.