Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hello,

Working on Dataiku DSS and there is a cool feature : they can tag tools, parts of a worklow.. and then emphasize the tools tagged.

Best regards,

Simon

Everyone knows the importance of adding the appropriate controls and governance to your workflows - and often, this means including events that will generate notifications if a workflow is running with errors.

But who is the audience of that email? If it's not a developer, will that person know what they are reading and where to focus?

How about a developer that would like to customize the message that the end user will receive?

Porting some existing functionality from other tools in the Alteryx toolkit to the Events page could easily provide added flexibility to event generation:

1) Add a formatting bar to the tool like shown in the image below

-- Style changes

-- Alignment

-- Highlighting

-- Coloring

-- Images

2) Add a function bar to the tool like shown in the image below

-- Ability to view all available variables

-- Ability to apply formulas using variables

-- Ability to save formulas

What do you think? Give this post a thumbs up if you find the post helpful!

We all know and love the Comment tool. It's a staple of every workflow to give users an idea of the workflow in finer details. It's a powerful tool - it helps adds context to tools and containers, and it also serves as an image placeholder for us to style our workflows as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Now, the gensis of this idea is inspired by this post and subsequent research question here.

The Comment Tool today allows you to:

• Write your text and provide context / documentation to your workflow
• Style its shape
• Style its font, colour, and background colour
• Align the text
• Put an image to your workflow

But it would provide way more functionality if it had the capabilities of another awesome Alteryx tool that is not so frequently mentioned... the Report Text Tool!

What's missing in the Comment tool that the Report Text tool has?

1. The ability to add active data records from the workflow to its text
2. Its wider range of styles which allows for more functionality such as with its Special Tags functions
3. Its ability to hyperlink
4. Text mode options!

Now, whilst I understand that the Report Text tool is just that, a tool that needs to be connected to the data to work, so too does the Comment tool (to a lesser extent).

It would be awesome to have the ability to connect the data to the Comment tool as it was a Control Container-like connector. It can also be just like the Report Text tool with an optional input, thereby making it like a normal Comment tool.

To visualize my point:

The benefits of doing so:

• Greater flexibility to the user
• Styles are endgame
• Users can use the comment box as a checksum or even a total count / checker to ensure everything is working as intended
• Makes the comment tool more powerful as a dynamic workflow documentation tool

I think it'll be a killer feature enhancement to the comment tool. Hoping to hear comments on this! 

Kindly like, share, and subscribe I mean comment your support. Thanks all! 😁

-caltang

Hello,

This is a popular feature on other tools, such as Talend (now Talaxie) : the ability to export the workflow as a vectorized screenshot in svg.

Why ? it helps to build documentation, svg being vectorized, it means the picture can be zoomed in without losing quality.

Of course, that would mean before that Alteryx use svg for icons as required here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Ideas/svg-support-for-icon-comment-image-e...

Best regards

Simon

When loading multiple sheets from and Excel with either the Input Data tool or the Dynamic Input Tool, I usually want a field to identify which Sheet the data came from. Currently I have to import the Full Path and then remove everything except the SheetName.

It would be great if there was an option to output she SheetName as a field.

Hello all,

As of today, Alteryx proposes the Intelligence Suite with amazing tools never seen in a data tool, even OCR, image analysis etc.. https://www.alteryx.com/fr/products/intelligence-suite

But... these wonderful tools are part of a paid add-on. And this is what is problematic :

-Alteryx is already an expensive tool. With a huge value but honestly expensive.

-The tools in Intelligence Suite are not common in data tools because you won't use often. And paying for tools you use once or twice in a month is not easy to justify.

So, I suggest to incorpore Intelligence Suite in the core product. The Alteryx users benefit is evident so let's see the Alteryx benefits : 
-more user satisfaction
-a simpler catalog
-adding a lot of value to Designer, with the ability to communicate widely on the topic.

-almost no cost : most costumers won't buy the Intelligence Suite anyway.

Best regards,

Simon

Allow users the ability to add a delay on the connection between Control Container tools. I frequently have to rerun workflows that use the control container because the workflow has not registered that the file was properly closed on outputting from one output tool to the next. The network drives haven't resolved and show that the file is still open while its moved on to the next control container. Users should have an option in the Configuration screen to add a delay before a signal is sent for the next container to run. 

In the past I was able to use a CReW tool (Wait a Second) in conjunction with the Block Until Done tool to add the delay in manually. But I have since converted all of my workflows over to Control Containers. Since then half of the times the workflow has run I encounter the following errors.

My organization use the SharePoint Files Input and SharePoint Files Output (v2.1.0) and connect with the Client ID, Client Secret, and Tenant ID. After a workflow is saved and scheduled on the server users receive the error "Failed to connect to SharePoint AADSTS700082: The refresh token has expired due to inactivity" every 90 days. My organization is not able to extend the 90 day limit or create non-expiring tokens.

If would be great if the SharePoint connectors could automatically refresh the token when it expires so users don't have to open the workflow and do it manually.

I sometimes have to swap (change the order of) two tools in a flow. It is a bothersome task, especially when there are many connections around them. I would like to suggest two new features for such a situation. It would help if either could be realized.

Swap tools

Select two tools, right-click, and select "Swap" option. 

Move and connect around

Drag a tool holding down Alt key (or something) to move it from the stream and connect around. After that, we can drag and drop the tool to the right place.

Hello all,

I really appreciate the ability to test tools in the Laboratory category :

However, these nice tools should go out of laboratory and become supported after a few monhs/quarters. Right now, without Alteryx support, we cannot use it for production workflow.

Example given :
Visual Layout Tool introduced in 2017
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-Visual-Layout/ta-p/835...

Make columns Tool also introduced in 2017
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Make-Columns-Tool/ta-p/67108

Transpose In-DB in 10.6 introduced 2016
https://help.alteryx.com/10.6/LockInTranspose.htm

etc, etc...

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

We all have experienced these last years the now famous concept of hide/unhide password :
Here a few examples of it

I would like this exact principle everywhere we have a password on Alteryx.

Best regards,

Simon

The JOIN tool could use some love.  Let's consider merging the JOIN and UNION functions into a single tool.  Instead of strictly L, J, and R outputs, we could have an option to allow for all standard SQL joins:

• Cross Join (Warning!!!)
• Inner Join (boring)
• Left Outer Join (saves time configuring Union)
• Right Outer Join (saves time ...)
• Full Outer Join (saves time ...)

Being able to JOIN on case-insensitive values is a big bonus (resisted urge to BOLD and change font size).

Being able to JOIN on date-range is often requested.

Being able to JOIN on numeric-range is often requested.

If we are combining tools, getting UNIQUE on L or R (or both) inputs would also save time.  Most JOIN errors are because the incoming (R) data contains duplicates by KEY.

cheers,

Mark

Hi @NicoleJ 

Hello all,

Apache Doris ( https://doris.apache.org/ ) is a modern datawarehouse with a lot of ambitions. It's probably the next big thing.

You can read the full doc here https://doris.apache.org/docs/get-starting/what-is-apache-doris but to sum it up, it aims to be THE reference solution for OLAP by claiming even better performance than Clickhouse, DuckDB or MonetDB. Even benchmarks from the Clickhouse team seem to agree.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

Like many softwares in the market,  Alteryx uses third-party components developed by other teams/providers/entities. This is a good thing since it means standard features for a very low price. However, these components are very regurarly upgraded (usually several times a year) while Alteryx doesn't upgrade it... this leads to lack of features, performance issues, bugs let uncorrected or worse, safety failures.

Among these third-party components :

- CURL (behind Download tool for API) : on Alteryx 7.15 (2006) while the current release is 8.0 (2023)
- Active Query Builder (behind Visual Query Builder) : several years behind

- R : on Alteryx 4.1.3 (march 2022)  while the next is 4.3 (april 2023)
- Python : on Alteryx 3.8.5 (2020) whil the current is 3.10 (april 2023)
-etc, etc....
-

of course, you can't upgrade each time but once a year seems a minimum...

Best regards,

Simon

Requesting a reduced-cost, read-only license to allow for additional users in our organization be directly review workflows for UAT and control testing.  Currently, the only individuals who can see the detail of Alteryx workflows directly are those with a full designer license or temporary trial license.  In our Alteryx control structure, we have additional reviewers confirming the workflow who do not have licenses, which requires copious amounts of screenshots and/or direct meetings with our licensed designers to walkthrough the flows step-by-step.  It would be much more efficient to provide a license that would allow folks to click through the integrations themselves, potentially allowing for comments and annotations, but without the ability to make direct changes.  This would be much more cost efficient for our organization and allow for better workflow review and control.

Connecting to Smartsheets using Alteryx Desktop (and by extension, Alteryx Server) is extremely cumbersome. If a user wants to read data from Smartsheet, they are required to get an API token (preferred) or use a username/password

Then do one of the following to read data from Smartsheets:

1. a. Install a ODBC driver

    b. Configure a DSN connection for ODBC
    c. Use the input data using a generic ODBC connection
or
2. Use python

To write data to Smartsheets, a user can use Python or upload the data using an API call - both very hard for end users to use especially if they're not Python developers.

Regardless, all of these are problematic. On the server I manage, I have over 15 ODBC connections to Smartsheets and it's getting very hard to upgrade the server hardware because of them. Creating a native connector for input/output of data to Smartsheets will eliminate a headache of managing ODBC connections, and make it simple for Alteryx Desktop users to read and write data.

There is no tool that exists that outputs all records that are duplicates (those sharing the selected values with at least one other record) and also outputs the records that are not duplicates (those not sharing the selected values with at least one other record).

The Unique Tool is not sufficient.  It only provides the first record of a unique duplicate group along with any non-duplicates and then provides a secondary output that only contains the additional records of a duplicate group.  Sometimes you only care about the duplicates and want to quickly see what differs between the unique groups.

For example, if there are 4 records with the City of Austin and I am looking for duplicates on City I want to see all 4 records with Austin in the output so I can quickly compare additional fields to see what might differ, or if they are all indeed truly duplicates.

I am aware that an Auto-Documenter tool is available in the Gallery, but that has not been maintained since 2020. 

It would be great if Alteryx could have that as an added feature to the Designer as an option for end-users to utilize. 

The breakdown of it can be done via XML parsing as such: 

<Nodes>: Configuration of tools

<Connections>: The tools used

<Properties>: Workflow properties

Right now, the current workaround is for users to export their XML, and the internal Alteryx development team has to build another workflow that reads the XML accordingly + parses it to fit what is needed. 

It would be better for Alteryx to build something more robust, and perhaps even include some elements of AiDIN which they are promoting now.