Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

We currently have language support for a few major languages. I know Chinese is available, but the writing system is only Simplified at this moment. 

I was recently in conversation with a few people from Taiwan, and they are using the Traditional writing system of Chinese. 

If Alteryx can provide Traditional as an additional to their already available Simplified writing system, I think Alteryx can help capture the market in Taiwan better. 

The people I spoke with never heard of Alteryx before, and after a demo - they were impressed. If it has this language support, then I think it’ll be much easier to get more sign ups for Alteryx from the Taiwanese market. 

Toggle individual expressions on/off in the formula tool.   

On more than a few occasions I have a number of expressions in a single formula tool and find myself wanting to turn off a few or many, but not all. 

It'd be great if there was a checkbox to activate/inactivate : on/off : include/exclude : select/deselect (whatever language you like for the concept) an individual expression.

Simple as a text box.  with maybe a 'select/deselect  ALL box available incase you want to turn most off then only select a single one? 

For all Alteryx versions I can remember, when entering a connection string into an input tool (e.g., "C:\Users\mbarone\Desktop\ . . . "), you could just start typing and it would auto-complete.  This is no longer the case when DCM is enabled.  This is a huge efficiency hit we're taking, and is enough for us not to enable DCM (optional or otherwise), given the fact that current workflow connection manager works just fine (meaning the "akas").

Please bring back auto-complete/predictive text when DCM is enabled.

After using the Text to Columns tool, I generally find myself using a Select tool to get rid of the original field that I split up. Could an option be added in the config to automatically delete this field once it is split to columns?

I love this tool,  but think it would be improved by including an option to create a column per delimiting character.  This could be added in the number of columns selector box.  In the case where 1 row has more delimiters than another, null columns can be created.  Without this option you have to Regex count the delimiters, select the max and then embed the Text to columns tools in a macro and then pass the max columns as a param.  Would be nice to resolve all this in the main tool.

Thanks, nick

Many users will probably follow best practice style guides with Alteryx to use comment boxes under tools to describe in detail what is happening with these tools - such as this one shared by @BenMoss.

However a limitation of this is the comment boxes do not move with the tools, so if you have a well documented workflow but then need to add a new tool, you need to adjust all the spacing and re-align the tools, which with a large workflow can be time consuming. 

Therefore the improvement would be to have an ability to lock comment boxes to individual tools (similar to a group function in Office).

I've seen this question before and have run into it myself.  I'd like to see a new tool that would allow a developer (of a workflow) to choose a path of logic based upon criteria known only during the execution of a module.

If LEFT INPUT Count of records < 10,000 THEN Path1 (e.g. use a calgary join)

ELSE Path 2 (e.g. use a standard join)

endif

Thanks,

Mark

Alteryx Designer is slow when using In-DB tools.

We use Alteryx 2019.1 on Hive/HortonWords with the Simba ODBC Driver configured with SSL enabled.

Here is a compare In-DB / in Memory : 

We found that Alteryx open a new connection for each action : 

- First link to joiner = 1 connection.

- Second ling to joiner = 1 connection.

- Click on the canevas = 1 connection.

Each connection take about 2,5 sec... It really slow down the Designer : 

Please, keep alive the first connection instead of closing it and creating a new one for each action on the Designer.

The current approach gives me both Record Counts and Total Record Size in KB, but I don't need or want the KB.

The option I am requesting does not currently exist.  It would remove the KB and leave you with just the Record Counts.  KB is useless to me.  I only care about Record Counts.  This option would help reduce the noise/clutter of the KBs.

I can be picky about how my workflows are laid out.  Oftentimes, the connector between tools has a "mind of its own" as to what direction it goes and how it crosses other objects.  I'd like to see the ability to control the connector lines with "elbows" that can be positioned in custom locations and directions, like an MS Visio diagram. Alternatively, add a simple "pin" tool could be added to the canvas and it's only function is to take in and send out a connector line by defining the input and output location.  The input and output locations could be defined angularly/radial in degrees, for example.  Image attached below of existing workflow with a "troublesome" connector and the concept of "elbows" and "pins" added as an alternate control mechanism.  Both would be great!  :)

In a similar vein to the forthcoming enhancement of being able to disable a specific output tool, my idea is to have the inverse where you can globally disable all outputs and then enable specific ones only. This should help reduce the number of clicks required/avoid workarounds using containers to obtain this functionality and allow users to be very specific in which outputs run and don't run as required.

I surprisingly couldn't find this anywhere else as I know it's been discussed in person on many occasions.

Basically the Formula tool needs to be smarter in many ways, but this particular post focuses on the Data Type component.

The formula tool, should not always default to V_String as the data type when entering data or a formula into the formula tool, it should look at the data type and estimate the most likely option.

I know there are times where the logical type might not be consistent in all fields, but the Data Preview and the Function of the formula should be used to determine the most likely option.

E.G. If I type a number or a date directly into the formula tool, then Alteryx should be smart enough to change the data type from the standard V_String to Int, Double or date.

This is an extension to the ideas posted here:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Tab-from-Select-Column-to-Enter-Expression-H...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Formula-tool-data-type-should-be-prominent/i...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Alteryx-11-formula-tool-default-data-type/id...

Very often, I used a container to make notes about certain parts of the workflow. Some of the comments that I created are pretty long. Could the user have the possibility to have at least rows for the title of the container?

I have created a screen to show what I have in mind. Potentially users could have the ability to turn this option on or inside the container?

It would be great if we could add example workflows to our macros, accessible in the same way as from the original tools (example hyperlink shown after single-clicking on a tool in the tool palette or when searching in the search bar).

There is a post on how to do it for custom tools How to add an example link in the custom tool (alteryx.com). The way described there has limitations and does not seem to work on macros: I was able to get the link to show up, but nothing happens when I click.

My suggestion, make it easy to add an example workflow to a macro, like it is to change the logo or add a help link.

So our company is relatively new to Alteryx Designer and Server and we recently found out that there's no official communication sent out from Alteryx on when there are patch releases for Designer and Server. We've encountered so many bugs that we later found on the release notes that would've been helpful to know about months before.

So my suggestion is to have an option for Administrators to opt in/out for communication emails on when the patches are released.

Thank you!

Hello all,

According to wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_(SQL)

CROSS JOIN returns the Cartesian product of rows from tables in the join. In other words, it will produce rows which combine each row from the first table with each row from the second table.[1]

Example of an explicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee CROSS JOIN department;

Example of an implicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee, department;

The cross join can be replaced with an inner join with an always-true condition:

SELECT *
FROM employee INNER JOIN department ON 1=1;

For us, alteryx users, it would be very similar to Append Fields but for in-db.

Best regards,

Simon

Hi all!

Based on the title, here's some background information: SHAPLEY Values

Currently, one way of doing so is to utilize the Python tool to write out the script and install the package. However, this will require running Alteryx as an administrator in order to successfully load, test, and run the script. The problem is, a substantial number of companies do not grant such privileges to their Alteryx teams to run as administrator fully as it will always require admin credentials to log in to even open Alteryx after closing it.

I am aware that there is a macro covering SHAP but I've recently tested it and it did not work as intended, plus it covers non-categorical values as determinants only, thereby requiring a conversion of categorical variables into numeric categories or binary categories. 

It will be nice to have a built in Alteryx ML tool that does this analysis and produces a graph akin to a heat map that showcases the values like below:

By doing so, it adds more value to the ML suite and actually helps convince companies to get it.

Otherwise teams will just use Python and be done with it, leaving only Alteryx as the clean-up ETL tool. It leaves much to be desired, and can leave some teams hanging.

I hope for some consideration on this - thank you.

Currently : the "Label" element in the Interface Designer Layout View is a single line text input.

Why could it be impoved : the "Label" element is often used to add a block of text in an analytical application interface. And adding a block of text in a single line text input is **staying polite** quite the struggle.

Solution : make this single line text input a text box just like the formula editor.

Hello,

We use the pre-sql statement of the input to set some parameters of connections. Sadly, we cannot do that in a in-db workflow. This would be a total game-changing feature for us.

Best Regards,

Simon