Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I think the Nearest Neighbor Algorithm is one of the least used, and most powerful algorithms I know of.  It allows me to connect data points with other data points that are similar.  When something is unpredictable, or I simply don't have enough data, this allows me to compare one data point with its nearest neighbors.

So, last night I was at school, taking a graduate level Econ course.  We were discussing various distance algorithms for a nearest neighbor algorithm.  Our prof discussed one called the Mahalanobis distance.  It uses some fancy matrix algebra.  Essentially it allows it it to filter out the noise, and only match on distance algorithms that are truly significant.  It takes into account the correlation that may exists within variables, and reduces those variables down to only one.  

I use Nearest Neighbor when other things aren't working for me.  When my data sets are weak, sparse, or otherwise not predictable.  Sometimes I don't know that particular variables are correlated.  This is a powerful algorithm that could be added into the Nearest Neighbor, to allow for matches that might not otherwise be found.  And allow matches on only the variables that really matter.  

Even with browse everywhere I see plenty of workflows dotted with browses.  Old habits die hard.  Maybe a limit configuration for browses would be a good thing.  If you've recently browsed a very large set of data you might agree.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi,

when I right-click on an Input tool, I can select "Convert To Macro Input" from the context menu. I would like the similar functionality when right-clicking a Browse tool to "Convert To Macro Output".

Dear Alteryx Team,

Dynamic Input Tool is a great tool to import easily multiple files using files paths parameters ... having the same tool for outputs would be great to export many files in pre-established folder.

Many thanks

Arno

My employer just started with Alteryx, so I'm sure after a few months, this will be basic simple, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has made this mistake, so there you go...

I was running a larger workflow that ends with outputting a table with about 80 columns.  Everything was working fine, except for one column, which kept coming up as all 0s.  Took me a while to find it, but the error all traced back to an error I made with a "Contains" function in a Formula node.

The Alteryx "Contains" function takes two arguments, 'string' and 'target'.  I interpreted this as 'find this string in this target variable', and entered two arguments: the string of characters I was looking for first, and then the name of the column I wanted to search in second. 

I think I had this backwards.  You need to enter the column name first, then the substring you want to look for second.  So the column name is the 'string' and the search term is the 'target'.  Me getting these reversed did not produce any errors or warnings, which I understand (e.g. maybe you might want to pairwise search for the text in one column in the text of another).

I think the terms 'string' and 'target' are kind of vague labels in this case (in Excel, for example, the analogous "Search" function takes the arguments 'find_text' and 'within_text', which is a lot harder to misinterpret).  So I would suggest changing the argument names in Designer and the online documentation, or at least adding text to the Alteryx Documentation (https://help.alteryx.com/2019.2/Reference/Functions.htm) that clarifies which is which.

Normally, I'd say this is a pretty minor thing, but since this is a potential 'silent error', I'd argue it's worthwhile.

(Also, the online documentation seems to imply there is a "CaseInsensitive" argument you can pass to "Contains", however I don't think there actually is.  May want to edit that for clarity.)

Thanks!

I suggest an additional tool that would allow adding columns to the data, if and only if they do not exist already.

Currently working with data that has a dynamic set of columns can be a bit tiresome as the Select tool will not allow to select columns that have not been witnessed in the data.

Adding a tool that would ensure that certain columns are available downstream can currently be achieved by:

1. 'Append Fields' tool with a 'Text Input' tool which will always append the fields, renaming them on the fly if needed
2. 'Union' tool with a 'Text Input' tool

Both options do not seem straight forward and I expect have a performance impact.

A separate tool to achieve this seems the more user friendly and performance oriented way.

I wanted to understand the purpose of the Select Records Tool. The text explains the tool, but by adding the Record ID Tool the result is obvious and also connects to the record selection, not having to read the explanation first. At the same time, one gets to know the Record ID Tool.

Without the Record ID Tool

With the Record ID Tool

Hi all,

Based on the thread here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Support-for-unsigned-int-database-type/m-... - there would be value in natively supporting the Unsigned Int data type in Alteryx.   

This idea was raised by @jgreene.

Note: this does appear to be directly supported in the core OCBC library (as long as it's supported by the ODBC driver for the specific database in question), so hopefully this won't be a huge lift:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/odbc/reference/appendixes/sql-data-types

@jgreene- would you mind adding any further information about the DBMS you are using which supports unsigned int, and any other info that may help the team to develop and test this (e.g. any link you can find to an available ODBC driver for this database etc?)

Thank you

Sean

Would be nice to make it so if I change from RowCount to index it all is linked together.

Something like a $FieldName$ which would automatically get substituted. 

Also nice in other formula tools, but most useful in places where name needs to be duplicated over and over

Hi there,

Similar to @aselameab1 - I was having trouble with using the Linear regression tool because it was giving error messages that were not explanatory or self descriptive.

@chadanaber identified the issue - that a specific field only had one unique value which was causing the regression tool to fail - however the error message provided gives no useful or helpful indication that this is the issue.   You can see that the error message below is pretty tough to understand.

Could we add an item to the development backlog to add defensive checks to the predictive analytics tools to check for conditions that will cause them to fail, and rework the error messaging?

I've attached the workflow with the sample data that replicates this issue

Many thanks

Sean

Hello,

In Formula tool beneficial will be implementation conditional formatting (similar like in Excel) allowing to change cell style (i.e. background color or bolding) based on specific rule. Currently such functionality is available in Table tool however it might be more convenient to use it in Formula tool and avoid Table tool.

Transfer of records from Python SDK RecordRef seems to be slow sending large amounts of data to the Alteryx Engine (e.g. discussion here). Although unclear of the exact specifics, it seems that there's a copy and convert process in play.

Apache Arrow appears to be addressing this issue, and the roadmap and specs are impressive! It seems like (again I have no understanding of the Alteryx Engine specifics) that something like this would be excellent for expanding SDK use cases as well as for other connectors such as the Apache Spark connector.

And it looks like it'd be fun to build into Alteryx! 🙂

In 2018.4, in the Select tool we were able to select the attributes, and then with CTRL+C copy these lines to the clipboard.

You could then paste it for instance to Excel. I used a lot this feature to communicate with third parties, to who I provide data.

The one single feature I miss the most in Alteryx, is the possibility to restart the workflow from wherever I want by using a built-in cache functionality. I have used the 'Cache Dataset V2' macro, but it really is to inflexible and really doesn't make me a happy Alteryx user. I would like to se a more flexible, quicker way of working with cached data.

On a single tool in the workflow I want to be able to set the option to:

• Enable cache
  This would enable me to always use cached data from this node when possible
  
  
• Run to this node
  Run from start OR from node with enabled cache to this node.

There should be lots of workflow options regarding the creation/deletion of cached data. Examples:

• Enable data cache on all nodes
  This would enable functionality to always use cached data on all nodes in the workflow
  
  
• Enable data cache on end nodes
  This would enable functionality to cache data on all 'Run to this node'-nodes.

...and so on. These are just a few examples, but there should be lots of options and shortcut keys revolving the cached data functionality in the workflow.

It would be helpful to have the Read Uncommitted listed as a global runtime setting.

Most of the workflows I design need this set, so rather than risk forgetting to click this option on one of my inputs it would be beneficial as a global setting.

For example: the user would be able to set specific inputs according to their need and the check box on the global runtime setting would remain unchecked.

However, if the user checked the box on the global runtime setting for Read Uncommitted then all of the workflow would automatically use an uncommtted read on all of the inputs.

When the user unchecks the global runtime setting for Read Uncommitted, then only the inputs that were set up with this option will remain set up with the read uncommitted.

It would be really helpful if Alteryx server could connect directly to files on cloud file storage such as Dropbox, Box and OneDrive.  For example; a workflow could access specific source files or a folder with multiple files stored on Dropbox and could run the workflow against those files and then write the output to another folder on Dropbox.  We are making less and less use of internal file servers, so accessing files directly from the cloud allow for additional deployment scenerios and flexibility. 

It is important to be able to test for heteroscedasticity, so a tool for this test would be much appreciated.

In addition, I strongly believe the ability to calculate robust standard errors should be included as an option in existing regression tools, where applicable. This is a standard feature in most statistical analysis software packages.

Many thanks!

It would be good to be able to fix pie chart colours (either automatically of manually), so that when building a report, categories are given the same colour throughout the report across multiple pie charts.  Currently, if the number of categories being shown varies, there is no way to manually align the colours (In the Bar Chart type there is a Style Mode for the Series where you can use a formula to assign a colour based on a criteria such as the name, but not for pie charts).