Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!
The Product Idea boards have gotten an update to better integrate them within our Product team's idea cycle! However this update does have a few unique behaviors, if you have any questions about them check out our FAQ.

Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Share your Designer Desktop product ideas - we're listening!
Submitting an Idea?

Be sure to review our Idea Submission Guidelines for more information!

Submission Guidelines

Automatic/Dynamic data type in the Formula tools

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...

15 Comments
NishaKalathur
5 - Atom

Yes this will be a great addition. Many a times i have to come back and change Data type

fmvizcaino
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

One of the most common errors I see in training is exactly that. For new users to forget to update the formula data type and not be able to do calculations with it.

This would be amazing!!

marcusblackhill
12 - Quasar
12 - Quasar

Even today, the formula is "dumb." That is one of the tools that gives you more options with your data but does not receive frequent updates.

 

I'd like to see smarter data type recognition. Based on the preview result, this could be accomplished using the same logic as the autofield tool. It would not be perfect, but it would be a better starting point than where we are now.

DavidP
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Awesome Idea!

patrick_digan
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Nobody has posted on this idea in awhile, so I just wanted to remind everybody that it's still here and would be great if it could be implemented! It's near the top with 64 Likes!