Drag a formula onto another formula to combine formula tools

[TheOC]

Hello!

I am just making a quick suggestion, specifically for the Formula tool within Alteryx.

Often when I am working on a larger workflow - I will end up optimising the workflow towards the end. I typically end up removing unnecessary tools, fields, and rethinking my logic.

Much of this optimisation, is also merging formula tools where possible. For instance, if I have 3 formulas - its much cleaner (and I would suspect faster) to have these all within one tool. For instance, a scaled down example:

to this:

This requires a lot of copy and paste - especially if the formulas/column names are long - this can be two copy and pastes, and waiting for tools to load between them, per formula (i do appreciate, this sounds an incredibly small problem to have, but on what I would consider a large workflow, a tool loading can actually take a couple of seconds - and this could burn some time. Additionally, there's always potential problems when it comes to copy/pasting or retyping with errors).

My proposed solution to this, is the ability to drag a formula onto another - very similar to dragging a tool onto a connection. This integration would look like:

Drag to the first formula:

Release:

Formula has been appended to the formula tool:

I think this will help people visually optimise their workflows!

Cheers,
TheOC

[CristonS]

hey @TheOC, this is a cool idea! I can't begin to estimate the time/ effort of implementing, but it sure would be a neat trick. Thanks for posting!

[TheOC]

@CristonS 
I did think this - definitely me being a pain for suggesting this!

I cant think of any other tool/functionality similar, apart from dragging a tool into a connection.

[CristonS]

Maybe it'll be easier in the Cloud version? It's worth passing along : )

[Thableaus]

I like this idea. It could be considered along with enhancements to make the Expression Editor more dynamic in other tools like Multi-Row Formula, Message Tool, Multi-Field and so on...

[gtaramasso]

I've had many occasions where this functionality would be useful. Instead of drag and drop, I would also take "select two formula tools, right-click and select "Merge".

eh-hem....While I'm here, along the same lines, I'd like to plug the idea of *swapping* two tools; this falls into the same category of optimizing a workflow after you've written a first draft: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Select-Two-Consecutive-Tools-and-Swap-Order/...

[CristonS]

Whaaa? Swap tools? That is such a cool idea! (Also your merge idea is cool too!) Thanks for posting.

[DawnDuong]

Actually it would be cool to have the opposite functionality as well. I.e. the ability to right-click a Formula Tool to split a "compounded" formula tool into different "single" ones.

So the ability to "group" / "ungroup" formulae would be really cool.

[DanielG]

This would be a great enhancement.  (Drag and Drop as well as right-click merge)  When I go back into an old workflow of mine from back when I first started using Alteryx, I often say to myself, "What the hell was I thinking with 5-6 formula tools in a row???"  🙂

[kelly_gilbert]

Merging or drag-and-drop to merge Formula tools would be great, or, alternatively, just being able to copy-and-paste a field from one Formula tool to another, with the column name and data type preserved.

I do this today by copying and pasting the XML from one Formula tool to another, but one of those options would save some mouse clicks!

[mceleavey]

Me likey.

+1