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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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Enhance Browse Tool

In the Browse window:

  1. Can we add a Find function like in excel? (e.g. find record_ID==4 or name =='foobar')
  2. Can we click the column name so it sorts on that field?
  3. In 9.0 when I click 'Cell Viewer' in Browse window,  'Show Whitespace' seems to be turn on by default. Can we turn it off like in 8.6?
  4. When I click the 'Fields' button to toggle fields on/off, it would be great to add a Sort function here too, so fields can be sorted a-z by fieldname (like in the Select tool).

Thanks!

11 Comments
cbridges
11 - Bolide

YES PLEASE! Especially #1 and 2

saubert
9 - Comet

Sort and filter directly in the browse tool would be a revolution for data discovery. I spend hours on that and I have to put it on excel to get something dynamic...

DultonM
11 - Bolide

This would be a game-changing efficiency gain for workflow development!

DultonM
11 - Bolide

Hello! Anyone from Alteryx have an update on this idea, especially with regards to the Find functionality? I was searching through emails and found one from April, 2015 where a product manager told me "Find functionality in the Browse tool:  Completely agree.  We’ve been seeing this exact use case more and more lately and we have this kind of functionality in our post 10.0 roadmap.". I've been part of the 11.0 Beta and it still does not appear that Alteryx is thinking about this. Thanks!

BenG
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Hi Dulton,

 

We are definitely still thinking about this.  Right now it does not look like we will get the functionality into 11.0, but it remains high on our list of fetures we would like to add to the product.  Along with find, we also want to be able to filter and sort.

 

Thanks,
Ben

DultonM
11 - Bolide

Thanks, Ben!

DultonM
11 - Bolide

A colleague of mine was showing an Alteryx workflow to someone on our BI/IT team recently who does not have Alteryx. The BI/IT person wanted to find specific information in the data, but the workflow had to be Filtered and reran first. The BI/IT person expected the kind of Find functionality (mentioned in item #1 of this idea) to be in Alteryx and was disappointed to find that it wasn't. There are likely a lot of new/potential Alteryx users with a similar expectation. Has this idea gained any traction in last year?

tlarsen7572
11 - Bolide
11 - Bolide

New user here.  My department is moving to Alteryx and I will confirm what Dulton said.  I absolutely do not like having to insert filter tools and re-run the workflow.  While Alteryx runs faster than our prior gear, my development cycle with Alteryx is slower (and a bit clunkier) because I cannot dynamically investigate the data as I develop.  Adding find, sort, and filter to the browse tool would be huge and make me feel a lot better about this transition.

apolly
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Status changed to: Under Review

Hello all, thanks so much for all the input and patience around this idea. We hear this a lot and understand it will greatly improve the way you perform data exploration. I am excited to say that we have a lot of ideas for making the data exploration experience much easier and this is a primary topic we’re thinking through this year. Although we have some other priorities we’ll be tackling first around the way you visualize and interact with data, we are working through the details of this specific suggestion and will keep you all updated on our plans.

willhaye
8 - Asteroid

When I create a browse tool and then expand to a window the first thing I typically want to do is "Ctrl F" to find a value I've been working with and also sort the columns.  This seems to be similar to 1 & 2 of the original poster's idea.  I'd like to add my +1 for this idea as well.  Thanks, -Hayes