Let tools group by selections persist when copied

[patrick_digan]

There are a number of tools that lose their selections when copied and pasted. Here are the ones I quickly found so far: 

-Multi Row Formula (Group By)

-Running Total (Group By)

-Transpose (Key Fields and Data Fields)

-Unique (Unique Fields)

-Concatenate (Group Data by these values and method for aggregating values)

It would be really great if they could keep their selections when pasted. This would be similar to the Join, Multi Field Formulas, or Sort tools which keep their settings but let you know if a field is missing. Thanks!

[RachelW]

@patrick_digan Thanks for the feedback Patrick. I've added checking for copy and paste behavior of tools to a our checklist for developing new tools. 

I'd like to learn more about how you use copying and pasting Tools. In what scenarios would you copy and paste a tool and why? 

[patrick_digan]

@RachelW Thanks for the reply! The multi-row formula was listed first because that's the tool that specifically tripped me up. Here is an example of my use case (the names have been changed to protect the innocent):

I have a file with several group by fields: State, City, County. For a given city/county/State combination, I have 2 key variables: Foodtype and Food. Foodtype is equal to Meat, Fruit, Vegetable, Dessert. Let's suppose that I want to grab each food with foodtype=Meat (within a given city/county/state), and join it the first alphabetical non-Meat left (and we don't care what Foodtype it is). For example, for Fort Wayne/Allen/IN, I have foodtype=Meat,Veggie,Meat,Fruit, Dessert and food=Beef, Corn, Chicken, Strawberries, Ice Cream. I would join Beef and Corn, Chicken and Ice Cream for this city/county/state. Perhaps there is a simpler way to do this, but I filtered my data to get 2 streams Meat and non-Meat. So I then used a multi-row formula, grouped by city/county/state, and basically numbered my meats. I needed to do the same thing for the non-meats data stream, so I copied the multi-row tool to my non-meats stream and thought I was good to go. I joined on city/state/county and my new number, but my output didn't look right. Then I remembered that after copying and pasting, I had to actually go back and re-select my group by variables.

In the bigger picture, I'm always copying and pasting tools. Whether I'm testing out different ideas, debugging things gone wrong, or taking chunks from one workflow and copying them to another. After I ran into the multi-row issue, I looked through the other tools I use that would have similar behavior.

In my original idea, Concatenate should have been the Crosstab tool.

[RachelW]

 @patrick_digan Thanks for this thorough example of when you copy and paste tools!

[patrick_digan]

Update: I've just downloaded 2019.2. Several tools have been updated, and some of them are moving backwards (ie they didn't use to lose their settings and now they do). 

Note that some tools are being updated correctly (like the sample tool).

Certain tools like R/Python don't work well with metadata. Macros can be finicky with the metadata at times. Copy/Paste as pointed out above will lose the settings. When the metadata isn't flowing, it's too easy to accidentally break your workflow.

Here is the current list of tools that I see where it can lose its settings as pointed out above.

1) Cross Tab >> Lose it's Group By selections.
2) Transpose >> Loses the key columns and data columns selections.
3) Unique >> loses column names selections
4) Tile >> Loses unique columns and group by selections. (this didn't use to behave like this prior to 2019.2).
5) Find and Replace >> Loses the append columns selections.
6) Running Total >> loses group by and column names selections.

7) Multi Row Formula (Group By)

[matt_w]

Just to confirm that the above comment is also an issue for me. Is there any workaround? Has this been resolved for the latest version of Alteryx? 

[KylieF]

@matt_w

The requested behavior hasn't been included in any current version of Alteryx at this point and there is no current workaround that I know of outside of redoing the setting on each tool manually. However should this idea gain enough traction, this idea will be brought to our product teams attention.

[matt_w]

Thanks Kylie. However, I did find a workaround in the end:

I hard-coded the metadata via the Text Input Tool and from then onward the metadata persisted throughout the workflow. The problem for me was caused by an external macro. 

[Hollingsworth]

I agree that holding onto the configuration of these tools during copy/paste is needed.

[patrick_digan]

According to this idea, the date time tool should also be fixed like the others we've mentioned: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Allow-the-DateTime-tool-to-keep-its-configur...

[patrick_digan]

I'll just add that batch macro mapped fields would be a another case where no metadata causes your mapping to be lost. When your metadata is unavailable for whatever reason, your mapping is completely and permanently gone if you click on the tool: