Alteryx Designer Ideas

I'm really liking the new assisted modelling capabilities released in 2020.2, but it should not error if the data contains: spatial, blob, date, datetime, or datetime types.

This is essentially telling the user to add an extra step of adding a select before the assisted modelling tool and then a join after the models. I think the tool should be able to read in and through these field types (especially dates) and just not use them in any of the modelling.

An even better enhancement would be to transform date as part of the assisted modelling into something usable for the modelling (season, month, day of week, etc.)

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

The dynamic input tool is useful for bringing in multiple files / tabs, but quickly stops being fit for purpose if schemas / fields differ even slightly. The common solution is to then use a dynamic input tool inside a batch macro and set this macro to 'Auto Configure by Name', so that it waits for all files to be run and then can output knowing what it has received. 

It's a pain to create these batch macros for relatively straightforward and regular processes - would it be possible to have this 'Auto Configure by Name' as an option directly in the dynamic input tool, relieving the need for a batch macro? 

Thanks,

Andy 

This has probably been mentioned before, but in case it hasn't....

Right now, if the dynamic input tool skips a file (which it often does!) it just appears as a warning and continues processing. Whilst this is still useful to continue processing, could it be built as an option in the tool to select a 'error if files are skipped'? 

Right now it is either easy to miss this is happening, or in production / on server you may want this process to be stopped.

Thanks,

Andy 

The crosstab tool replaces any non-alphanumeric characters with underscores in column names. It would be helpful to keep the original values as column names (or to have the option to toggle whether or not special characters are replaced with underscores).

This is often an issue for reporting and for dynamically-populated app inputs (e.g. drop-down), where we need to retain the special characters.

For example, say I have the following dataset: 

Currently, the crosstab tool produces this:

I would like this:

There are currently (somewhat cumbersome) workarounds such as adding an extra row with the original names, and then using Dynamic Rename to rename the columns, but it would be great to be able to use the data straight out of the crosstab!

There is no straightforward way to know if a string is lower, upper or title case. A workaround such as Contains function or REGEX ones has to be used.

The creation of the following functions would make it easier :

     - IsTitleCase(String) : tests if a string is in TitleCase

     - IsUpperCase(String) : tests if a string is in UpperCase

     - IsLowerCase(String) : tests if a string is in LowerCase

They would all return a boolean and be in the Test category.

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...

I often need to create a record ID that automatically increments but grouped by a specific field. I currently do it using the Multi-Row Formula tool doing [Field-1:ID]+1 because there is no group by option in the Record ID tool.

Also, sometimes I need to start at 0 but the Multi-Row Formula tool doesn't allow this so I have to use a Formula tool right after to subtract 1.

So adding a group by option to the Record ID tool would allow the user not to use the multi-row formula to do this and to start at any value wanted.

I personally think it would work better to tab from 'Select Column' to 'Enter Expression Here' and not the 'Functions' List as probably people who are tabbing would immediately like to start typing the formula rather than going through functions, fields, etc.

With the new intelligence suite there is a much higher use of blob files and we would like to be able to input them as a regular input instead of having to use non- standard tools like Image, report text or a combination of directory/blob or input/download to pull in images, etc. I would like to see the standard input tool capable of bringing in blob files as well.

Blob InputImage InputText Input

When writing an expression in a Formula tool, I love that you can just type an open bracket and suggestions pop up that allow you to auto-fill the rest of the variable name. What I find frustrating, however, is that once you type the open bracket, the highlighted field automatically moves to the one where your mouse is pointing, regardless of if you have moved your mouse or not. I think it makes more sense to always highlight the first field in the list and only take mouse position into account once it has actually moved.

It is hard to describe in just a picture as opposed to a video but essentially I had my mouse below where I was typing in the screenshot below then when I typed the open bracket, the 3rd field listed automatically got selected even though I never moved my mouse.

Cc: @Hollingsworth 

So I just realized that if I click F2 I am brought to the annotation window in the configuration window. 

It would be great if I can click F3 to bring me back to the Configuration window! Often times I switch back between configuring and annotation a tool multiple times. 

‘]Thanks,

J

If you forget to put a name on a new column in the formula tool - the error message is 

The field "" is not contained in the record. (Expression #1)

Please could you replace this with a user-friendly message which is self descriptive like:

"Please provide a name for the new column created in expression 1"?

There is an extensive need from customers to be able to create emails but not send them (right away at least). This would be an enhancement to the email tool to allow for checking a box to say "Save in Draft" and if that box was checked the send email functionality would not be called but the email would be created. 

Experts - 

During development it would be helpful to be able to do the following in both Formula and Filter tools (and perhaps any other tool that uses custom code):

1) Highlight a line or block of code

2) Right click

3) Comment/Uncomment

Easier than manually typing or deleting "//" at every line.  

Thanks in advance!

Any python user will tell you that one of the reasons why python is so powerful is the ability to access values using their indexes. It would be great if alteryx had such a system in place too, where you can access values or loop over them using their index, which can then be applied in creating new columns or calculations. 

P.S - I know we can use the python tool but I would rather see this ability built in the formula tool.

I would like to request that the Python tool metadata either be automatically populated after the code has run once, or a simple line of code added in the tool to output the metadata. Also, the metadata needs to be cached just like all of the other tools. 

As it sits now, the Python tool is nearly unusable in a larger workflow. This is because it does not save or pass metadata in a workflow. Most other tools cache temporary metadata and pass it on to the next tool in line. This allows for things like selecting columns and seeing previews before the workflow is run.

Each time an edit is made to the workflow, the workflow must be re-run to update everything downstream of the Python tool. As you can imagine, this can get tedious (unusable) in larger workflows.

Alteryx support has replied with "this is expected behavior" and "It is giving that error because Alteryx is 
doing a soft push for the metadata but unfortunately it is as designed."

The expression editor in the RegEx tool is only a single line, which makes it really hard to edit long regular expressions. See attached photo comparing the expression editor in the RegEx tool compared to the formula tool for the same expression. Please make the RegEx editor box either wrap to multiple lines, have a pop-out expression editor, or something so we can see long expressions.

The Remove Null Rows feature added to the Data Cleansing tool is really nice, however it doesn't work for a common use case for us where we have key metadata field(s) added to the data stream that make rows not null so we'd like to be able to ignore or exclude one or more fields from the Remove Null Rows output.

Here's a use case starting with an Excel file with multiple tabs where each tab holds the records for a different Province:

Note that the 2nd record in Southern is entirely empty, so this is the record that we'd like to remove using the Data Cleansing tool.

Since the Province name is only in the worksheet name (and not in the data) I'm using a Dynamic Input tool with the "Output File Name as Field" to include the worksheet name so I can parse it out later. So the output of the Dynamic Input looks like this:

With the FileName field populated the entire row is not Null and therefore the Remove Null Rows feature of the Data Cleansing tool fails to remove that record:

Therefore what we'd like is when we're using the Remove null rows feature in the Data Cleansing tool to be able to choose field(s) to ignore or exclude from that evaluation. For example in the above use case we might tick the "FileName" checkbox to exclude it and then that 2nd row in Southern would be removed from the data.

There are workarounds to use a series of other tools (for example multi-field formula + filter + select) to do this, so extending the Data Cleansing tool to support this feature is a nice to have.

I've attached the sample packaged workflow used to create this example.

Hi Alteryx community,

It would be really nice to have v_string/v_wstring and max character size as a standard for text columns.

it is countless how many times I found that the error was related to a string truncation due to string size limit from the text input.

Thumbs-up those who lost their minds after discovering that the error was that! 😄