Alteryx Designer Ideas

Currently if I have a connection between two tools as per the example below:

I can drag and drop a new tool on the connection between these tools to add it in:

And designer updates the connections nicely, however if I select multiple tools and try and collectively drop them inbetween, on a connection then it won't allow me to do this, and will move the connection out of the way so it doesn't cause an overlap.

Therefore as a QoL improvement it would be great if there was a multi-drop option on connections between tools.

This idea has arisen from a conversation with a colleague @Carlithian where we were trying to work out a way to remove tools from the canvas which might be redundant, for example have you added a select tool to the canvas which hasn't been configured to change a data type or rename a field. So we were looking for ways of identifying in the workflow xml for tools which didn't have a configuration applied to them.

This highlighted to me an issue with something like the data cleanse tool, which is a standard macro.

The xml view of the data cleanse configuration looks like this:

<Configuration>
  <Value name="Check Box (135)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (136)">False</Value>
  <Value name="List Box (11)">""</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (84)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (117)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (15)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (109)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (122)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (53)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (58)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (70)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Check Box (77)">False</Value>
  <Value name="Drop Down (81)">upper</Value>
</Configuration>

As it is a macro, the default labelling of the drop downs is specified in the xml, if you were to do something useful with it wouldn't it be much nicer if the interface tools were named properly - such as:

So when you look at the xml of the workflow it's clearer to the user what is actually specified.

Please add either or both

1. "CustomFile/Database", similar to the TREE tool to the Text Box interface tool
2. An option to make TREE Tool "silent" or passive when using the "CustomFile/Database" option

The purpose is to provide a better way to pass data, and thus allow "Action" tool to be used, from interface responses in a previous App chained to the current App.

Use Case:

We had a workflow with 8 TREE tools and 3 of them had significant number of rows associated.  This caused frequent failures where the queries getting the multiple layers of data for the TREE would time out.

Through trial and experiment we determined this was the issue by removing TREE tools until we had consistent function.

Most if not all the TREEs and all of the 3 offending TREEs were used to modify FILTER tools, in this case each of those 3 TREEs 3 or 4 Actions driving the same number of FILTERs

So we had to find a way to break up the operation.  Ultimately I separated the 3 large volume TREE tools into a separate workflow to run first and then CHAIN to the original flow with modifications to read the responses passed from the new 1st workflow in the chain and replaced the FILTER with JOINs, effectively filtering by JOIN.

This worked but was extra work and it made me think of the many other situations where I would like to take input from an external source and affect a FORMULA or FILTER or a few other tools where an ACTION is best/only way to modify tool configuration at run time.

I think this lack of a way to use an ACTION tool with a "Non-Interface" data source has probably limited the opportunities of Applications.

Given the division of labor in an APP,

1. run all Interface tools first and modify config of other tools
2. then run the rest of the tools on the canvas

there is no way to make a run time ACTION tool as it must do its job before the core job runs. 

This adaptation of the TREE tool, which is my preference, or the adaptation of the Text Box tool, offer good solutions that should be fairly simple to code and roll out the the user base.

I would like to see Designer offer me the ability to chain workflows together where once Workflow A completes, Workflow B will automatically start.  There are times when linear processing is required in order to avoid dependency issues and/or for making it easier to organize complex processes. It would require outputting results to static files and it would take longer to process than the standard approach, but that is an expected trade-off.  Offering a GUI drag-drop "orchestrator" to tell Designer the order of operation would be even better than having to manually open each workflow and tell it which workflow to kick off next.

Hello all,

As of today, you must set which database (e.g. : Snowflake, Vertica...) you connect to in your in db connection alias. This is fine but I think we should be able to also define the version, the release of the database. There are a lot of new features in database that Alteryx could use, improving User Experience, performance and security. (e.g. : in Hive 3.0, there is a catalog that could be used in Visual Query Builder instead of querying slowly each schema)

I think of a menu with the following choices :
-default (legacy) and precision of the Alteryx default version for the db
-autodetect (with a query launched every time you run the workflow when it's possible). if upper than last supported version, warning message and run with the last supported version settings.
-manual setting a release (to avoid to launch the version query every time). The choices would be every supported alteryx version.

Best regards,

Simon

Currently there is a function in Alteryx called FindString() that finds the first occurrence of your target in a string. However, sometimes we want to find the nth occurrence of our target in a string. 

FindString("Hello World", "o")  returns 4 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the first "o" in the string. But what if we want to find the location of the second "o" in the text? This gets messy with nested find statements and unworkable beyond looking for the second or third instance of something. 

I would like a function added such that 

FindNth("Hello World", "o", 2) Would return 7 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the second instance of "o" in my string. 

At the moment, in order for users in our organisation to run apps, they need to be added to permissions for the data connection for the server/DB the app uses (as we use Gallery connections for ease of collaboration within the Analytics team).

This is fine provided users running the apps do not have Alteryx Designer, however, we have users across the business who do use Designer - we don't always want these users having direct access to query the server/DB through designer just because they have the connection in order to run workflows on the Gallery. It's my understanding that at the moment this is necessarily the case, which is not ideal.

Would be great if we could grant permissions for users to use the connection to run apps in the Gallery without that enabling them to use that connection in Designer to query the DB however they want.

Can a function be added to the Text-to-Column tool that allows selecting "split on entire entry" or "split on entry-as-a-whole" for the delimiters field?

Background:

Currently if we type  vs.  in the delimiters field, it'll look for each character separately including spaces.

The recommendation in the tool help is to use RegEx for splitting on whole words, but for some, RegEx is quite intimidating and adding this function would be a big help for new users.

Proposed Change:

2 Radio Buttons added to the Text-to-Column tool

1. Split by Each Entry
   1. Current functionality
   2. Should be default
   3. Splits on every letter, space, punctuation, etc. separately
2. Split by Entire Entry
   1. Allow splitting by using entire entry in the field
   2. Still includes spaces, letters, and punctuation, but now sees as "whole-word"

Example of function:

1. Radio button set to "split by entire entry"
2. Delimiter field has:   vs. 
3. Tool sees  ______ vs. ______  in a column in the data
4. Tool splits ______  and  ______ into new columns leaving out the entire vs. including the spaces entered around it

Thank you!

Hi everyone! I have been trying to find a way to do this without creating a new idea, but I have decided to make it an official 'Idea' to see if there is anyone else that might appreciate a feature like this (or has found there own way to do it!)

Do your workflows look like this...

but you wish they could look like this?

Well... they can with your help!

Okay, I might be crazy...but its worth a shot.

While I understand this is an extremely niche issue, in my experience, it can become very difficult to trace the data through unmanaged lines in large workflows. I think it will be great to cable manage canvas lines so workflows are easier to follow. Heck, while I am already at it, I think it we should all start calling these canvas lines cables... They don't carry electricity, but they sure do carry data!

Here is an example I created in Alteryx using select tools and containers:

Checkbox ability to ‘not’ output the original column on a text to columns tool

It would be nice to be able to concatenate numeric values (integers, doubles, etc.) directly in the Summarize Tool.

I know this would involve converting it to a string on the backend, but I don't believe there would be any data loss when going from numeric to string. I know this can be done by using other tools like Select of Formula to convert to string before the summarize but I don't see any reason why this couldn't be accomplished in a single tool.

Thanks,

Paul

Similar to the setting that you have in many individual tools  (join, append, select, et al) where you can go to options and choose to "forget missing fields" it would be nice where you could go to options for the entire flow and "forget missing fields".

This would remove the headache that you have with large flows where you make a change(s) then have to go back through each and every tool to "forget" within that tool. Yes you could still do it individually, but if you chose, you could also do it universally for the entire flow all at once to all the 'missing fields'. 

In the tools that embed the "Rename" option (Select, Append Fields, Join, Join Multiple), copying the new name will copy all the information of the field configuration : tick/untick, original field name, type, size, new name and description.

Renaming the field "Rename_Field"

In my opinion, it should copy only the new name. This would be useful, especially because when you change the name of a field, it isn't automatically changed in subsequent tools, so copying it to replace it in those tools is faster than retyping it every time.

Currently the only way to do IF / FOR / WHILE loop is either in Formula tool or via iterative/batch macro.

Instead, it will be hugely useful and a lot more intuitive if there is the ability to build the FOR / WHILE logic embedded in a container (similar to LabVIEW interface https://www.ni.com/en-sg/support/documentation/supplemental/08/labview-for-loops-and-while-loops-exp...).

Advantages include:

- Increased readability. (not having to go into a macro!)

- Increased agility. (more power/ features can be added or modified on the go for something that is more than a Formula tool but not too much interface like a Macro App)

- More intuitive

Dawn.

Take this example macro

I've build in a message on the tool to inform the user that the macro is set up in test mode. What this macro does is it will either filter the records based on a condition which the user provides in the macro configuration via a text input tool, for example Contains([Name],"Goodman") or they can select a check box to override the testing mode.

What I want is the user to be notified when there is a filter condition being applied, so they can quickly identify where in the workflow data might not be the full dataset. At the moment this is achieved using the error tool, but due to be it being the error tool you are limited to only specifying the red !

Therefore my idea is to update the error tool to allow the user to specify additional indicators, such as a warning triangle, because the message I am displaying is actually a warning to the user. Additionally it would be great if you could provide custom images (for example a glass flask) to show it's in a test mode, like you can with the macro image tools.

I think the undo/redo capabilities in Alteryx could be greatly improved. Here is an idea that I think would be beneficial... 

I'd like to see which exact tools are affected by my undo/redo actions. An idea was suggested a couple years ago to move your location on the canvas, but that was not added to the roadmap. Instead, is it possible to add the tool ID to the undo menu so that it is obvious which tool each line is detailing?

This is the current debug menu that shows your previous actions:

When a tool is created, the ID can be displayed in this menu, but this is not shown when a change is made to an existing tool. My suggestion is that the menu would say:

4. Change Sort (3) Properties

This same change should be made in the Edit dropdown menu.

When typing a function (often the formula tool), you can use autocomplete to get the syntax to display, however if you are editing a previously written expression, you have remember or try to guess at the syntax.  This often leads to having to consult the documentation or adding an extra duplicate function below your code just to see the syntax (that you then have to remember to remove).  This process could be improved by showing a window that shows the function syntax while you are typing within the parentheses of the function.  This would be even more useful with nested functions to see which function you are within.

Connecting to Smartsheets using Alteryx Desktop (and by extension, Alteryx Server) is extremely cumbersome. If a user wants to read data from Smartsheet, they are required to get an API token (preferred) or use a username/password

Then do one of the following to read data from Smartsheets:

1. a. Install a ODBC driver

    b. Configure a DSN connection for ODBC
    c. Use the input data using a generic ODBC connection
or
2. Use python

To write data to Smartsheets, a user can use Python or upload the data using an API call - both very hard for end users to use especially if they're not Python developers.

Regardless, all of these are problematic. On the server I manage, I have over 15 ODBC connections to Smartsheets and it's getting very hard to upgrade the server hardware because of them. Creating a native connector for input/output of data to Smartsheets will eliminate a headache of managing ODBC connections, and make it simple for Alteryx Desktop users to read and write data.

I am working with complex workflows which use multiple files as input, located on network drives. Input tools are Input Data, Directory, Wildcard Input, Wildcard XLSX Input (from CReW macros).

Regularly, I experience very slow Designer when working on the workflows, and slow progress when running the tools mentioned above, especially when working from home. Switching off Auto Configure did not really help because I the column list sometimes does not converge even after pressing F5 multiple times, and when actively working on workflows, I have to press F5 all the time...

In order to speed up both working on workflows and running the workflows, I would like to propose a function "Cache all File Inputs" which loads and caches all file inputs at once. To achieve this state, I now have Cache and Run workflow once per every file input.