Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Hi Team,

I couldn't find much on enhancing the Tool Container tool searching.

I am doing some work on a large workflow today and have replaced three tool containers with multiple containers within them with macros in order to simplify the overall workflow. Doing this work, I need to document the purpose of this simplification to my stakeholders within the business in terms of business value, and one aspect I thought of would be how much time is saved by wrapping all of these tools within a macro, another is how many tools are visible on the canvas, and therefore how by modulising (creating macros rather than tool containers) sections of the workflow it is much easier to see what's happening to the data

My macro replaces 50 tools with one and therefore this is quite a key quantifiable piece of business value that I can communicate.

In order to count the tools within the old container I had to do this manually. I was wondering - rather than manually count all of the tools within the old container - Could there be some functionality built into Tool containers such as a profiling tool similar to the browse? So that when you clicked on the tool container you would get some simple profiling, summary of the tools used?

Any thoughts welcome!

Ciaran

We just updated to 11.7 from 10.5.

The Container adding/removing rules were changed somewhere in there and the change made it much harder to remove tools from containers. Is there any way to undo these changes or look into a better set of rules to use?

Nick

I think it would be a nice feature if a user were able to export the list of tools and annotations in a way to use as the foundation of a process memo (or simply listed sequentially in an appendix). We're using Alteryx for tax data prep processes and documentation of the process is important.  So I believe getting the workflow into words would be a great addition.

It would be a timesaver for workflow documentation if macro metadata could be passed through to the workflow where the macro is deployed.  The image below suggests that the Description encased in the macro could be copied across to the corresponding Annotation panel.  I would also suggest that the Meta Info panel have a checkbox to control this new funtionality.

Currently, users are unable to export only the annotations contents.

Requested change: Please add an option to export just the annotation content for an entire workflow. 

This would be useful when Tax reviewers need to include the workflow preparers' comments in the tax compliance review file.

The "Open Example" feature that has been implemented for many tools helps new users quickly learn how to exploit Alteryx.  I would like to see Alteryx make further investments in this area and in particular I would like to see enhanced and organized documentation for functions with more and better examples.  I would encourage Alteryx to engage its ACE community and the other advanced users who are active in the Community to contribute to this effort. 

The COMMENT tool has a number of default settings.  It would save me a lot of time if the Designer could remember the last settings used.  

This is the panel I am referring to:

It would be helpful to redirect Help Documentation searches to the latest version number.  When Googling problems I often get help page links that are for version 9.5 while I'm on version 11.7.  I'll usually change the version number in the URL to get to the right documentation.  It would be great if the version <11 documentation would automatically port forward to the current documentation with the option to go to older documentation for users on those versions.

The Explorer Box is great for embedding help documentation into workflows. That being said, there are several text-based file types that cannot be accepted into the Explorer Box such as .sql or .log. Since these are essentially text files, I'm suggesting that the Explorer Box should be less strict regarding file extensions and allow all text-based file types to be viewable.

Problem: The visual nature of Alteryx is one of its key selling points. The idea is to make work flows understandable. But when you're building something complicated, the lines cease being a helpful visualization and become a confusing mess instead. Lines cross each other. Lines cross out annotations. I know that there's wireless connections, but using too many of those makes the data flow hard to trace. So I spend time moving tools and boxes around, trying to get lines to cooperate, instead of chasing that thrill of solving. 

Solution: Users should be able to click the line and place an anchor which affects the line just like a tool would, but without doing anything to the data. It would just be a little point, not a full tool.  That way I could make the lines dodge my annotations without placing needless select tools or moving everything around. It could be located in the Documentation tab. 

Thanks for reading,

BG

So while working through a workflow that takes up a bunch of canvas space, I find myself jumping between two points, one at the beginning and one at the end. Every time I need to jump to the other point, I have to zoom out and scroll over and down and then zoom back in. 

What if there was a tool that you could drop on the canvas as a "point of Interest" that if you select it (perhaps) on some other part of the interface, takes you right to that spot in the workflow. I know that currently you can look up tools and it will take you to the location of the tool, but it can be difficult when you are jumping around 4 or 5 different spots to remember which tool number is which.

I would use this all the time!

Just a thought

We see very nice demos at the Alteryx Academy. Trainers showing some actions, tips and tricks on screens previously recorded...

Originally you need to install a software like;

• https://tinytake.com/ (freeware)
• https://icecreamapps.com/Screen-Recorder/
• https://www.screenpresso.com/
• https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html ($49,95)

Then learn how to use them and share separate video or moving GIF files with people manually by mail etc....

I suggest a screen recorder for Alteryx where you can quickly record and save how something is done

and then share it thru Peer to peer with a colleague one-on-one or publish to the Alteryx Community...

It may even be an awesome thing if one can share screen in real-time with another Alteryx user...

Then it will be top notch collaboration...

Best

Altan @Atabarezz

I am in the process of thoroughly documenting my workflows should someone else need to run them. However, I find a lot of my time is having to adjust font style, font size, colors, comments, etc. for each of the items I'm notating. It would be far easier to have the ability to set up a custom scheme that I could apply overall to the workflow that would change all of those attributes to my workplace standards. Sort of like how you can define a style in Microsoft Word to use repeatedly, this scheme would include comment boxes, tool containers and any other means of notating the workflow.

At first I was going to suggest a new tool, but I think this works better as a configuration item.  Some users, myself included, develop workflows with several containers intended to allow portions of the workflow to be turned on and off for the purpose of debug, more efficient development, etc.  Managing which containers are enabled and disabled can become cumbersome and time-consuming.

I propose a new tab in the Workflow Configuration to allow the user to easily enable/disable containers.  The Container configuration tab would list all containers by their tool number and caption. Each container would also have a state slider (Enabled/Disabled) that would show the current state of the container.    The user could click any container's state slider to enable/disable as desired.  An "all" slider that enabled/disabled all containers would also be helpful. 

This enhancement would centralize container management and save developers a lot of time.

Thanks for your consideration.

How about the ability to minimize or maximize all containers on your workflow, perhaps with a context menu option? It would make sorting through large workflows easier.

I have have the topic similar to this suggestion found here Export to Visio. However I came to the community to stick my neck out an suggest Alteryx provide a new product offering.

I believe it wouldn't be a big jump for Alteryx to provide a platform to process design, similar to Visio. Coming from a BA background, I didn't come up with a technical background. When I first viewed it, I rationalised the software as a process design program which was more than pictures it, it actually manipulated the data. The look and feel is already setup, just adding some swimlanes and some icons which don't do anything would be all that is required.

This could be offered as a add-on, a stand alone, or something else - I'd leave that to the marketers. I just know if I could wrap up a data work flow, and potentially a business process designed in the one platform - it would be an advantage.

An Alteryx workflow can have a lot of text in it. You can rename individual tools, add annotations to them and use comment boxes to write explanations of what the workflow is doing. The idea I would like to advocate is to have a search function built into Alteryx to find words within any of these text inputs.

Thank you,

James

Speed up canvas edits - The Create/Remove Space Tool

Usually day two of working with a canvas I realize that I have been a fool, and I come up with a significantly more elegant or simple solution.  Moving all of the containers or tools to fit my slick new container is cumbersome and slow.  I've created a GIF of a feature several tools have which allows the user to easily move and arrange items on the canvas.

Open source tool used in demo: bpmnJs

It would be extremely helpful if there is an easy way to print off the current function reference for 11.0. In the past, you could easily do so with 9.5 (with the print button), but even putting out a basic PDF file that outlines the parameters for each function, and what it does would be useful. This is not possible with the newest version of the documentation.

https://help.alteryx.com/9.5/index.htm

https://help.alteryx.com/current/index.htm