Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Analytical apps currently do not have the ability to provide any indication of progress to users when hosted on the galaxy.

It would be valuable to be able to provide a progress bar or some indication of progress to the user when invoking analytical apps from the gallery.

There needs to be a way to step into macro a which is component of parent workflow for debugging.

Currently the only way to achieve to debug these is to capture the inputs to the macro from the parent workflow, and then run the amend inputs on the macro. For iterative / batch macros, there is no option to debug at all. This can be tedious, especially if there are a number of inputs, large amounts of data, or you are have nested macros.

There should be an option on the tool representing the macro in the parent workflow to trigger a Debug when running the workflow, this would result in the same behavior when choosing 'Debug' from the interface panel in the macro itself: a new 'debug' workflow is created with the inputs received from the parent workflow.

On iterative / batch macros, which iteration / control parameter value the debug will be triggered on should be required. So if a macro returns an error on the 3 iteration, then the user ticks 'Debug' and Iteration = 3. If it doesn't reach the 3rd iteration, then no debug workflow is created.

I do a lot of work with SQL code in the PRE/POST SQL options and when I get an error, it usually returns the entire code and a little bit about what is wrong. These long strings are hard to read in the current tooltip format as if you hover over to see the entire error, the tooltip goes away after 5 seconds. So I am frantically reading through lines of error code 5 seconds at time. Can we make it so the tooltip just hangs out until I move my cursor off of it?

Hello,

It appears that Alteryx does not accept .svg (or other vector image format) for icons (I think to custom macro icons), image in comment, etc...

I think that would be a great idea, especially to manage web integration and support of different resolutions.
here an example of a svg logo I made :


As you can see you can zoom in/out without loose quality.

Hi all,

I was recently helping a new starter assemble an app the included a long check box list in its interface, and stumbled upon a possible feature to be added to your interface tools. Here’s the situation in a nutshell:

• The analyst wanted to allow the end user to select a from a list of stores, so he used a List Box that populated from our store list in Oracle
• We have thousands of stores, so when rendered, the interface would be extremely long and cumbersome for the user
• I then suggested he use a Tree instead of a List Box for this part of the interface, as a Tree allows the designer to limit the Tree Window Height and display only XX lines to the user at a time

So, here’s my suggestion: Can a “Window Height” option be added to the List Box tool?

Given that Tree already has this functionality, I think it would make sense to include such a feature for List Box as well. As of v11.3, this feature does not appear to be included.

Thoughts?

Current option in Tree interface tool

I always end up sorting after the Summarize tool. It would be nice to have an option to sort on a field in the Actions section of the Sort tool. 

When building out Alteryx workflows there may be a need to read in different ranges within the same Excel spreadsheet. For example bringing in a table from Sheet1, but also isolating a table name in a particular cell (in my example cell C8).

When turning this into an analytic app, with a file browse is to add an action tool with the default value of "Update Input Data Tool".

However when specifying this option within the analytic app interface, you are only allowed to chose one option of the following:

i) Select a sheet

ii) Select a sheet and specify a range

iii) a named range or

iv) a list of sheet names.

The problem is in the example above I need a sheet and a range, but I want to avoid adding two file browse interface tools as it shouldn't be needed. If the user selects (i) then it loses the reference to cell C8, but I would imagine a lot of users as they get started with apps don't realise this is what will happen.

There is however a way to solve this currently and it requires overwriting the default behaviour and configuring the second action tool (the one that updates the file for C8), to update value with a formula, where you assume the user would select sheet name and then use this formula:

replace([#1],"$`","$C8:C8`")

However I would argue that this has a lot of technical debt, plus if the user needs to modify where the header is, for example to D8 they need to change the input file and the action tool so it works as a workflow and an analytic app.

Solution

Like how the configuration options for the input file, such as which row to input data from or whether first row contains data is maintained, modify the behaviour of the default option in the action tool to maintain references to ranges.

There are many circumstances when you have to build an interative macro where it's not just the iterating data set that needs to change every iteration, but also a second data set.

Think about this like a loop where two different variables are updated on every iteration, not just the control variable in the For xxx control variable.

The way that users work around this is to use a temporary yxdb file where instead of a macro input you input from the yxdb, and then write back to the same yxdb.    This allows you to pretend that you can adjust 2 different data sets on every cycle of the loop.    there are 4 downsides to this:
a) User complexity - this breaks the conceptual simplicity of macro inputs since now the users have to understand that in situation X I use macro inputs; and in situation Y I have to use some other type of tool.

b) Speed penalty - writing to disk is between 1000x slower and 1 000 000x slower than working with data in memory (especially if it's in cache) - so by forcing this to go through a yxdb file, you do incur a speed penalty which is just not needed

c) blocking penalty - Because of the fact that you can't write to a file that you're still reading from, you need to pepper this with Block until done tools - and you need to initialize the macro using a first write to the yxdb file outside the macro - which further hurts speed.    Given the nuanced behaviour of block-until-done, this also introduces user complexity issues

d) Self-contained - because you have to initialize these files outside the macro - the macro is no-longer self-contained and portable (which breaks the principle of Information Hiding which is a key pillar of good modular decoupled software design.

The other way that users work around this - is to serialize their entire second recordset into a field which then gets tacked onto the iterating data set using an iterative macro.   This is HIGHLY wasteful becuase then you have to build a serialize & deserialize process for this second recordset.    It fixes the speed and blocking penalites from above, but introduces a computational overhead which is generating no value; and makes this even more complex for users - and a further blocker to using macros.

Recommendation:

We could make this simpler by allowing users to create multiple pairs of macro input / macro outputs so that 2 or 3 or n different data sets can be updated with every iteration.

Below is a screenshot demonstrating this, from an Advent of code challenge - the details of the problem are not important - the issue at hand is that there are 2 record sets which both need to be updated on every iteration.

cc: @NicoleJohnson @Samanthaj_hughes @SteveA 

How about giving an auto-layout button to help easily layout the canvas even if the user has not neatly created the workflow?

It would be interesting to have the ability to change the orientation of a tool container separate from the orientation of the workflow. For example having a vertical tool container within a horizontal workflow will help keep the workflow short enough to view on one page. Also it would look alot better to collapse and expand vertically in a horizontal workflow.

I've recently been delving into using the interface tools and there are a couple of glaring issues for me as a developer/designer, all having to do with the UI, ironically (yes, I used that correctly!) with the interface tools. The irony here is that the interface tools utilise a poor user interface.

Firstly, I finished this video to ensure I was indeed doing things correctly, and I was.

The UI for designer's interface tools is incredibly sluggish. In order to rearrange tools, each time you create a new one, you have to push the up arrow for each tool and you have to traverse the groupings.

This will take forever. I counted 36 clicks.

Instead of this, I suggest two changes to the interface designer.

1. 1. Allow a control-click in the interface designer layout view so that multiple elements can be selected and they can traverse the groupings and be moved together. When one has, say 4 elements in 2 nested groupings, that is a lot of clicks to get your new element to the top. Having to do it with its radio-button partner: pretty much infuriating.
2. ONE at a time, children. No control-clicking. That would lead to pandemonium?Allow control-click in the tree view as well. The fact that we can only click one item at a time and move it one slot at a time is incredibly time consuming. It seems a no-brainer to at least allow a control-click here.
   • Bonus: Include the ability to jump to the top and/or pop out a level with left/right arrows in the tree interface. 

I know not everyone is building macros/apps and dealing with this, so I have little faith that this will jump to the top of your queue. But this is a painful part of the UI. I don't know if your UX designers could easily fix this or if it is more pain on your end than the pain you're giving me, but I just want to say: This hurts. 35 clicks every time I add a new element with no option to 'move to top' like you (wonderfully) do in the select tool is a big drag on my time (hint: maybe add that sort of functionality too; the select tool manages this stuff so well!). Which is supposedly valuable. In theory. But it certainly doesn't feel that way when I've spent 10 minutes clicking an up arrow (and yes, my UI is slow. And I may be exaggerating, but not by much!). 

Thank you for your continued improvement!

-Çædric Justice
Alteryx Developer
Cambia Healthcare

Add an option to the tree tool generate custom lists similar to the list box.  When building apps for teams to use and we need them to select from either a product or store hierarchy it would greatly simplify the process if the tree tool could generate a custom list of the lowest level of the hierarchy that we could feed into a sql pull in the dynamic input tool.  On top making the workflow cleaner, I think it would make the user interface a lot cleaner, instead of a giant lists of stores/departments etc. they could drill down to the relevant area much faster.

Hi Team,

I would like to make some suggestions for future release. I am a big fan of the "retro" alteryx look and would like the option to select that look under User Settings. There should also be some other set themes for user to use. a "Light" version, "Dark" (for the true developer feel) and some grayscale standards or color blind adapted themes. 

I have a number of reservations to the new look design (I can put those in a separate post if the team really wants to hear them) but please put the 'retro' button in user settings for me and I will be a happy analyst.

Keep up the good work!!!

With the Action Tool, if you use the "Update Value" action type, you have the ability to check the "Replace a specific string" option

If you use the "Update Value with Formula" action type, you no longer have the option to Replace a specific string.

Can't think of any reason why we should not have the ability to replace a specific string while using "Update value with formula"

Please can you add this in next release?

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.

My team has requested that the user interface for one of our macros is color coded to indicate the priority of certain inputs. This would be a huge help in making our large interface easier for a user to fill out and utilize.

Good afternoon,

If any one of you have had to create Column Rules in the Table Tool for multiple Table Tools you'll know how much of a pain it is to set the same rules over and over and over.

It would be an amazing addition if we had the functionality to copy column rules to apply to other Table Tools.

What are yalls thoughts?

-Nick

Example1

Hi Alteryx,

Can you add the search functionality in the dropdown (Apps) where the user enters specific text and the dropdown list gets filtered accordingly?

It would enhance the user's experience while using large lists in dropdown.

The ability to create Interface tools would be helpful. I would to edit multiple actions at the same time on a single tool, but it needs to be done dynamically. All of these tools exist within the standard tool set, but the standard action tool only allows for one action to be done per tool.  

Other Examples:

-Radio Button Groupings (only 1 scenario can be selected within a group instead of one radio button per designer interface)

-Replace textual selection with a graphic selection:

                       Please select a Park to run the report for:

                      Islands of Adventure     Universal Studios      Both        vs                IOA          Universal Studios         UPR

-Toggle List Box Options where: 

Survey Import