Alteryx Designer Ideas

We're currently using Regex and text to columns to parse raw HTML as text into the appropriate format when web scraping, when a tool to at least parse tables would be hugely beneficial.

This functionality exists within Qlik so it would be nice to have this replicated in Alteryx.

Obviously, we need to retain the ability to scrape raw HTML, but automatically parsing data using the <td>, <th> and <tr> tags would be nice.

In the following page there is a table showing the states and territories of the US:

With Qlik, you can input the URL and it will return the available tables in tabular format:

As this functionality exists elsewhere it would be nice to incorporate this into Alteryx.

The DateTime tool is a great way to convert various string arrangements into a Date/Time field type. However, this tool has two simple, but annoying, shortcomings :

1. Convert Multiple Fields: Each DateTime tool only lets you convert one field. Many Alteryx tools (MultiField, Auto Field, etc.) allow you to choose what field(s) are affected by the tool.  If I have a database with a large number of string fields all with the same format (such as MM/DD/YYYY), I should be able to use one DateTime tool to convert them all!
2. Overwrite Existing Field: The DateTime tool always creates a new field that contains your converted date/time. I ALWAYS have to delete the original string field that was converted and rename the newly created date/time field to match the original string field's name. A simple checkbox (like the "output imputed values as a separate field" checkbox in the Imputation tool) could give the flexibility of choosing to  have a separate field (like how it is now) or overwrite the string field with the converted date/time field (keeping the name the same).

Alteryx is overall an amazing data blending software. I recognize that both of these shortcomings can be worked around with combinations of other Alteryx tools (or LOTS of DateTime tools), but the simplicity of these missing features demonstrates to me that this data blending tool is not sufficiently developed. These enhancements can greatly improve the efficiency of date handling in Alteryx.

STAR this post if you dislike the inflexibility of the DateTime tool! Thank you!

Hey all,

The join tool currently does not allow case-insensitive joins, but the find/replace tool does.    Additionally- even if both sides are identical, the join tool will not join "Sean's house" to "Sean's house" because of the non-letter character in the middle.    Finally - if one side is a string(2), and the other is a vString(200) - even if you have a single identical character on both sides you get uncertain outcomes unless you force the type

Please could you consider amending the join tool to include 3 new options or capabilities:

- Case insensitive join

- Allow full Unicode character set in join

- Full match across text types (irrespective of string size) - this would allow a string(2) value to match to a string(100) value as long as the string(100) value only has the same 2 characters in it as the string(2) value

That would remove a load of work from every text-join that's being done on every canvas we do.

Thank you 

Sean

I love the new Custom Format option with the DateTime tool in Alteryx 11.0, this makes working with dates SO MUCH easier... BUT it would be great if you could update an existing field rather than having to create a new column (e.g. DateTime_Out) and then use a select to put this back to the original Date field.

Hi, I've noted that there is not url-decode function in Alteryx. I guess I'm the first one to need that, so I'm posting this idea here. I think it would not be a big deal to do so if there's a url-encode function. 

Thanks. 

A problem I'm currently trying to solve and feel like I'm spending way too much time on it..

I have a data set which has some data in it from multiple languages, and I only want English values.  I was able to get rid of the words with non English letters with a little regular expression and filtering.  However, there's some words that do contain all English letters but aren't English.  What I'm trying to do is bring in an English dictionary to compare words and see which rows have non English words according to the dictionary.  However, this is proving to be a bit harder than I thought.  I think I can do it, but it feels like this should be much simpler than it is.

It would be great to have a tool that would run a "spell check" on fields (almost all dictionaries for all languages are available free online).  This could also be useful also just for cleaning up open text types of data where people type stuff in quickly and don't re-read it! 🙂

Access to only MD5 hashes via MD5_ASCII(String) and MD5_UNICODE(String) found under string functions is limiting.  Is there a way to access other hashing algorithms, ideally via the crypto algorithms from OpenSSL or the .NET framework? 

  - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.hashalgorithm(v=vs.110).aspx
  - https://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Command_Line_Utilities#Signing_.2F_Digest 

Hashing functions are a very useful tool to have. There are many different types of hashes and each one has tradeoffs for different uses. This can range from error checking, privacy shielding, password protection, forensic analysis, message authentication (HMAC) and much more. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/800685/which-cryptographic-hash-function-should-i-choose 

- For workflows with data containing existing hashes, being able to consistently create hashes from non-hashed data for comparison is useful.
- Hashes are also useful because they are the same outside the Alteryx environment. They can be used to confirm correct operation of a production system or a third party's external process.

Access to only MD5 hashes via MD5_ASCII(String) and MD5_UNICODE(String) found under string functions in the formula tool is a start, but quite limiting. 

Further, the ability to use non-cryptographic hashes and checksums would be useful, such as MurmurHash or CRC.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hash_functions

Having the implementation benefit from hardware acceleration (AES-NI / CUDA) would be a great plus for high volume applications. 

For reference, these are some hash algorithms that could be useful in workflows:

SHA-1

SHA-256

Whirlpool

xxHash

MurmurHash
SpookyHash
CityHash

Checksum
CRC-16
CRC-32
CRC-32 MPEG-2
CRC-64

BLAKE-256
BLAKE-512
BLAKE2s
BLAKE2b
ECOH
FSB
GOST
Grøstl
HAS-160
HAVAL
JH
MD2
MD4
MD6
RadioGatún
RIPEMD
RIPEMD-128
RIPEMD-160
RIPEMD-320
SHA-224
SHA-256
SHA-384
SHA-512
SHA-3 (originally known as Keccak)
Skein
Snefru
Spectral Hash
Streebog
SWIFFT
Tiger

It would be a handy feature if it were possible to choose a data type for an input tool to read the data in as. For example, if a dataset has multiple fields with different data types, it would be handy to be able to make the Input Tool read and output them all as a string, if needed. This would also make a handy tool, a sort of blanket data conversion to convert all fields to the specified type.

It would be great if there was a way for the Text to Columns tool did not drop the last empty when using Split to Rows.

For example, if I had the data:

Notice that each value has two commas (representing three values per cell), and If I configure to split into rows on the comma character, what would you expect the result to be:

Result A:

OR

Result B:

OR

Result C:

I would expect Result C if I selected "Skip Empty Fileds", and that is what happens if I select that option.

But If I do not want to skip empty fields, I would expect Result B, but what I get is Result A where the last value/field is dropped/skipped.

What would it take to Result B as the output from the Text to Columns tool?

Hi there,

Could we please add a simple date function which allows you to construct a date from the basic inputs (rather than having to go through date-time-parse).

Example:

Function CreateDate(Year as integer; optional month as integer; optional day as integer; optional hour as integer; optional minute as optional; optional second as integer) as DateTime

Examples:

• CreateDate(2017) = 2017-01-01 00:00:00
• CreateDate(2017, 4) = 2017-04-01 00:00:00
• CreateDate(2017,04,05) = 2017-04-05 00:00:00

How about turning this;

SELECT * 
FROM Employee 
ORDER BY First_name ASC

into this automatically

and a more complex one

SELECT Orders.OrderID, Customers.CustomerName, Orders.OrderDate
FROM Orders
INNER JOIN Customers
ON Orders.CustomerID=Customers.CustomerID; 

into this

basically it's a parser;

1) First check if it's a MS SQL, PL/SQL or T/SQL

2) Then figure out join relationships

3) Convert each subset SQL into function nodes

4) Convert function nodes to Alteryx yxmd (xml)

Creates the following for the first workflow

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<AlteryxDocument yxmdVer="10.5">
  <Nodes>
    <Node ToolID="1">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.AlteryxSelect.AlteryxSelect">
        <Position x="174" y="90" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <OrderChanged value="False" />
          <SelectFields>
            <SelectField field="*Unknown" selected="True" />
          </SelectFields>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxSelect" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="2">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.Sort.Sort">
        <Position x="246" y="90" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <SortInfo locale="0">
            <Field field="FIRST_NAME" order="Ascending" />
          </SortInfo>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText>FIRST_NAME - Ascending</DefaultAnnotationText>
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxSort" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="4">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.TextInput.TextInput">
        <Position x="90" y="90" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <NumRows value="0" />
          <Fields>
            <Field name="FIRST_NAME" />
          </Fields>
          <Data />
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxTextInput" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="13">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.BrowseV2.BrowseV2">
        <Position x="330" y="90" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <Layout>
            <View1>
              <Hints>
                <Table />
              </Hints>
            </View1>
          </Layout>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxBrowseV2" />
    </Node>
  </Nodes>
  <Connections>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="1" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="2" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="2" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="13" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="4" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="1" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
  </Connections>
  <Properties>
    <Memory default="True" />
    <GlobalRecordLimit value="0" />
    <TempFiles default="True" />
    <Annotation on="True" includeToolName="False" />
    <ConvErrorLimit value="10" />
    <ConvErrorLimit_Stop value="False" />
    <CancelOnError value="False" />
    <DisableBrowse value="False" />
    <EnablePerformanceProfiling value="False" />
    <DisableAllOutput value="False" />
    <ShowAllMacroMessages value="False" />
    <ShowConnectionStatusIsOn value="True" />
    <ShowConnectionStatusOnlyWhenRunning value="True" />
    <ZoomLevel value="0" />
    <LayoutType>Horizontal</LayoutType>
    <MetaInfo>
      <NameIsFileName value="True" />
      <Name>New Workflow1</Name>
      <Description />
      <RootToolName />
      <ToolVersion />
      <ToolInDb value="False" />
      <CategoryName />
      <SearchTags />
      <Author />
      <Company />
      <Copyright />
      <DescriptionLink actual="" displayed="" />
    </MetaInfo>
    <Events>
      <Enabled value="True" />
    </Events>
  </Properties>
</AlteryxDocument>

and for the second example with joins...

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<AlteryxDocument yxmdVer="10.5">
  <Nodes>
    <Node ToolID="1">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.AlteryxSelect.AlteryxSelect">
        <Position x="126" y="54" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <OrderChanged value="False" />
          <SelectFields>
            <SelectField field="*Unknown" selected="True" />
          </SelectFields>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxSelect" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="2">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.TextInput.TextInput">
        <Position x="54" y="54" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <NumRows value="0" />
          <Fields>
            <Field name="CustomerID" />
            <Field name="OrderID" />
            <Field name="CustomerName" />
            <Field name="OrderDate" />
          </Fields>
          <Data />
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxTextInput" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="3">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.AlteryxSelect.AlteryxSelect">
        <Position x="126" y="198" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <OrderChanged value="False" />
          <SelectFields>
            <SelectField field="*Unknown" selected="True" />
          </SelectFields>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxSelect" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="4">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.TextInput.TextInput">
        <Position x="54" y="198" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <NumRows value="0" />
          <Fields>
            <Field name="CustomerID" />
          </Fields>
          <Data />
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxTextInput" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="5">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.Join.Join">
        <Position x="222" y="126" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration joinByRecordPos="False">
          <JoinInfo connection="Left">
            <Field field="CustomerID" />
          </JoinInfo>
          <JoinInfo connection="Right">
            <Field field="CustomerID" />
          </JoinInfo>
          <SelectConfiguration>
            <Configuration outputConnection="Join">
              <OrderChanged value="False" />
              <SelectFields>
                <SelectField field="Right_CustomerID" selected="True" rename="Right_CustomerID" />
                <SelectField field="*Unknown" selected="True" />
              </SelectFields>
            </Configuration>
          </SelectConfiguration>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxJoin" />
    </Node>
    <Node ToolID="6">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.BrowseV2.BrowseV2">
        <Position x="294" y="126" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <Layout>
            <View1>
              <Hints>
                <Table />
              </Hints>
            </View1>
          </Layout>
        </Configuration>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText />
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxBrowseV2" />
    </Node>
  </Nodes>
  <Connections>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="1" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="5" Connection="Left" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="3" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="5" Connection="Right" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="2" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="1" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="4" Connection="Output" />
      <Destination ToolID="3" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
    <Connection>
      <Origin ToolID="5" Connection="Join" />
      <Destination ToolID="6" Connection="Input" />
    </Connection>
  </Connections>
  <Properties>
    <Memory default="True" />
    <GlobalRecordLimit value="0" />
    <TempFiles default="True" />
    <Annotation on="True" includeToolName="False" />
    <ConvErrorLimit value="10" />
    <ConvErrorLimit_Stop value="False" />
    <CancelOnError value="False" />
    <DisableBrowse value="False" />
    <EnablePerformanceProfiling value="False" />
    <DisableAllOutput value="False" />
    <ShowAllMacroMessages value="False" />
    <ShowConnectionStatusIsOn value="True" />
    <ShowConnectionStatusOnlyWhenRunning value="True" />
    <ZoomLevel value="0" />
    <LayoutType>Horizontal</LayoutType>
    <MetaInfo>
      <NameIsFileName value="True" />
      <Name>New Workflow1</Name>
      <Description />
      <RootToolName />
      <ToolVersion />
      <ToolInDb value="False" />
      <CategoryName />
      <SearchTags />
      <Author />
      <Company />
      <Copyright />
      <DescriptionLink actual="" displayed="" />
    </MetaInfo>
    <Events>
      <Enabled value="True" />
    </Events>
  </Properties>
</AlteryxDocument>

After you've saved a file from the Browse tool, a popup window appears to confirm the file saved.  That popup window contains an image off text that you can't copy/paste.

I recommend turning that text into a hyperlink so users can just double-click on the popup window to open the file they just created.  Or add another button to "Open File" next to the "OK" button.  This would eliminate the need to go find the file you just created.  

Thanks for your consideration

This might be an edge case, but it would be nice to be able to parse a file using a Regex in the Text to Columns Tool, or specifying a delimiter as a Regex:

Consider the following pandas code where one can easily pull in a file with a bad delimiter

In Alteryx, you would be forced to read in the file with no delimiter, and set the field length to be extremely long, and parse out the contents manually.

filename = "http://daniels-pull.universityofdenv.netdna-cdn.com/assets/GeneralOccurrencesAll.csv"

df = pd.read_csv(filename, sep=r',(?!\s)')

I'm glad that there is a Date filter function but I was wondering whether it could be changed?

I like how the ordinary Filter function has a true and a false output and I was wondering whether the Date Filter could have the same?

The tokenize would be more powerful if in addition to Drop Extra with Warning / Without Warning / Error, you could opt to have extra tokens concatenated with the final column.

Example: I have a values in a column like these:

3yd-A2SELL-407471

3vd-AAABORMI-3238738

3vd-RMLSFL-RX-10326049

In all 3 cases, I want to split to 3 columns (key, mlsid, mlsnumber), though I only care about the last two.  But in the third example, the mlsnumber RX-10326049 actually contains a hyphen.  (Yes, the source for this data picked a very bad delimiter for a concatenated value).

I can parse this a lot of different ways - here's how I do it in SQL:

MlsId = substr(substr(listingkey, instr(listingkey, '-')+1), 1, instr(substr(listingkey, instr(listingkey, '-')+1), '-')-1)
MlsNumber = substr(substr(listingkey, instr(listingkey, '-')+1), instr(substr(listingkey, instr(listingkey, '-')+1), '-')+1);

With Regex tokenize, I can split to 4 or more columns and then with a formula test for a 4th+ column and re-concatenate.  BUT it would be awesome if in the Regex tokenize I could instead:

1. split to columns

2. # of columns 3

3. extra columns = ignore, add to final column

I'm wondering about migrating from SAS DATA STEP to Alteryx tools and R...

Idea is to parse DATA STEP, replace data loading, preperation, filetring, formula and iterative flows with native Altryx tools and

for the rest, PROC's etc will be replaced by R packages... Wouldn't that be like magic?

Similar to the regular formula tool, it would be great if we would be able to configure multiple text to column processes within one tool rather than having to line up several tools when having to convert various fields of different logic at the same time.

Instead of counting the number of occurrences of the delimiter and then specifying it is there a way to split column for:

1. Every occurrence of the specified delimiter?

2. Only the last occurrence

3. Only the first occurrence

Thanks,

I'm stealing this idea from Tableau's number formatting, it's a timesaver.

In the DateTime tool if I've initially selected a value besides Custom in the "Select the format..." list then when I click Custom rather than having the Custom textbox be blank I'd like to have it automatically populated with whatever formatting string I just selected. Here's an example screenshot: