Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I haven't seen this idea posted exactly this way...

Right now the browse results are only available while a workflow is open. It would be great if they could be saved until the next run, because sometimes I have to do things in stages, saving and closing a workflow, then continuing on it another time. I would love to have the browse results fromt the last run still be there until I re-run it.

Currently I am able to apply smart tile to only one field. If it could be applied to multiple fields at the same time it would optimize the workflow.

 

Thanks,

Keerthana

 

Example Data:
MJE Text	Ref Fld 1	Ref Fld 2	Ref Fld 3	Date	NTID
Accrual	MJE Load			11/1/2019	DAVET
Fx Reval	Accrual			12/2/2019	MOLLYI
		Acc		3/4/2019	BOBH
Forex Fx			CCRUAL	7/9/2019	GREGA
FASB				8/5/2019	BOT7
Tax				10/6/2019	BOT88

 

I want to use contains to search multiple strings and "IN" for multiple targets within the same formula. 

 

IF Contains(([MJE Text]+[Ref Fld 1]+[Ref Fld 2]+[Ref Fld 3) IN("Accrual","Acc","CCRUAL")) THEN "Accrual" ELSE "" ENDIF

 

Result would be:
MJE Text	Ref Fld 1	Ref Fld 2	Ref Fld 3	Date	NTID	Group
Accrual	MJE Load			11/1/2019	DAVET	Accrual
Fx Reval	Accrual			12/2/2019	MOLLYI	Accrual
		Acc		3/4/2019	BOBH	Accrual
Forex Fx			CCRUAL	7/9/2019	GREGA	Accrual

 

Can this be developed?

It would be extremely helpful if you could add more parameters to the string functions to make them more powerful and useful. For example, adding a parameter into the get Word Function to match whole word only would be really nice in situations where you want to match the term VA, and not valley. Otherwise, you would end up building a regular expression to find what you are interested in when that may be overkill for the problem at hand.

Dear Alteryx,

 

You know the thing I used most in the old Formula tool? The "Operators" section under "Formulas" that reminded me of Alteryx's particular syntax for things you can use in formulas but that aren't formulas themselves. (I switch between Alteryx, Tableau and Excel for writing formulas, and they all have slightly different rules for this stuff - having a quick syntax reference right where I needed it in Alteryx was SO HANDY!!.) There is no operators section in the new "fx" section. Please add it in. As it is, I've taken to opening a second instance of Alteryx with nothing but a loose filter tool so I can look at the operators section there when I'm trying to use the new formulas tool in my working instance. This is not ideal.

 

Thank you!

Ever since Alteryx 11 came out, the way dates and DateTimes are handled and computed changed from v10.  Formulas that I had working before no longer work.  The single biggest culprit I tend to see for this problem is that Alteryx 11 no longer seems to be able to intelligently compare Date and DateTime formats.  This is kind of annoying because it forces me to run a DateTime function on all my Date fields for doing comparisons.

For example, I have a formula that I use to calculate if a date is the beginning of the month.  That formula is:

 

IF DateTimeTrim([Snapshot Date],"month") = [Snapshot Date]
THEN 1
ELSE 0
ENDIF

Where in the above, Snapshot Date is a date field with data incoming in a format like "2017-01-01".

 

In Alteryx 10, this formula returned as expected, true.  However, in Alteryx 11, it returns false.  When I dove into this a bit more, I noted that DateTimeTrim will always return a DateTime format, so the formula is attempting to compare "2017-01-01 00:00:00" to "2017-01-01".  For some reason, Alteryx now doesn't think this comparison will result to true.

 

To address this, I now have to do:

IF DateTimeTrim([Snapshot Date],"month") = DateTimeTrim([Snapshot Date], "day")
THEN 1
ELSE 0
ENDIF

My suggestion: Let comparisons between Date and DateTime formats work with the assumption that any Date field is as of midnight that day.  In the example above, Alteryx would implicitly assume that "2017-01-01" is "2017-01-01 00:00:00" for any comparisons to DateTime, like it did in the past.

I would like to configure/save the size of the column 'Rename' within the Select-Tool. All the time I go to another tool and come back, the column is too small and need to be changed in size manually again and again.

The Record ID tool can take a custom starting value other than the default of 1. I sometimes have a case in which I want the starting value to begin with 1 + the max of another field. I can either do this with a macro or with Append and Formula tools. This is just one example. If I have the ability to use an expression as the Starting Value, then I can do the 1 + max or something else cool and useful.

It would be nice to have a function similar to IsEmpty() that would also return true if the string only contained spaces. Of course the simple work around is to Trim() inside IsEmpty(). Just trying to save a few keystrokes and remove a failure mode if you forgot to Trim()...

 

ken

(Not sure i have posted this in the correct spot)

In my environment, creating tables with fields in a particular order is a requirement.

The Select tool (and others) let me manually change sort orders. The Select tool will also allow me to sort on Field Name in Ascending or Descending order.

I can add a sort order prefix to my input data with the Dynamic Rename tool, connect a Select tool and then go into the Select tool properties to sort by Field Name. But this requires that I first run the module so that the Select tool knows what the incoming fields are called, then set up the Select tool properties, and then rerun the module. If I change the prefixes or the list of incoming variables, the Select tool has to be reconfigured.

It would be really nice if there was a Field Sort tool that only had Ascending or Descending as properties that would 'dynamically' do what the Sort on Field Name option in the Select tool does.

A multifilter tool would match excel capabilities and make users more comfortable making leap to Alteryx from excel/.

 

I pull alot of excel and text files through Alteryx; the files always have empty rows that make viewing the files through Alteryx unwieldy.  It is easy to filter one at a time but that is laborious,.  I put a post out to the community and others encountered same issue.  There was a macro built to bring this capability to Alteryx; it really should be a native feature.  I would rather not have to use a macro

 

Users in excel do sumifs, countifs where multiple fields are pulled into the formula.  The current filter tool in Alteryx only considers one column.  To match excel, the ability to bring multiple columns into the filter tool at once would match this capability.

 

Thanks,

 

Stan Grabish

(404) 925-3013

 

 

 

 

Would love for the text areas in the configuration window to allow for a Find/Replace text search. Especially useful if you have long/nested/complex calcs that reference the same field multiple times and then you change that field's name or want to replicate the same formula for another field.

@RachelW 

 

I wanted to suggest unhiding select/deselect all in the Options menu for the "select tool".
There is enough space in the header right of "Options" to include select all/deselect checkboxes. or remove the Tip.

Select all/deselect is suppose to reduce clicks. By hiding in Options, it adds clicks. 

 

It'd be nice if there was a way to add an autofill function.  Say I was using a text tool and got tired of always typing the full name in (lazy, I know) or just didn't know the correct spelling.  It'd be nice if there was a check box where the app creator could allow for autofill or autoselect.  As the user typed in the text a drop down list would show changing as he user typed until the user saw what they were going to fully type.  They would then select that text from the drop down list.  Be a nice little feature.

A client has requested that we provide the ability to have the two digit year begin a date string.  Currently, we have the following:

yyyy-MM-dd
yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss
yyyy*MM*dd
yyyyMMdd

In addition, they have requested that we have the ability to convert from a date field to another date field.  Currently, we can only convert to/from a string to date and vice versa, but not date to date (which would be helpful in a date format).

I am having large denormalized tables as input, and each time I need to scroll down approx 700+ fields to get an exhaustive view of fields that are selected (even if I have selected 10 out of 700 fields).

 

It would be helpful if along with having a sort on field name and field type, I can have an additional sort on selected/deselected fields. Additionally if I can get sort by more than one options i.e sort within an already sorted list that will help too - i.e. sorted selected first and inside that selected by field name.

 

I can get an idea of selected fields from any tool down the line (following the source transformation), but I would like to have an exhaustive view of both selected and unselected fields so that I can pick/remove necessary fields as per business need.

There are currently two different types of select tools. The dynamic select tool and the normal select tool. In my opinion there should only be 1 tool and it should be a mix of these two tools.

 

First the select tool is great because I can select the exact fields that I want, and I can pass new fields through using the "unknown" field. The dynamic select tool is also great because I can write formulas that dynamically select fields. Why not have one tool that does both?

 

In my mind, it would just look like the select tool, but then on the "unknown" field, I can click on it and configure it. It would basically just open the dynamic select tool interface where I can write formula's etc that select the unknown fields that I am willing to pass through.

 

For example.. clients add new fields to our data integrations all the time. A lot of the time I dont want these new fields to pass through automatically. But we also do reporting, and reporting could include column headers that are dates (ie sales may 18, sales june 18, etc). As new months appear in our sales data, new columns are added to our reports. I should have the capability to hardcode the fields I want to pass through and then write a formula for the remaining "unknown" fields. In this example I would check mark the fields I know I want, then write a formula that says if the unknown field starts with "sales" then pass it through.

 

Yes there are workarounds for this type of functionality (such as I could do a dynamic select tool and use the formula function to type in the name of EVERY field that I want to "hardcode"), but that would take a long time if I am trying to pass 10+ fields through.

Posting this idea after searching the community postings and then submitting a question to confirm:

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Function-to-convert-to-from-HEX-encode...

 

I could invest the time into creating a macro to do what I need, or per @MichaelF suggestion a custom formula. However, the functionality already exists in the Blob Convert tool, so I'm suggesting that Alteryx provides that existing functionality to customers in a Formula.

 

I checked the Conversion formulas:

 

https://help.alteryx.com/2019.1/Reference/Functions.htm

 

And found other users talking about making a macro to do this:

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Hex-to-ASCII-Conversion/m-p/344126

 

 

Could Alteryx add a new Conversion formula to convert a field to/from HEX/Base64 formats similar to the current Code Page conversion functions?

 

Thanks,

 

Cameron

It is nice that there is a sample node option for In-DB, however it isn't a random sample.  It isn't always feasible for me to stream out and use the random sample % option.  In fact on numerous occasions when I use the Data Stream Out option in DB I often times have workflows crash because it can't handle the number of records I am trying to stream out.