Alteryx Designer Ideas

The Formula Tool does a good job of autocompleting expressions (for example an open square bracket will show you variables in your dataset), as well as syntax highlighting (coloring variables, keywords, strings, etc).

I propose having this feature available in all tools that use the expression editor, particularly common ones such as the Multi-Row Formula Tool and the Multi-Field Formula Tool.

This parity across tools would provide a more consistent experience for the user and increase one's productivity using these tools. It's incredibly helpful for beginners and seasoned Alteryx users alike and should be available wherever possible.

Here's a reason to get excited about amp!   Create a runtime setting that gets Alteryx working even faster. 

when you configure a file input you see 100 records.  Imagine the delight that after you run your workflows all input tools are automatically cached.  You run so much faster. 

now think of the absolute delight that even before you run the workflows that a configured input tool causes a background read off the input data.  Whether it is a new workflow or an opened existing flow that reading can start ahead of the time button. 

what do you think 🤔?

It would be ever so helpful and save a couple extra steps if a count distinct option could be added to the crosstab tool.  Seems like a slam dunk since plain ole 'count' is already a choice.

That's it!  That way I dont have to go through every select tool in the entire workflow to hit "Forget All Missing Fields" in the entire Workflow. 

(1) I would like to have more text formatting options available in the Comment Tool, such as:

• set different format for selected words (color, bold, underline, size..)
• indenting
• bullet list or numbered list

(2) Option to remove or recolor the blue outline of the comment box. (Especially when I have a comment in a color-filled comment box, I would prefer a comment box without a dark outline.) 

(3) UX -  Add an arrow cursor to indicate resizing functionality

It would be really helpful to have the ability to read in a Header from an Excel file as part of the Excel file.  I am not referring to column names but the actual Header on the file as this can contain important info to be appended to the data.  This could be an additional checkbox in the Input tool for excel files to read in the header and append to the data as a field.

Currently, a workaround process to do this is to make a copy of the xlsx file and rename as file.zip.  Then unzip the xlsx file and open the sheets as xml files where the headerFooter child element is read in.  Then the header info is appended to the Excel data file which is read in separately in another input tool. 

Would be much more efficient if this was simply a checkbox in the Input Data interface and the Header read in with the data.

Very often, I used a container to make notes about certain parts of the workflow. Some of the comments that I created are pretty long. Could the user have the possibility to have at least rows for the title of the container?

I have created a screen to show what I have in mind. Potentially users could have the ability to turn this option on or inside the container?

In normal output tool, when file type is csv, it is possible to custom select the delimiter.  It would be great to be able to have the same option in the Azure Data Lake output tool, so for example you can write a pipe delimited file to your ADLS storage account.

I will start off with a story. I have built a process to manage batch API requests. It's an iterative process that checks to see where the export is at by calling an API and then returning some status. It will run and wait and run and wait until the export is ready to be downloaded. However sometimes, the jobs don't finish and a status returns something like "failed" or "cancelled". When this is the case, I have my process (which is a little bit batch macro) kicks off an error message, using the nifty error message tool. After some time I noticed that it was a PAIN to go back and figure out which of my requests failed and I decided that I need to add some messaging around where this was failing, so I could do some easy auditing. So I go back into my tool and much to my chagrin, I cannot pass variables into the message section. I would expect it to have worked something like this:

"Record "+[#2]+" is not 'A'"

Can we please get a change to this. It would save a lot of time and energy if we could create a dynamic error message option.

TL;DR Please allow us to use formulas in the "If expression is true, display error message:" settings area.

After I type something into the filter box, I should be able hit enter and then it just applies my change (ie enter hits the apply button). It used to be this way, but it's not working as of 2021.2. This feels like a very tiny move in the wrong direction. Currently enter does nothing. It looks like if I hit tab twice and then enter, it finds the apply button. I shouldn't have to hit tab twice. 

cc: @Hollingsworth @A11yKyle 

We have discussed on several occasions and in different forums, about the importance of having or providing Alteryx with order of execution control, conditional executions, design patterns and even orchestration.

I presented this idea some time ago, but someone asked me if it was posted, and since it was not, I’m putting it here so you can give some feedback on it.

The basic concept behind this idea is to allow us (users) to have:

• Design Patterns
  • Repetitive patterns to be reusable.
  • Select after and Input tool
  • Drop Nulls
  • Get not matching records from join
• Conditional execution
  • Tell Alteryx to execute some logic if something happens.
  • Record count
  • Errors
  • Any other condition
• Order of execution
  • Need to tell Alteryx what to run first, what to run next, and so on…
  • Run this first
  • Execute this portion after previous finished
  • Wait until “X” finishes to execute “Y”
• Orchestration
  • Putting all together

This approach involves some functionalities that are already within the product (like exploiting Filtering logic, loading & saving, caching, blocking among others), exposed within a Tool Container with enhanced attributes, like this example:

The approach is to extend Tool Container’s attributes.

This proposition uses actual functionalities we already have in Designer.

So, basically, the Tool Container gets ‘superpowers’, with the addition of some capabilities like: Accepting input data, saving the contents within the container (to create a design pattern, or very commonly used sequence of tools chained together), output data, run the contents of the tools included in the container, etc.), plus a configuration screen like:

1. Refers to the actual interface of the Tool Container.
2. Provides the ability to disable a Container (and all tools within) once it runs.
   • Idea based on actual behavior: When we enable or disable a Tool Container from an interface Tool.
3. Input and output data to the container’s logic, will allow to pickup and/or save files from a particular container, to be used in later containers or persist data as a partial result from the entire workflow’s logic (for example updating a dimensions table)
   • Based on actual behavior: Input & Output Data, Cache, Run Command Tools, and some macros like Prepare Attachment.
4. Order of Execution: Can be Absolute or Relative. In case of Absolute run, we take the containers in order, executing their contents. If Relative, we have the options to configure which container should run before and after, block until previous container finishes or wait until this container finishes prior to execute next container in list.
   • Based on actual behavior: Block until done, Cache, Find Replace, some interface Designer capabilities (for chained apps for example), macros’ basic behaviors.
5. Conditional Execution: In order to be able to conditionally execute other containers, conditions must be evaluated. In this case, the idea is to evaluate conditions within the data, interface tools or Error/Warnings occurrence.
   • Based on actual behavior: Filter tool, some Interface Tools, test Tool, Cache, Select.
6. Notes: Documentation text that will appear automatically inside the container, with options to place it on top or below the tools, or hide it.

This should end a brief introduction to the idea, but taking it a little further, it will allow even to have something like an Orchestration layout, where the users can drag and drop containers or patterns and orchestrate them in a solution, like we can do with the Visual Layout Tool or the Interactive Chart tool:

I'm looking forward to hear what you think.

Best

Hi,

It would be helpful to improve the tools regarding connections, for example:

In a snowflake data connection tool, it would be good to have the form to fill with the necessary parameteres of warehouse/role/etc as shown in the driver configuration, instead of setting all this details in the driver or manually in the connection string (and for snowbl (bulk) the connection string is not applying the adicional parameters at all). Also for bulk output we would like to have the DSN-less option available.

Regards.

I want to jump to expression #3 of formula (3), when I see following error message. Now I can jump to formula (3), but only expression #1 is opened, not #3. If I have 30 expressions, it is hard to find #20 in 30s.

When building a workflow with testing tools, you tend to want to be able to put these in container and then minimise this to improve readability of the workflow.

For example instead of this:

You might want to minimise the error checks like this:

However when running apart from reading through the results window, there is no immediate indicator that there is a tool inside the container that has errored:

So the feature enhancement request is to add in an exclamation marker to show the user that a tool inside has an error and you can then easily open it up and investigate further.

Hello - The Input Data tool allows you to import a list of sheet names, but it doesn't let you import a list of named ranges. I'm proposing the Input Data tool allows you to import a list of named ranges for as many Excel file formats as possible. Right now when I go to import say an xlsx or xlsm the Input Data tool allows me to select from a drop down of named ranges, so it seems the functionality is already there. I am not aware of a reasonable approach to getting a list of named ranges other than opening up the Excel file as XML, specifically xl/workbook.xml - however, I've ran into issues with this approach providing sheet names instead of named ranges (unsure why but I posted about this here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/How-do-I-get-a-list-of-all-named-range...)

If we were able to import a list named ranges I think the benefits are obvious. The one that really stands out to me is that if you have a standard when creating named ranges (for example "prefix_name1, prefix_name2" etc... you could search for specific prefixes to find the named ranges available. In a large portfolio of models deploying such a standard the total universe of named ranges might not be known ahead of time except the prefix to search. I'm curious if this resonates with others.

Thank you

Hello,

Regarding the Amazon S3 tools in Alteryx Designer, only 4 file formats are supported.

We would like to see also the following formats: .xls and .xlsx 

Regards.

As per a recent discussion (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Geopackages-Can-Alteryx-Open-GeoPackag...), please add the GeoPackage datatype to the Input tool.

For reference, the open-source project ogr2ogr has this functionality. (https://gdal.org/programs/ogr2ogr.html)

Thanks!

It would be great to have an option in the Output Data tool to write the workflow name to the Info properties of Excel outputs.

Maybe something like this:

So that whenever you open an Excel file you always have a way of finding the name of the workflow that created the file.

This would make it so much easier as I often have to share Excel files with colleagues and customers and then need a way of tracking them back to workflows weeks or months later.

@RithiS ,

I'm a fan of using DETOUR tools in Alteryx.  I often place "test" code into a standard workflow and opt to use it or not based upon a detour.  The challenge is that adding a detour and detour end invariably leads to having to re-route connectors (default of adding tools is to connect to the left).  Here's a picture:

What I'd like to do is SELECT the tool or tools that I want to connect around (in this case, just the formula tool).  I'd like to right-click and DETOUR.  The detour and detour end would be added (putting the selected tools in the path of the RIGHT option.  This would greatly speed up the tool configuration process.

If you want to go for extra credit, you could modify the GUI to express which direction a detour is travelling in a standard workflow (e.g. make connections wireless or dashed when not selected).

Cheers,

Mark

@Claje @Hollingsworth @SeanAdams