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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Share your Designer Desktop product ideas - we're listening!
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Featured Ideas

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I have been working in some large files where I end up wanting to highlight several tools that are connected together, copy them, paste them and what to insert all at the same time in the same order into another section of my workflow and still have the tools around it connect the way things work when you are dragging in one tool at a time. This would save a lot of time of having to delete connections, drag tools out to make room for the ones I want to add and then reconnect everything back together again. I perform this sort of  thing on a regular basis and it adds time when I am trying to save time by connecting the same series of tools I was just using.

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I often copy/paste chunks of workflow and paste it into the same workflow (or a different one).  It always seems to paste just diagonally below the upper most left Tool.  This creates a real mess.  I'd like to be able to select a small area within the work area and have the chunk of workflow I'm pasting drop there - instead of on top of the existing build.

  • Feature Request
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Please allow a hover over that would show you the value of a variable in the formula tool. At times I get long formulas and it would be nice to see the values of each variable by just putting your mouse on top of it. Just show the first row like the preview. There is similar functionality in visual studio and it makes coding easier. 

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Can a spell check option be included that will check the spelling in the comment tool text box and tool container captions?

 

Ideally a global check would be nice for the annotation section of each tool, especially if it can be determined if I changed the annotation from the default one on some tools.

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I just downloaded the new 2018.4 version of Desktop, and I feel like it's going backwards with the Window UI. I prefer to keep my Results window on a separate screen where I can review it side-by-side with my workflow. I have three large monitors, and I have no need to keep that window tabbed, or docked. 

 

With the removal of he 'Close' option, I no longer have a way of closing that window without putting back in a mode I do not want. 

When i first started using Alteryx, the results window acted the same as any normal Windows window, but over time I've lost the ability to quickly maximize the window AND now I can't even close it. One of the most critical windows is getting harder and harder to use.

 

Pretty please! 

 

 

 

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I think It would be very beneficial to be able to find the first instance that a field appeared or when its name changed.

 

So consider the following:

 

1) Somewhere in my workflow, I use a formula tool and create a new field called Total Assets which is the sum of Asset1 and Asset2.

 

After my workflow is built (and I failed to do any sort of documentation) it would be nice in the results window if each field name was a highlighted link that took me to the first instance that a field appeared.

 

In my scenario above if I am downstream and wonder when Total assets appeared (as I might have multiple formula tools, but if could click the field name and it bounced me right to the first instance the field existed -- in this case a formula tool, this would be a huge time saving when troubleshooting.

 

Thanks,

Seth

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When outputting to files in avro format, it would be nice to have Alteryx either throw an error/warning or automatically add a prefix when field names do not conform to the Apache Avro specifications. For example, if I were to try to output an .avro file with a field named "2018 actions", Alteryx could throw a warning/error to remind me to rename the field, or Alteryx could change the field name for me to something like "X2018_Actions".

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It would be helpful if Alteryx did not try to report blank dates in the data profiling tool that are not existent in the dataset. If our data is missing dates, it would be better to report these as a warning, rather than making the profiling imply that they should be within the dataset. Attached is a simple dataset to illustrate.Dates Data Profiling.PNG

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Often when working on problems posed by other people, they provide a sample table of data.

 

Would love a trivial way to copy from the Community to Alteryx.

  • Feature Request
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When working on the Weekly Challenge #108, I was trying to design a non-macro solution.

 

I ended up settling on the Generate Rows tool and was trying to find a way to generate rows until I had reached or exceeded the maximum density, however, I ran into an issue where I'd always have one too few rows, since the final row I was looking for was the one that broke the condition I specified.

 

In order to get around this, I came up with the following solution:

 

Spoiler

 

Idea_IncludeConditionBreak_GenerateRowsTool.PNG

Idea_IncludeConditionBreak_GenerateRowsTool.PNG

 

Essentially, I just set my condition to twice that of the true threshold I was looking for. This worked because I was always doubling the current value in my Loop Expression, and so anything which broke the 'actual' condition I was looking for ([MaxDensity]), would necessarily also break the second condition if doubled again.

 

However, for many other loop expressions, this sort of solution would not work.

 

My idea is to include a checkbox which, when selected, would also generate the final row which broke the specified condition.

 

By adding such a checkbox, it would allow users to continue using the Generate Rows tool as they already do, but reduce the amount of condition engineering that users are required to do in order to get that one extra row they're looking for, and reduce the number of  potentially unseen errors in their workflows.

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Hello,

 

It would be nice if Alteryx had a way to create a time lapse video based on a date field.  Create a map showing data over time (day, week, year, etc) that shows it cumulative or individual for each time frame.  I needed to map a set of location points, with a date field, to show where and when they opened throughout time by each year or by each decade, so it starts with only a few locations, then keeps adding the new locations with time to show all locations at the end or present time.

 

Thanks,

Bob

0 Likes

Hey Alteryx!

 

Here's one. I don't care for the tabs at the top showing each workflow. They are not in order by open date and it's hard to tell whether tab all the way on the right is the final workflow or not... They are hard to X out (especially the last one on the right that seems to have a semi hidden X). Depending on your monitor layout/resolution, you can only see like 10 visible workflows at a time in the gui. If you want to see more, you have to go into the workflow dropdown carrot which AFAIK also doesn't seem to be in any particular order esp when you open up several flows having same name. On a side note - what happened Alteryx? They USED to be in order by open date going across at the top AND in the workflow dropdown... That was useful.

 

So let get rid of these tabs. It's so windows95.

 

Instead create an interactive workflow history table (window) similar to what exists in TOAD, sql assist and other database tools (see image below). It's a table in the view but each row would reflect a workflow (formerly a tab). Top row is most recent workflow and moving down the table shows history of workflows.

You could can hover over a row to see details pop up for that workflow OR you could click each row (double click to run?) and workflow becomes visible in active canvas and overview and results window update accordingly. Maybe we could even have more than one active window per session? (sort vert/horz).

 

Additional benefits/functionality:

1. Slightly more screen real estate which we know you are always looking for and asked about 🙂

2. This could also be an autosave feature. When Alteryx crashes - and it does - when you reopen designer all your history will be there - no loss of productivity! Also high on your list.

3. Have an additional search function where we can search for tool names, comments, annotation, workflow/app/macro names, odbc connections, specific formulas or key words and then we see which history rows match our search criteria (rather than searching using notepad++ 'find in Files' feature in a directory)

4. It's not that much dev time since workflow history is already available in some buried log so why not show some of this metadata to the user in the gui?

 

Thanks,

Simon

 

history.JPG

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