Alteryx Designer Ideas

Many users will probably follow best practice style guides with Alteryx to use comment boxes under tools to describe in detail what is happening with these tools - such as this one shared by @BenMoss.

However a limitation of this is the comment boxes do not move with the tools, so if you have a well documented workflow but then need to add a new tool, you need to adjust all the spacing and re-align the tools, which with a large workflow can be time consuming. 

Therefore the improvement would be to have an ability to lock comment boxes to individual tools (similar to a group function in Office).

It would be very helpful if there was a tool that could stop the workflow without throwing an error. Currently, you can use the message tool to throw an error on a certain condition, and then enable the "Cancel Running Workflow on Error" option in the Runtime settings, but when the workflow is stopped in this way, many other tools don't function such as the Output Data and Email tools. Simply adding a tool that stops the workflow without erroring that also allows the other tools to finish their job would be great. 

New Runtime configuration option.

Check box = Do not output ANY file if an ERROR is present.

HOLD all output functions until workflow runs every tool (cache them) and then start writing to output if no errors are found.  If one of the output files fails, we'd like to not output any, but that would be Christmas.  Let's just know that all processing of data was successful before outputs are generated.

Maybe in a cloud or future environment this would look like step #1 build cache.  Step #2 is load output files.  In a local implementation, you've got to have adequate temp space available for the cache.

Cheers,

Mark

I would love to be able to see the actual curl statement that is executed as part of the download tool. Maybe something like a debug switch can be added which would produce 1 extra output field which is the curl statement itself? This would greatly enhance the ability to debug when things aren't working as expected from the download tool.

This is a QoL-request, and I love me some QoL-updates!

While I'm developing I often need the output of a workflow as input for the next phase of my development. For example: an API run returns job location, status, and authentication ids. I want to use these in a new workflow to start experimenting what'll work best. Because of the experimenting part, I always do this in a new workflow and not cache and continue in my main flow.

Writing a temporary output file always feels like unnescesary steps, and tbh I don't want to write a file for a step that'll be gone before it reaches production. Esp if there is sensitive information in it.

Thanks.

Hello all,

Despite a few limitations, Alteryx is great when you work with full table (i.e when you rewrite entirely the table). But in real life, very few workflows work like that :

Here are some real life use cases that should be easy to deal with on Alteryx  :

-delta on a key

-delta on a key + last record based on a date

-update records

-start_date and end_date for a value

etc



Best regards,

Simon

In Excel you can use an Indirect function to create strings to return a valid cell reference.

For example if in column A you have a list of sheet names e.g.

A1 = New York

A2 = Paris

A3 = London

Then you could create a formula which is Indirect(A1&"!B2") to reference the cell B2 in the New York tab.

An example of where I'd want to use this in Alteryx is to create a dynamic value based on a variable field.

For example based on this data:

I write [car make]+"_"+[car model] in the formula it will return the following

Volkswagen_Golf

Pontiac_Firebird

Audi_TT

Subaru_Outback etc.

However if I want it to be dynamic in an app or macro to allow the user to choose a suffix via a drop down this is not straight forward.

If I set up the tooling in this way:

What I get is the [#1] will bring in the field name and not the field value. So it would come through as Volkswagen_car model.

So my suggestion is that you have the ability to something like

[car make]+indirect("["+[#1]+"]") which would evaluate to [car make]+"_"+[car model] when car model is selected in the drop down.

The current workaround with help from @JonathanSherman is to use a dynamic select where [Name] = [#1] then join that onto the original dataset and use a dynamic rename create a new dynamic suffix field that can then be used.

Which while a nice design pattern, isn't as intuitive as indirect for those coming from a strong Excel background.

Having the ability to call-out via ARROWS/SYMBOLS (gold star) would be nice without requiring the user to create images and call them to the canvas.  This makes the workflow even more readable.

Watermarks (e.g. DRAFT, AMP, Do NOT AMP, FINAL) would be useful on the canvas as well.  

Cheers,

Mark

There are quite a few instances reported in my ognization that user terminates the intallation process since it takes more than one hour and user tends to believe that the intallation process is somehow "failing". So they terminate the installation and try to install again.

A kind reminding message such as "This will approximatly take one hour, and you can enjoy your coffee break" something like that would definetely help.

Please kindly consider.

Right now it is not possible to open .xlsx files in Alteryx that has restricted access to specific users from the excel file, even when you are logged in to Alteryx and Excel with the same user. If it is possible to make Alteryx recognize which users/email addresses should be able to input a file to Alteryx I think it would be a great enhancement. To get around the problem we are currently changing the file restrictions through right clicking on it -> Properties -> Security, but this is time consuming and not a smooth fix. 

All the best,

Elin

I like to suggest having a Batch Macro Container (besides the existing Container) which acts as a Batch Macro within a Workflow and is stored within the Workflow.

I understand that having a batch macro available as a separate tool can be very powerful and reduces redundant work.  However, very often Batch Macros are set up for a specific workflow only and are of no use for other workflows. The Creation of a Batch Macro in a container will significantly reduce the time to deploy a batch macro and keeps the Macro folder clean of one-time Batch Macros.

Attached a picture of how this could look like

Thanks

Manuel

yxdb.  It would be AWESOME to either right-click on the Input tool or use a new tool to get:

• Engine Version
• # of Records
• Writing Workflow (Path + Filename)

anything else would be icing on the cake.

Cheers,

Mark

Alteryx is unlike many BI tools in the sense that it joins NULL. It is difficult to think of another platform that has this behaviour. Either people know about this and work around it or they don't and their joins are a ticking time bomb. Please add a check box to the Join and Join Multiple tools to allow or prevent joining NULL. This will serve to remove the need for workarounds as well as educate users about this default behaviour.

Can we please have a tickbox (ideally one that remembers your preference to be ticked or unticked) on the Save to Gallery pop up that would allow us to save a (timestamped?) copy of that workflow on a local drive (perhaps one that is preset in the user settings)?

Currently, if you download and Alteryx package from an alternative version it doesn't allow import into a newer version.

Workflows allow this with a warning it would be good to allow it on packages too. 

Hello all,

According to wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_(SQL)

CROSS JOIN returns the Cartesian product of rows from tables in the join. In other words, it will produce rows which combine each row from the first table with each row from the second table.[1]

Example of an explicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee CROSS JOIN department;

Example of an implicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee, department;

The cross join can be replaced with an inner join with an always-true condition:

SELECT *
FROM employee INNER JOIN department ON 1=1;

For us, alteryx users, it would be very similar to Append Fields but for in-db.

Best regards,

Simon

When viewing results of a workflow that has Errors, could we add External error resolution data if the user clicks on the error message?  Like browse everywhere it could lookup the error in help and in community posts.  

cheers,

 mark

We store valuable data in our MS Teams sites (which are sharepoint folders behind the scenes). Currently, there is no way to connect to sharepoint directly (only if I sync sharepoint to my local drive, which is problematic and doesn't work on Alteryx server).

My recommendation is to have a sharepoint connector which works on both the desktop and server.

Thanks!

I was looking at the ideas history to see if this was already posted and couldn't find it, but feel free to merge if there is a existing one.

The motivation for this is that I have a workflow that works perfectly when you hit the run button in Designer, but fails when runs from schedule (To local computer).

So the idea is to allow the users to run the workflows from within the scheduler, once a workflow has been scheduled (So it runs exactly as it'll be when the schedule triggers it, but without having to reschedule every time).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this possible in old (I mean very old)  versions of Designer?