Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The Optimize tool is a very useful capability - and if we could improve the error messaging then it would be much more approachable for users to learn and make use of.

For example - the error message in the attached image - could we please update this to provide information about what went wrong, and how to fix it?

Many thanks

Hello Dev Gurus - 

The message tool is nice, but anything you want to learn about what is happening is problematic because the messages you are writing to try to understand your workflow are lost in a sea of other messages.  This is especially problematic when you are trying to understand what is happening within a macro and you enable 'show all macro messages' in the runtime options.  

That being said, what would really help is for messages created with the message tool to have a tag as a user created message.  Then, at message evaluation time, you get all errors / all conversion warnings / all warnings / all user defined messages.  In this way, when you write an iterative macro and are giving yourself the state of the data on a run by run basis, you can just goto a panel that shows you just your messages, and not the entire syslog which is like drinking out of a fire hose. 

Thank you for attending my ted talk regarding Message Tool Improvements.

To avoid some errors occurring during upgrade or even installation, it would be great  to add an option in the installer to go with a fresh installation (remove any previous Alteryx Designer).

If selected, option would:

- Warn users that everything Alteryx related is going to be deleted

- Generate a log of what is going to be removed

- Rename folders and registry keys listed there: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer/Complete-Uninstall-of-Alteryx-Designer/ta-p/402897

(rename instead of delete to avoid "bad surprises")

A similar option could exist when one would like to uninstall Alteryx Designer.

This would remove the frustration of having to rely on a "white knight" when something happens in the middle of an upgrade or an installation.

Thanks,

PaulN 

I want to check out which things downstream are receiving data from the true and false branches of this filter.

I could step through them one by one.

It would be much easier if I could simply select the tool and see directly which tools are connected to which output by colour, or line style.

Hi Team,

Version: 2019.3

Issue:

As what title said, it was hard to see the records display when the records is too large.

I have to adjust the Config Window to see the records. It is pain when checking a workflow with Join.

Suggestion:

1. Used fraction:   100,000/1,000,000 Records Displayed

2. Change based on the size it have, minimum will be 1,000,000 Records. Partial displayed will show if it expand.

3. Reduce the space for Search Bar, only Expand if selected.

4. Use another line. 

Appendix

10 Records (no Issue)

1 Million Records

1 Miillion Records (Issue to see the records)

10 Records

We have a lot of workflows with a lot going on in them, as I'm sure a lot of you do.

Sometimes, the way that Alteryx draws the connections between tools is loopy, literally.

It would be very helpful if we could explicitly control how the connectors were routed, as this would allow us to prevent them from cutting across other complex areas of the workflow.

Also if we could bundle the connectors (think tying together a bunch of cables with a cable tie) so that things that were heading to the same part of the canvas could route there as a bundle.

Exactly as the subject says: It would be incredibly useful to be able to change the colour, and possibly the line thickness of the connectors between tools.

We have workflows with huge amounts of stuff going on, as I'm sure many people do.

Being able to colour code the connections between tools would help us to trace things from place to place when stepping through the workflow.

So I just realized that if I click F2 I am brought to the annotation window in the configuration window. 

It would be great if I can click F3 to bring me back to the Configuration window! Often times I switch back between configuring and annotation a tool multiple times. 

‘]Thanks,

J

Similar to "Start here" dataflow, it would be useful to specify a path within the User settings to open a dataflow "template" file when the users do not have permission to add or replace "start here" dataflow.

Within our organisation, we are required to have the dataflow summary. We have prepared a dataflow to meet these requirements but currently unable to share it like "start here" template so that every Alteryx session opens the agreed datalow "template" file.

Can we have an option to save a workflow in a prior version for backward compatibility? I think Tableau offers this functionality.

Example:

If I have 2019.4.8 and a colleague has 2019.1.x, I cannot share my workflows because my colleague will receive a notice that the workflow was built in a newer version. I want to be able to save my workflow in 2019.1.x and send to my colleague.

This is predicated on the workflow not containing any tools/features not present in the older version. In that case, give me a warning about the specific tools/features that are not backward compatible. Thank you.

Part of the joy of using Alteryx is watching connections progress, tools turn green, and messages flow to the results window. As workflows are running, the messages provide crucial information for the developers/executors in real time. This UX is absent when running on the Gallery. It would be lovely to run a workflow on the Gallery and let it stream all those messages, and possibly even the canvas, to my Designer window in real time. I could even catch issues/problems and stop the workflow instead of waiting for it to finish on the Gallery and then diving into the log. Is it possible to have the same experience in Designer regardless of executing the workflow locally or in Gallery?

Because this is a desired feature in Designer, I decided to post in Designer Ideas rather than Server Ideas.

The Connected Tools submenu of a tool configuration is useful for navigating rapidly. One can double-click an Incoming or Outgoing line and jump to that connected tool. It gets tricky when a tool has multiple in/out anchors, like Append or Join. In those cases, it isn't possible to tell which tools are connected to which anchors. In the case of a Join tool, please change Incoming: to Incoming L: and Incoming R: and do the same for Outgoing. Please do this for all tools with multiple in/out anchors. Thank you.

Let's say I have an Input tool and a Browse tool connected in my workflow (Picture 1). I drag and drop another tool between them, it's fine (Picture 2).

Now I have a Select (or any other tool) connected to the Input tool but not to the Browse (Picture 3). So now my input tool has two output connections.

I want to add a tool, let's say a Filter tool after the Input but to both connections. If I drag and drop the Filter tool where connections are together just after the output anchor of the Input tool it insert the tool only within one of the connection (Picture 4).

The idea (and you might have guess by now) is to automatically add the new tool to all output connections  when it is dropped near the output anchor of the a tool present in the canvas.

I personally think it would work better to tab from 'Select Column' to 'Enter Expression Here' and not the 'Functions' List as probably people who are tabbing would immediately like to start typing the formula rather than going through functions, fields, etc.

Is it possible to have a "Run Workflow" option in the right click dropdown menu?

Sometimes you may just want to run the workflow at random from the convenience of your desktop without using the Alteryx server's capacity. When that is the case, you have to open the workflow, wait for it to load in Alteryx, and click "run" from the canvas. Instead, I would like to right click the workflow's file path and click "run workflow" from a dropdown menu without opening the workflow itself. When the file is complete, I can either receive a pop up to inform me it is complete, the time it completed, and the runtime or I will just know by checking the date/time modified in my output file. And if you have disabled all output in that specific workflow or it writes out to a database, an email, a server, or somewhere else that may not be able to handle this new feature, the "run workflow" could simply gray out in the dropdown menu to indicate it is not an option for that workflow. I think this would be a very nifty feature for your .xlsx, .tde, .txt files, etc. that output in the same file directories,

Thanks for reading!

When attempting to save from Designer to Gallery the last step of the save is the validation step.  The validation step, as I understand it, checks to make sure there's a valid license on Gallery.  This counts as one of the processing "threads".  If your organization is constrained by the throughput on Gallery, this can cause delays. 

Our business only has the 2-thread service level for Alteryx Gallery.  Consequently, if someone is running long, drawn out workflows on Gallery, this can create delays in saving the file from Designer to Gallery.  It can also cause delays if there's a long "line" of workflows waiting to run.  I presume that the save attempt is put in line along with the other jobs on Gallery that have to run.  If this is the case, it could take a long time to complete the validation--tens of minutes or longer.  

That window being open keeps the user from being able to use Designer at all.  Very inefficient.  There should be a requirement that the user has both valid licenses on Designer and on Gallery before they can run anything on Gallery.  However, the validation of both of those is already accomplished by virtue of the fact that Designer checks for a license whenever the program loads.  Also, if Gallery checks for the license anytime the workflow runs, then the second half of this check is already accomplished and, therefore, renders the check when saving to Gallery unnecessary.  Please correct me if i'm wrong on this. 

Change #1) Please the validation of Gallery license when saving from Designer to Gallery.

Change #2) Please adjust Designer such that you can continue to edit workflows on the same session while other files are being saved to Gallery.

Change #3) If we can't get #1 or #2, please change the queueing process to put attempts to save to Gallery in the front of the line because they should take <1 second to validate the license while other workflows could take many minutes.

*This is an idea from @sayuri  from the Portuguese Community*

• Create a button to add any tool to all output anchors of selected tools (similar to “Add All Browses”)

I love the example workflows.  If I've already added a tool to the canvas that I need to reconfigure, however, it would be easier to simply right click the tool that's already there rather than finding the tool on the ribbon at the top to open the example workflow.  Please add the ability to launch the example workflow for each tool on the right click menu.