Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Once you get the hang of it, Alteryx is great at producing reports. Unfortunately, each item has its own XML parameters, like font size, colors, table defaults, etc. As it stands now, if I want to make a change across the course of a complex, multi-page report, I have to update the settings in each table and chart.

 

I'd love it if I could have a 'Styles' module that I could set, then copy and paste and insert after each table. From that point, I suppose you could make parameters out of style options and build them into a bigger module. For now, though, some kind of reusable style would be invaluable.

It would make it a lot easier to create and manage a work stream if you added the standard ability to maximize and minimize the workflow canvas and configuration and results windows.

With the increase number of JSON feeds and the need to properly define the data type for date and date/time fields. It would be useful to have the Auto Field tool detect common date and date/time formats from Strings and assign the Date, Date Time, or Time data type.

 

Given the following input data:

 

 

The select tool confirms is a String

 

 

If we use the Auto Field as:

 

The result is still a String data type (2nd Select Tool)

 

 

I would expect this to be Date Time.

 

One solution would be to create a formula and parse it, but this is not suitable for situations that the field names are unknown.

 

It would be much easier to have the work done by Auto Field.

 

Using R tool, I created Monetary unit sampling macro. Auditors often use MUS methodology to select samples from population for testing.

Check it out and let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

It feels that lately Alteryx has been focusing on integration rather than adding more machine learning tools, which sadly are still not on par with many competing products...

Personally I miss having XGboost and multi-core random forest libraries like Ranger (along with a more robust implementation of C5.0).

 

What about you guys? Which R/Python libraries are you missing in Alteryx?

Hi!

 

It would be cool if the Overlap tool also worked with report layouts, instead of just the map image. For example, once I've pieced my different report tables into one layout, it would be cool if I could just add my company logo using image tool, add a Overlay tool, and add the logo to the top corner of my finalized report. I realized there are other ways of doing it, this would seem the most straight forward though. Just an idea.

 

We encountered an issue with clob data.  Looks like alteryx is very slow performing while loading clob data to Oracle database. We need to figure a better way to handle the clob data.

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.

As per title, add option to not write 0 records to output file i.e. don't create file with just headers, if 0 records end up streaming to the output tool

 

 

Pretty simple but could be helpful when troubleshooting and reviewing.  Allow a user to have rows be banded in a different color, allow the user to select how to do the grouping to band.  For example, a large browse tool has several thousand rows, sorted by product name.  Each product has between 5 and 50 rows each.  If a user could set color banding by product,.. they could easily find the "breaks" between product rows.  This could be somewhat similar to the Excel table formatting option for banded rows,.. you could simply alternate bands,.. but would be nice to be able to group the bands by some column attribute in the data.

This may be a little easier than constantly opening new browse windows with the selected records,. or to use filters or other tools to group the data for review / troubleshoooting purposes.

I love this option in the Input Tool and use it extensively. It would be really handy to have the ability to set this option 'globally' for all Inputs in a module. I don't mean to remove it as an individual option, but to add ability to make the setting for everything. In my mind I imagine it being a Module/Runtime property that overrides the individual Input tool settings (like the Record Limit option).
 

Like for Salesforce Input and Output tools, the Salesforce Wave Output should offer the possibility to change the URL for the connection.

 

I struggled connecting to Einstein Analytics (Wave) in one of our company sandbox. I could not. However, I succeeded when I changed the harcoded url in both the macro and its related javascript.

 

Francois

In earlier versions the MongoDB Output did not pass fields with null values; this was ideal for storing individual attributes, where one person may have 4 attributes and another may have only 2 attributes, because we did not waste space storing empty or null values.  The newer versions pass these fields with null values; I would like the option to not pass these fields. Please see an example below.  Thank you for your consideration.

 

Workflow Results

 

ID	Attribute1	Attribute2	Attribute3	Attribute4
1	A	B	C	D
2	Z	Y

 

MongoDB Output Current Versions

 

{"_id" : "1",
"Attribute1" : "A",
"Attribute2" : "B",
"Attribute3" : "C",

"Attribute4" : "D"}

 

{"_id" : "2",
"Attribute1" : "Z",
"Attribute2" : "Y",
"Attribute3" : null,

"Attribute4" : null}

 

Desired MongoDB Output (previous functionality)

 

{"_id" : "1",
"Attribute1" : "A",
"Attribute2" : "B",
"Attribute3" : "C",

"Attribute4" : "D"}

 

{"_id" : "2",
"Attribute1" : "Z",
"Attribute2" : "Y"}

Dear Alteryx Team

A nice to have :
Possibility to create output directories automatically using a given fieldname in order to organize properly macros outputs

Thanks a lot

Arno

 

Do you have self diagnosed OCD?  Do you know why 59 could be a magic number in Alteryx?  After long bellyaching in these forums about distribute evenly (+1) and auto layout, and the clean my workflow features I suddenly realized, why not just snap to grid and make my grid size the size of an Alteryx tool?  Voila! only ...no.  Setting the grid size to 59 and snapping only intermittently works. There seem to be varying reference points used for the snap depending on the existence of containers, etc.  So my idea, maintain a single reference point for workflow snapping that should ensure everything snaps based on that point (aligns to the grid).

 

For those of you still wondering what I'm on about... note how the append tool is shifted.  Yes I know I can click and move it to align with the grid, but it gets cumbersome when dealing with many items in many containers.  One grid to rule them all.

Line UP!

 

 

I'm working on loading some public data available as an .xls doc on the web. I can use the download tool to fetch the file, but then have to save it, and reopen it in a separate input data tool. It would be so much easier if I could just flow the download result into an excel parser tool, but I don't see that as an option unless the download file is XML or CSV.

With SSIS, you can invoke user precedence contraint(s) to where you will not run any downstream flows until one or more flows complete.  A simple connector should allow you to do this.  Right now, I have my workflow(s) in containers, and have to disable / enable different workflows, which can be time consuming.  Below is a better definition:

 

Precedence constraints link executables, containers, and tasks in packages in a control flow, and specify conditions that determine whether executables run. An executable can be a For Loop, Foreach Loop, or Sequence container; a task; or an event handler. Event handlers also use precedence constraints to link their executables into a control flow.

Unless I'm missing the basics, I'm unable to scroll and pan during module runs.  I can zoom in and out, but not scroll or pan.
On large modules, I would love to be able to scroll to different areas to see progress/status of different key points in the process.
Guidance from the experts would be much appreciated!  Thanks!

When starting workflow from scratch I often build functionality in disjoint containers but would like away to indicate the order of running for containers (possibly by connecting with optional arrows to indicate order of precedence).