Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When testing an app, I always use the Debug Mode.

However, if I have any files in the app that are using a relative reference (and are not being updated by the app), they continue to have that relative reference in Debug mode.  But in Debug Mode, this Debug workflow is located in a totally different computer location that my app - C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp

So when I try to run the workflow in Debug mode, it can no longer find my files that used a relative reference path.

Can you make it so that when you are in Debug mode, the relative references are changed to absolute references so the files can be found?  I find it really inefficient to have to either:

1 - repoint my files that have a relative reference to their locations so they can be found when the workflow is run

2 - save the debug workflow to where the app is located so the relative reference works.

Thanks

Right now there is not an exception join in DB which means if I want to remove records I have to filter on NULL and with large tables this is really inefficient.

It would be awesome if there was a cross tab in DB option because right now I have to stream out millions of records to build a cross tab.

An option to import field descriptions would be really handy if I could import filed descriptions while working with datasets where filed (thousands) names are type of codes and there is a spearate alias table with filed descriptions.

I think it will be useful if I have an option to add field description when new fields are being created (eg. formula tool, transformation tools etc.)

The case for this is I tend to create a lot of calculated fields by combining fields and applying transformations for exploration predictive possibilities, I want to capture description of the fields while they are being created (its not always possible to set the names descriptive enough)

As of now I think I can add description using select tool but that's not optimal

Thanks,

Option to add a description for each newly created filed in all data preparation and transformation steps. Although a description can be added in the select tool but that's an additional tool in already cluttered (most workflows).

My use case for this is I tend to create a lot of fields (dummy, interaction and transformation) for predictive modelling to come up with a best model. I can not always name the same filed in such a way that is descriptive enough but I want to capture my thought on why I created a particular field right when I am creating it.

Thanks,

Ashish Singhal

This functionality won't be mission-critical to anyone, I'm sure, but a lot of IDEs and upgraded text editors (lookin' at you Notepad++) have the ability to customize the colors of text, the background, and other various tabs/objects that may appear on the screen. I understand that this is more important for code-based systems where the coloring improves readability so much, but I thought it might be a neat feature. I think leaving the tool colors standardized is a good idea though, just the canvas and outerlying windows. It could include the colors for the formula syntax highlighting too?

The icing on the cake would be the ability to save and share your settings or create a repository for them in the public gallery or something.

I'm not sure if this will ever be possible, but I know that it would greatly benefit me and I'm sure thousands of other users. In my work place I am constantly working in a conference room and at my desk. At my desk I am wired into an Ethernet connection while in the conference room I am wireless. When I start my workflows after working with my team in the conference room, I can't go back to my desk until the workflow is finished running because I am changing internet connections and I lose connection to the databases. With the pause button it would become possible to run a workflow and then change my internet without losing connection to the databases.

Another use for this would be while testing a workflow with a new tool. There are times I run a workflow that can take a few hours, but then I realize there is a mistake somewhere in my workflow, where the data hasn't reached yet. I think it would be very helpful to be able to pause the workflow and add the new tool in, while seeing results from tools it has already passed through.

But yet again this is just an idea that relates to me, I wonder what the rest of the community thinks.

It would be very helpful to be able to export your entire workflow to a poster-sized paper, either in paper or PDF format.  When explaining a workflow to others, or getting feedback, the ability to see the entire workflow or lay it out on a table is very helpful

There is a bug in DateTimeDiff(a, b, "months") whereby if a is a leap day DateTimeDiff() returns a value by less than 1 month.

Please see attached workflow where I demonstrate this bug.

Currently Alteryx does not support writing to SharePoint document libraries.

However there are success sometimes but not at other times.

Please see attachment where we ran into an issue.

See this link for additional information.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Connect-to-and-Publish-Back-to-SharePoint-Online/m-p/4...

We need official support for reading and writing to SharePoint document libraries.

It's an important Output target, and will becoming more so, as Alteryx enhances its reporting capabilities.

As of today, we cannot choose the field separator when we read a csv file. In France, the common separator for csv is the semi-colon (;)

It leads to this kind of thing in a filter :

The "Browse HDFS" for the Spark Direct connection does not allow to specify a File Format at "ORC". Could you please add these feature?

Working in the accounting department, this has come up too many times now to ignore! 

Would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see a new formula available in the DateTime formula suite that mimics the function of the EOMONTH() formula when working with dates in Excel. 

The beauty of the EOMONTH() formula in Excel is that I can just give it a date, and then tell it how many months in the future or past I would like it to add/subtract... Alternatively, in Alteryx, this can require 2 or 3 nested DateTime functions to arrive at the same answer. 

Example: To find the end of the month 2 months in the future from today's date, I would use the following formula...

Excel = EOMONTH(Today(),2)

Alteryx = DateTimeAdd(DateTimeAdd(DateTimeTrim(DateTimeToday(),"month"),3,"months"),-1,"days")

Seems much more complicated than it needs to be in Alteryx, and easy to get lost in the nested formulas & non-intuitive adding/subtracting of months/days! I can see a new formula (something like DateTimeEOMonth?) being structured as follows in Alteryx: DateTimeEOMonth([Field],increment)

Please consider! Our accounting department thanks you heartily in advance... 🙂

Cheers,

NJ

From Wikipedia :

In a database, a view is the result set of a stored query on the data, which the database users can query just as they would in a persistent database collection object. This pre-established query command is kept in the database dictionary. Unlike ordinary base tables in a relational database, a view does not form part of the physical schema: as a result set, it is a virtual table computed or collated dynamically from data in the database when access to that view is requested. Changes applied to the data in a relevant underlying table are reflected in the data shown in subsequent invocations of the view. In some NoSQL databases, views are the only way to query data.

Views can provide advantages over tables:

    Views can represent a subset of the data contained in a table. Consequently, a view can limit the degree of exposure of the underlying tables to the outer world: a given user may have permission to query the view, while denied access to the rest of the base table.
    Views can join and simplify multiple tables into a single virtual table.
    Views can act as aggregated tables, where the database engine aggregates data (sum, average, etc.) and presents the calculated results as part of the data.
    Views can hide the complexity of data. For example, a view could appear as Sales2000 or Sales2001, transparently partitioning the actual underlying table.
    Views take very little space to store; the database contains only the definition of a view, not a copy of all the data that it presents.
    Depending on the SQL engine used, views can provide extra security.

I would like to create a view instead of a table.

Hi Alteryx User and Alteryx Dev team,

I saw there are number of posts from the community asking for solution to calculate the NetWorkDays (e.g. similar to the networkdays in excel which to calculate the number of days different between the two days excluding weekend and holidays.)

Although we could build a macro for it, the performance is not ideal, especially when the data set is huge and/or the date range required is far apart from each other because there is currently NO a build-in function in Alteryx.  Alteryx will have to expand the date range by date and check whether each is a weekend or holiday.   It will an excellent idea if a build-in function for Networkdays could be built to minimize this hassle from everyone around the world. 

We are looking forward this idea could be take forward.

Thanks

Eric

I run into this a bunch.  There are some Alteryx workarounds for some use cases but not all.

We just updated to 11.7 from 10.5.

The Container adding/removing rules were changed somewhere in there and the change made it much harder to remove tools from containers. Is there any way to undo these changes or look into a better set of rules to use?

Nick

Hi,

I understand that we can find tools that uses formula by ctrl+F. 

I wish we can find text and replace the formula like excel does.

Sincerely,

knozawa