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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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Currently I have to load data from an Eloqua instance. Unfortunately, there is no connector (apart from a third party connector). Eloqua has a a bulk API to export data. Extracting data involves several steps of GETs and POSTs which would be nice to have it done in one connector module.

 

 

My system's regional settings are German that uses a different decimal symbol and digit grouping than an English system.

Frequently I need to copy data from a browse tool in Alteryx to Excel to create a quick chart or further analysis; this often includes float or double data types.
Instead of the in my case correct ',' as decimal symbol, Alteryx uses the English '.', hence would cause incorrectly pasted values in Excel.
Always using an Excel file as output data is time consuming.


The request is: Make Floats and Double aware of the systems regional setting for copy and paste out of results.

I have a column called Recency that only has values from 1 to 5. When I view the data using the Browse tool I see a scatter graph of the data that tells me very little apart from the fact that they only have values from 1 to 5. It would be much more useful to display a histogram showing how many records have 1,2 etc so I get a better idea of the data quality.

 

Alteryx Designer x64 - RFM_pushSF.yxmd.jpg        Alteryx Designer x64 - RFM_pushSF1.yxmd.jpg

Currently if I enter a long text using the Text Input Tool (for example when posting data using XML) it's impossible to see what's in the entire field since the horizontal scrolling immediately jumps to the next field instead of smoothly scrolling the (long) first field. I have to edit the data in Notepad and then paste back into Alteryx to fix.

Alteryx Designer x64 - RFM_pushSF.yxmd.jpg

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I would love to have the ability to easily populate an entire schema of tables into my work space without having to perform repetitive connections to individual tables. 

 

Ideally, this would include the ability to drag a schema onto the workflow and have all of the connection tools auto-populate.

 

I often have  a need to investigate data in many tables to verify its presence / validate the table contents. This would be a very helpful feature for completing this easily and completely.

 

Thank you!

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Cisco, which has been building enterprise networks, and is literally close to the Internet of Things, is creating some data products, perhaps a platform, perhaps a suite, to handle big data. Part of their offering is DNA Data Virtualization (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/dna-virtualization/index.html). Compare Cisco at 75,000 employees to SAS at 15,000. 

As the subject header says, I would like the Data Cleansing tool to incorporate a way for the user to explicitly specify characters that should be removed.

A very common task that should exist in this tool, removing the need for writing formulas and cluttering the workflow with additional tools.

 

 

I love the new Custom Format option with the DateTime tool in Alteryx 11.0, this makes working with dates SO MUCH easier... BUT it would be great if you could update an existing field rather than having to create a new column (e.g. DateTime_Out) and then use a select to put this back to the original Date field.

 

 

Datetime.png

Issue:

Currently there is no "In - Database" node to perform action queries

 

Work around

Use of the pre / post SQL in "Output data" node to perform action queries

 

Impact

Alteryx ease of use of "In - Database" nodes to work on large scale databases

Currently use of Knmie and SSIS is preferred instead of Alteryx

 

Action Requested

Please add an action query node to "In - Database" group.

 

 

Background:

Teradata is a high performance database system.  It is highly sensitive to indexes and balancing the records across each index segment.

Teradata uses Spool to perform queries on the database.  It is also very sensitive to type of table (volatile, temp, permanent) created.

 

Issue:

Alteryx "In - Database" nodes are not providing the ability to configure them to Teradata needs.

As a result, when executing workflows with "In - Database" nodes there is high probability of "out of spool" error specially when working on medium size data base (between 250 million to 1 billion records).

 

Impact:

Question mark on the ability of Alteryx to handle medium to large databases.

Knime and SSIS are currently preferred to Alteryx

 

Action Requested

Please change the configuration of the "In - Database" nodes to allow fine tuning of the node behaviour.

 

 

It would be great if Alteryx could better handle Carriage Returns!  If I have a csv file that has Carriage Returns (\r) in the Description field Alteryx displays it like so in the browse tool:

 

1.png

 

I’m ok that it’s ignoring the carriage returns entirely to better display the data, but the problem is that there is no way to know by looking at this browse tool that there are “hidden” carriage returns in my data. When we try to copy this to excel and it looks like this:

 

2.png 

 

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite how I was expecting it to look. I think there are three related changes I would like to see:

 

1) Change the copy feature of the browse tool so that it ignores carriage returns (\r) just like when you display it in a browse tool.

 

2) Make a new character that would display the carriage return when I click the “show whitespaces” button. It shows line feeds (\n) as paragraph symbols but won’t show carriage returns (\r). Here is what the \n looks like if I replace my \r with \n:

3.png

My \r character currently doesn’t display at all:

4.png

 

3) Add the red triangle indicator similar to the line feed (\n):

 5.png

 

I currently get no warning that there are embedded carriage returns.

Thanks!


Using Render tool to create an excel document. 

(This is for a specific use case)

 

If you are using the RENDER tool to create one or more EXCEL documents.  Ensure that you are NOT explicitly stating the Sheet name in the file name.  (Output file or 'Replacing entire Path with Group).

 

If you explicitly name the sheet, it will throw an inboundPipe error.  

Remove the sheet name, and it should work fine. 

 

 

On the RedShift Bulk Loader add support for Redshift options:

 

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/copy-parameters-data-conversion.html

 

  • TRUNCATECOLUMNS (automatically truncates any fields to the defined in the table)
  • IGNOREBLANKLINES
  • FILLRECORD
  • TIMEFORMAT
  • TRIMBLANKS
  • ENCODING
  • EMPTYASNULL
  • DATEFORMAT

...

I like the cool new features in designer 11.x

However, to my surprise when I searched for a sum() function..... it wasn't there yet

 

Math bucket has common functions such as Average, Mod, Median and some very complex functions such as Hyperbolic Tangent (an average user don't need it)

 

But a basic mathematical logic is missing : SUMMATION

 

Please add SUM() as a function

 

https://www.svgimages.com/svg-image/s4/summation-sign-256x256.png

Python pandas dataframes and data types (numpy arrays, lists, dictionaries, etc.) are much more robust in general than their counterparts in R, and they play together much easier as well. Moreover, there are only a handful of packages that do everything a data scientist would need, including graphing, such as SciKit Learn, Pandas, Numpy, and Seaborn. After utliizing R, Python, and Alteryx, I'm still a big proponent of integrating with the Python language much like Alteryx has integrated with R. At the very least, I propose to create the ability to create custom code such as a Python tool. 

Hi,

 

It'd be great to have a specific connector for Hubspot. It' a marketing automation Platform such as Marketo.

 

Thanks.

In Alteryx 11 the formula tool got redesigned but multi-field and multi-row tools have been left as it. It would be nice to have formula autocomplete and other new features in these tools as well.

Back in the days of Visual Basic 6, and Delphi 3 - the development environment for software coding started introducing the idea of Optimization hints - specifically looking at things like variables you'd declared but never used.

 

All of the Alteryx tips guides say "as early as possible use a Select tool to remove fields that are not used in the workflow" - it would be very useful if the Alteryx system did a reverse walk through the workflow (from outputs back to inputs) and suggested fields that were not used anywhere or components that could / should be removed because they don't go anywhere.

 

For example

  • Unused Components: if I have a filter with a summarize on both legs, and only one leg goes to an output - then the summarize on the other leg is just a waste of processor and memory.   
  • Unused Fields: If I've been lazy and brought in all the fields in a spreadsheet and only used two of them through a complex and heavy workflow - then suggest that I only bring in 2; or that I add a select component for those two fields early on
  • Ineffective data types:
    • Numbers stored in a double that could be stored in an int16; 
    • numbers stored in strings;
    • strings stored in very large containers which only need 10 characters;
    • dates stored in strings
    • Using a field for "True" and "False" instead of the Boolean True and False (1 and 0)

By adding a reverse-walk to a workflow (sort of like an A-B-Tree prune on a game-tree) - Alteryx could spot many of these kinds of issues - and by observing the workflow in action over a few iterations, it could identify the remainder.

 

 

In an enterprise environment, or a reasonably sized BI team - you want a degree of consistency on how workflows look and feel.   This increases maintainability; portability; and also increases the safety (because like well structured source-code - it's easier to read, so it's easier to peer-review)

 

Looking at all the samples provided by Alteryx, they all have a similar template, which makes them very easy to use.

 

Could we add the capability for larger BI teams to create a default canvas template (or a set of templates) which enforce the company / team's style-guide; layout; and required look-and-feel?   

 

Thank you

Sean

 

 

So - given the importance of Macros - it would be valuable to have the ability within Alteryx to generate a test harness with test data that ships with the macro (this way you can maintain and enforce regression testing)

 

For example:

- Macro that takes in 2 numbers and adds them

- Alteryx would look at the Macro to determine the input types, output types (in this case - two integers; with an integer output)

- Based on this, it could walk you through creating a fairly robust test harness that allowed the user to specify a set of inputs, and prompt you to also include things like blanks; negatives; etc (boundary values; deliberately destructive values like % or ' signs in strings; etc)

 

 

 

 

 

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