Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Many times; ideas for new ways to use Alteryx come to me while I'm not at work.

Most of the time that happens, I can use RDP via VPN to get to my work desktop.

But sometimes it isn't easy to do that.  Like when I'm driving, outside for a run, in the shower.. you get the idea.

 

My point is that there should be a mobile app for Designer (iPads and Android tablets).  The mobile app wouldn't necessarily need to be connected to the actual sources live (maybe require a template used for input for ODBC; but allow connections to HTTP/FTP/local sources). 

The user would design the workflow, and then have the option to email the schema to themselves (or others) so that once back at work, one could pick up where they left off.

 

Although I would prefer to use it on an iPad, it could technically be used on an iPhone as well.

For an example of how that could look, see the iOS app "Workflow".  That, in combination with the now defunct "Schemes" was a great way to do visual programming similar to what we do in Alteryx.

 

When calculating distance from a single point (or a list of points) to many other points, it can require a lot of processing time to append the single point into the same table as the multiple points (especially with very large datasets).  Seems it would be more efficient to allow the single point as in input to the distance tool and bypass the timely append step.

In a Formula tool expression editor, when I type "nu", the first result in the autocomplete suggestion dropdown is "Null()". When I hit TAB to autocomplete, my cursor is placed in between the parenthesis, as if to enter an argument. Null() takes no arguments. Therefore, my cursor should be placed to the right of Null(). I can then continue typing rather than hitting the Right Key first and then typing. For the speed demons out there, this extra keystroke is a big slowdown. This same functionality applies to any function that does not take arguments, such as DateTimeNow().

 

Please change the expression editor to autocomplete and place the cursor to the right of any function that does not take arguments.

I use the Render tool daily to generate Excel reports with multiple worksheets.The page layout/format is global. Many of my report include 30+ columns of data in multiple tabs, along with a summary tab, with fewer columns.

 

When formatting the page size, if I don't set "Custom" and some very large number (30-50), Alteryx randomly truncates the headings and any text in the data. If set the page size to such a large number, the "summary" Excel tab (which may only contain 5 columns) is set to the same page format as the larger worksheets. I actually have end-users complain that they have to resize the summary page. A "page format by worksheet" would allow a landscape orientation, with a page size of 8 1/2 X 11 for the "summary" worksheet, and "custom" for the others.

 

The version of Excel in the "Temp Excel Output" is still 2007. Can we get this updated?

Under the new licensing system (licenses.alteryx.com), I don't have the ability to truly release a license seat without user interaction. Currently, I have to revoke the license and then have that user start up alteryx on their machine to complete the process. Until the user starts up alteryx, I cannot reallocate that license. 

 

I would like the ability to obsolete a license where as soon as I click the button in the licensing portal, I can immediately reallocate that license to somebody else. This functionality existed in the previous licensing system and is not available in the new licensing system.

I have a problem when transferring records between different O365 Sharepoint Sites.  It seems that Alteryx cannot maintain 2 separate connections at the same time.  I can transfer fine if I read from one site to a temp file and then, in another workflow, read from the file and write to the second site.

 

I can work around the problem using Block until Done, but there are some situations where I need to be able to compare between lists in 2 different sites and write back to one or both depending on the results.  it would be much more convenient to be have multiple connections open simultaneously.  I'm aware that Alteryx uses the SharePoint API to move information around.  This API does allow multiple connections.  I'm not familiar with the internals of how Alteryx accesses the API, perhaps the OAuth token is shared through out the workflow process,  but this should be posssible

 

Thanks for considering this

 

Dan

   

 

I have used the SharePoint List Connectors with our SharePoint 2010 (on prem) instance for some time now. It works great and has become invaluable. Unfortunately, I have been told that these connectors do not work with a Cloud instance or an instance that is not on prem. We need this capability since Microsoft is pushing coporations to move to the cloud instance and there is talk that on-prem may not be available past the 2016 version that is coming soon. Many companies including mine have either completed or are close to completing a full migration which has rendered the current SharePoint Connectors useless. While this is the most important part, another piece that is missing is a SharePoint Document Library connector (similar to the Amazon S3 Download/Upload). Currently I must use the UNC path to my SharePoint folders and an easier more reliable way to save files out to OneDrive and SharePoint Online would be very beneficial.

Currently the Save Field Configuration, when used with fields in a different order does not give any indication that the ordering will not be saved and reused. It is possible people may use this option without realising.

 

This should be in the help at a minimum, perhaps in a warning box when used too, but ideally the renames and types should be applied to the columns they came from by Name - not just based on the order of the fields.

It would be helpful if the "Copy Ouput Fields and Add" default was unchecked.

Hi all,

 

@PaulT put this list of keyboard shortcuts for the Alteryx Designer together in 2013, and it seems to not have been updated since then, and I cannot find a well-structured version of this elsewhere in Alteryx documentation.

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Keyboard-Shortcuts-in-Alteryx/ta-p/1188

 

Please could I ask that this be converted to a standard page in the Alteryx help documentation, and be structured into logical categories (example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/sql-server-management-studio-keyboard-shortcuts)

 

Many thanks

Sean

In the output window, numbers should always be displayed right aligned by default. Also the font should be fixed width type so an 8 and 1 both take equal width and we dont see numbers as below.

11111111

88888888

 

1. It instantly tells the user that its data type is numeric without having to check metadata.

2. Readability of the values is greatly increased.

I would like to have feature to disable the fitter tool so that all the filters added within the filter tool are ignored when the filter tool is disabled and data flows through to the next tool . At this moment there is no way we can achieve this as adding a tool to a container and disabling it stops the data flow to the next tool.

Goal: My goals is to pull Marketo Lead Data via the Marketo Input SOAP API Connector and have specificied only 3 columns to pull for 1 day. 

Issue: It appears that the Marketo Input SOAP API Connector needs to go through all 500 + columns of lead object data before it filters out the specific request I indicated.  What this means is that to process 1 day of lead data for 3 columns of data, it takes 45 minutes plus and not ideal.

Client Services indicated that there is a limitation with the Marketo SOAP API tool and it would be best to utilize the Download tool and build a custom connection to the CRM System (Microsoft Dynamics) to get a predefined list of Lead IDs and then use that as a filter via the Marketo Input SOAP API connector. 

Request:
1.  Add Microsoft Dynamics Connector
2.  Try to innovate a better Marketo Service Connector to just grab the defined fields as opposed to go through the entire processing for all records to only filter back down to. 

Eric  

A typical macro does the same job every time. I therefore want it to have the same annotation each time.

I want it to have a default annotation that I save in the Interface Designer. This annotation will be shown on the canvas whenever the macro is added.

All,

 

I'd like to be able to disable the notification to update Alteryx toward the top of the screen.  The longest choice is only one year...I'd like to turn it off forever, since we control versions used internally and it is driven by the server version.

 

Folks are updating their software when they shouldn't and causing issues for each other.

 

Thanks for any advice.

A lot of popular machine learning systems use a computer's GPU to speed up some of the math to a huge degree. The header on this article on Medium shows a 15x difference from a high-end CPU vs a high-end GPU. It could also create an improvement in the spatial tools. Perhaps Alteryx should add this functionality in order to speed up these tools, which I can imagine are currently some of the slowest.

It would be really helpful to have the ability to read in a Header from an Excel file as part of the Excel file.  I am not referring to column names but the actual Header on the file as this can contain important info to be appended to the data.  This could be an additional checkbox in the Input tool for excel files to read in the header and append to the data as a field.

Currently, a workaround process to do this is to make a copy of the xlsx file and rename as file.zip.  Then unzip the xlsx file and open the sheets as xml files where the headerFooter child element is read in.  Then the header info is appended to the Excel data file which is read in separately in another input tool. 

Would be much more efficient if this was simply a checkbox in the Input Data interface and the Header read in with the data.

Please have the option to place Calendar tool side by side in the Interface Designer. Currently they are only allowed to be placed vertically i.e. on top of each other. By placing the calendars side by side, the interface will look more organized and intuitive to the user. This is particularly useful when there is a need for a companion calendar tool. For example, allowing user to pull data between a date range. In this situation, arranging Date1 and Date2 side by side will be intuitive than placing them vertically.

Create a tool that allows user to create calculated fields for Tableau to output along with a .tde so they are available when openning the tde.  

 

There are several situations where precalculated materialized data will visualize inaccurately in Tableau and calcualted fields need to be used.

• 1:* measures - Fixed Lod expersions for selected measures
• Count Distinct
• Percentages and Ratios