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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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I am aware that an Auto-Documenter tool is available in the Gallery, but that has not been maintained since 2020. 

 

It would be great if Alteryx could have that as an added feature to the Designer as an option for end-users to utilize. 

 

The breakdown of it can be done via XML parsing as such: 

<Nodes>: Configuration of tools

<Connections>: The tools used

<Properties>: Workflow properties

 

Right now, the current workaround is for users to export their XML, and the internal Alteryx development team has to build another workflow that reads the XML accordingly + parses it to fit what is needed. 

 

It would be better for Alteryx to build something more robust, and perhaps even include some elements of AiDIN which they are promoting now.

Currently there is a function in Alteryx called FindString() that finds the first occurrence of your target in a string. However, sometimes we want to find the nth occurrence of our target in a string. 

 

FindString("Hello World", "o")  returns 4 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the first "o" in the string. But what if we want to find the location of the second "o" in the text? This gets messy with nested find statements and unworkable beyond looking for the second or third instance of something. 

 

I would like a function added such that 

 

FindNth("Hello World", "o", 2) Would return 7 as the 0-indexed count of characters until the second instance of "o" in my string. 

The Formula Tool does a good job of autocompleting expressions (for example an open square bracket will show you variables in your dataset), as well as syntax highlighting (coloring variables, keywords, strings, etc).

 

PhilipMannering_0-1633166313984.png

PhilipMannering_1-1633166410914.png

 

 

 

I propose having this feature available in all tools that use the expression editor, particularly common ones such as the Multi-Row Formula Tool and the Multi-Field Formula Tool.

 

This parity across tools would provide a more consistent experience for the user and increase one's productivity using these tools. It's incredibly helpful for beginners and seasoned Alteryx users alike and should be available wherever possible.

Very often, I used a container to make notes about certain parts of the workflow. Some of the comments that I created are pretty long. Could the user have the possibility to have at least rows for the title of the container?

 

Emil_Kos_0-1627035618539.png

I have created a screen to show what I have in mind. Potentially users could have the ability to turn this option on or inside the container?

Emil_Kos_1-1627035835238.png

 

When configuring a FILTER tool, the results of your formula are uncertain until you RUN/PLAY the workflow.  Compare that experience with the configuration of a FORMULA tool where you see a "Data Preview" of the first record results.

 

capture.png

 

TRUE or FALSE could readily be added to the Filter Tool and save the execution time for the workflow.  

 

When you get to HTML tool versions, you could check many rows of data and potentially give back counts of TRUE and FALSE results as well.

 

I'll put this on my x-mas list and see if Santa has me on the naughty or nice list.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

It would be ever so helpful and save a couple extra steps if a count distinct option could be added to the crosstab tool.  Seems like a slam dunk since plain ole 'count' is already a choice.

Hi Alteryx community,

 

It would be really nice to have v_string/v_wstring and max character size as a standard for text columns.

fmvizcaino_0-1587008811932.png

it is countless how many times I found that the error was related to a string truncation due to string size limit from the text input.

 

Thumbs-up those who lost their minds after discovering that the error was that! 😄

When using the formula tool -- one of the nice features is that when you start typing in a function or variable -- the tool will show formulas/variables that begin with that letter and keep changing as you type in more letters. I believe this is called predictive typing.

Good.jpg

 

However, this does not happen in tools like multi-row or multi-field where a user would have to search for functions and variables if they weren't sure what they are.

 

Not good.jpg

 

Can predictive typing be added to the multi-row and multi-field tools? If I want to take it further, any tool that allows a user to use the formula functionality should be able to see predictive typing. 

 

Thanks,

Seth Moskowitz

 

 

Background:
Currently Anaplan Input and Output tool only supports basic authentication and 
does not have option to connect using CA Certificate Authentication.
 
Reason:
Drawback of basic authentication is that critical information (email and password) is easily accessible.
If unauthorized person retrieves the credentials, he can access all of Anaplan interface and functionality.
 
Using CA Certification authentication adds a layer of security as no critical information is stored.
If certificate information is retrieved, the unauthorized person can only trigger APIs and has no access to other parts of Anaplan interface and functionality
 
Wishlist:
We hope that the Anaplan tools can be enhanced to have CA Certificate Authentication so
as to provide added security to transfer data between Alteryx and Anaplan.

Single point of maintenance for Salesforce Input tool connection to Salesforce

 

This prevents user maintenance every time their password (and token) changes which requires them to update every Tool with new credentials

 

Also logged as issue under Alteryx, Inc Case # 00252975: Connection to Salesforce Issue

Thank you to @LeahK for suggesting that this should be a separate idea (cc @JulieH; @TaraM, @LeahK, @JoeM😞

 

The lack of home use / learning editions of Alteryx is a serious mid-term competitive threat factor for Alteryx - and it's well worth both this Alteryx community; and the Alteryx Community Management team making this a key priority for the Alteryx platform.

 

Rationale:

The BI/Data science space is very competitive (as evidenced by the recent Gartner 2016 Magic Quadrants), and although Alteryx was given very favourable review in some factors - there were serious concerns about licensing costs; and time to productivity.

 

Clearly - Alterxy succeeds in direct proportion to the size of the active user base - so the question is "How do we increase the licensed / deployed user base" and I believe that there are 3 factors which all relate to the issue of learning-edition alteryx licenses.

 

a) Time to productivity:   Right now - I cannot ask one of my staff to learn Alteryx at home and prove their capability before paying several thousand dollars to give them a license.   Once I give them a license; it then takes them 2-3 months to become productive, and we run the lottery of finding out whether this person was a good fit for this kind of role in the first place.   Solution:  Make Alteryx available in a learning edition at home with a robust certification program; and a learning progression built in - that way I can tell my staff "I will give you a license once you demonstrate your competence by learning to this level".   How does this help Alteryx: lower time to productivity = more attractive product

 

b) Size of committed user base:  As tech professionals - we take our tech bias with us to our new role (the "Affinity effect"), and often will have some leverage in tool selection.   The more people know Alteryx and are invested in their Alterxy skill set - the greater this "Affinity effect" will start to show in sales figures.   This also makes the tool more sticky, reducing the defector population if users can see and use latest features at home.

Solution: Give the learning edition away for free - Pentaho spoon is currently free for learning; as is Tableau Public; and MS Power BI is incredibly cheap to learn.   If Alteryx doesn't do this - others definitely will anyway, and this "Affinity Effect" will be washed out.

 

c) Increase the skill pool in the market:  The more wide-spread the skills are - the more likely I am to purchase a toolset.  So - if Alteryx skills are very broadly available in the market - it's easier to make the purchase decision for Alteryx rather than competitors.   However - right now the skillset growth is severely constrained, so Alteryx is making the "Buy Alteryx" decision needlessly harder.   

Solution: Make Alteryx available for training; learning; & Certification for free.   

Note: Although this is directly contrary to my personal interests in the short term (the smaller the number of people with skillX, the higher the market value), it is also long-term selfish because I will be able to increase the impact within my firm by having access to a greater pool of skilled and instantly productive workers in the market.

 

 

Although price may be an issue - this is a separate matter.   I believe that Alteryx can do a lot to create future sales pipeline, and a committed and very sticky user base by providing this home-learning & certification program.   In my mind - this is probably one of the biggest competitive opportunities & threats facing Alteryx right now, given the velocity of this particular industry & segment.

 

I'd be very happy to talk this through in detail with the Alteryx team if that's helpful (just PM me)

Many thanks

Sean

 

 

 

 

I recently came to know that Alteryx doesn't support Denodo Data sources. We at our company are using Denodo as a data virtualization tool and also Alteryx is used for data blending. The request is for Alteryx to start supporting Denodo as a data source so that our company can reach out to Alteryx for any support related issues with Denodo.

Please add Parquet data format (https://parquet.apache.org/) as read-write option for Alteryx.

 

Apache Parquet is a columnar storage format available to any project in the Hadoop ecosystem, regardless of the choice of data processing framework, data model or programming language.

 

Thank you.

 

Regards,

Cristian.

 

Microsoft Office provides a facility in all its apps to make the loading of frequently used files a breeze. In the FILE OPEN function the user can "PIN" a previously opened file so that it is always easy to find and load.  This would make it easier to manage and retrieve Designer files. 

 

This is what PINNING looks like in Excel

 

pinned.png

With more and more enterprises moving to cloud infrastructures and Azure being one of the most used one, there should be support for its authentication service Azure Active Directory (AAD).

 

Currently if you are using cloud services like Azure SQL Servers the only way to connect is with SQL login, which in a corporate environment is insecure and administrative overhead to manage.

 

The only work around I found so far is creating an ODBC 17 connection that supports AAD authentication and connect to it in Alteryx.

 

Please see the post below covering that topic:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Alteryx-Designer-How-to-Connect-to-Azu...

 

 

Hi there,

 

Adam ( @AdamR_AYX ), Mark ( @MarqueeCrew) and many others have done a great job in putting together super helpful add-in macros in the CREW pack - and James ( @jdunkerley79 ) has really done an incredible job of filling in some gaps in a very useful way in the formula tools.

 

Would be possible to include a subset of these in the core product as part of the next release?

I'm thinking of (but others will chime in here to vote for their favourite):

- Unique only tool (CReW)

- Field Sort (CReW)

- Wildcard XLSX input (CReW) - this would eliminate a whole category of user queries on the discussion boards

- Runner (CReW - although this may have issues with licensing since many people don't have command line permission - Alteryx does really need the ability to do chained dependancy flows in a more smooth way.

- Date Utils (JDunkerly) - all of James's Date utils - again, these would immediately solve many of the support questions asked on the discussion forum

 

I think that these would really add richness & functionality to the core product, and at the same time get ahead of many of the more common queries raised by users.   I guess the only question is whether the authors would have any objection?

 

Thank you

Sean

Idea:

An Alteryx version for Mac OS X sounded like a nice idea... Although there are options for using bootcamp with windows 7-8

or some virtualisation software as mentioned in a community post here.

 

Rationale 1 (Competitors do it):

First of all there is no need to neglect a customer segment using Mac's.

 

  • Rapidminer Studio comes with a dedicated OS X version,
  • Knime has Mac OS X support 
  • Weka has Mac OS X support as well
  • SPSS Modeler is Windows only but SPSS Stats is Mac OS X compatible.

 

Seems SAS was compatable in the last decade, but they dropped it. Now SAS is not OS X compatible but

still with the "SAS OnDemand" version Mac users can easly get a hands on experience.

 

Rationale 2:

The Mac Pro Beast has 7.2 TFlops of computing power with the help of dual ATI graphics cards.

It would be awesome to install Alteryx on one... 

 

Hi there,

 

When you use DB connection aliases that are saved in Alteryx, it's currently not easy to edit them when you move a database to a different location.

 

Can we do something simliar to the "Edit Password" function, but which allows the user to also edit the database or server, so that this applies to all workflows using this alias?

2017-05-07_20-23-01.png

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 love the new right click and duplicate workflow feature, but I think the duplicated workflow that opens, should open next to the original workflow and not at the end of all of your already open workflow tabs...

 

cc: @jpoz @jeffv 

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