Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

When training people on the use of action tools, something that I always have to hit on is that when you are telling the tool which piece of the XML that you are adjusting, it's sort of difficult to tell what you have selected, and super easy to accidentally select something else.

Example:

When you initially select the action to take it's this nice Blue Color. However, it still doesn't feel exactly like you have actually selected anything or told the Action Tool what to do, since it's so easy to just select any other one of these actions.

A slightly different problem is that if you are selecting an action that has been previously configured, it is just this light grey color. So it can be easy to accidentally change your settings because you may not realize it's actually set up.

Here is a recent community post that sort of outlines a few of these problems.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Analytic-App-to-Create-Custom-SQL-Quer...

Would it be possible to have the text wrap inside the box when we are creating new formulas?

For example I have an ERROR MESSAGE tool that is rather verbose.  I chose to modify the annotation as:  ZIP Code Check.  I presumed that the result would simply be "ZIP Code Check", but Alteryx added that to the beginning of the annotation rather than replacing the whole annotation.  I reported this as a bug, but was told that this was designed to operate in this manner.  It was suggested that I bring this out as a "New Idea" to the community for review.  If you agree that the tools should operate in a similar fashion for annotation (or other actions) across the pallet, please STAR this.  Otherwise, I'm happy to hear your feedback.

Thanks,

Mark

One major improvement in version 11 is that you can now schedule workflows directly in the Gallery. One thing I miss though is the ability to see the whole log from the workflow (messages, warnings and conversion errors).

I have made a workaround by using the list runner (Crew Macros), but I think this should be a functionality on the server itself.

To see the workaround and the expected output, you can watch this video:

https://vimeo.com/214995668

Never noticed this, because I always use the custom filter option, not the basic.  But I had a user come to me asking why his app wasn't updating his filter properly.

He configured the filter tool thusly (dummy data):

And here is the what the action tool looks like when you connect it to the filter tool:

So he simply highlighted the "Bob" line and picked to update "Bob".

However, since he used a basic filter, and not a custom one, this is how he should've configured the action tool:

I realize that "well, it's spelled out for you - there's an expression section & a simple section in the action tool".  But for beginners or even non-beginners, it might not be obvious.

It would be nice if when you connect the action too, it only displayed the appropriate option (either custom or simple, but not both).

In a future release, I'd love to see the whole concept of browsing for and installing new macros/apps brought into Designer itself.  It's always great finding new macros, but the expereince is inconsistent- sometimes you have to run an installer file, sometimes run a package, sometimes just put the file in a directory and add a 'watched macro' directory to your preferences.

I'd like to see a cleaner expereince where you can choose to 'Add Tools', browse the gallery, check the thing i want, and click the tools group I want to put it under, then have Alteryx take care of the rest.  There would also be the need for a 'Manage tools' screen where could could uncheck and remove them later if you no longer need them.

For inspiration, check out the way MS handles 'Adding Apps' via their catalog to build out your Sharepoint 2013+ site

We need the ability to pre-populate App questions with a default value. This not only gives the user an example of what type of data string the App is looking for, but also may avoid the user from having to do anything if the default folder or file is already correct.

This would also allow for quick App testing since we can just accept the defaults and not have to load up a yxwv file every single time.

ArcPy/Python, ESRI Modelbuilder, PyQGIS can all do this (heck, even MapBasic can do it!) - there's no doubt it's more convenient for the designer and end user.

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