Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

We have discussed on several occasions and in different forums, about the importance of having or providing Alteryx with order of execution control, conditional executions, design patterns and even orchestration.

I presented this idea some time ago, but someone asked me if it was posted, and since it was not, I’m putting it here so you can give some feedback on it.

The basic concept behind this idea is to allow us (users) to have:

• Design Patterns
  • Repetitive patterns to be reusable.
  • Select after and Input tool
  • Drop Nulls
  • Get not matching records from join
• Conditional execution
  • Tell Alteryx to execute some logic if something happens.
  • Record count
  • Errors
  • Any other condition
• Order of execution
  • Need to tell Alteryx what to run first, what to run next, and so on…
  • Run this first
  • Execute this portion after previous finished
  • Wait until “X” finishes to execute “Y”
• Orchestration
  • Putting all together

This approach involves some functionalities that are already within the product (like exploiting Filtering logic, loading & saving, caching, blocking among others), exposed within a Tool Container with enhanced attributes, like this example:

The approach is to extend Tool Container’s attributes.

This proposition uses actual functionalities we already have in Designer.

So, basically, the Tool Container gets ‘superpowers’, with the addition of some capabilities like: Accepting input data, saving the contents within the container (to create a design pattern, or very commonly used sequence of tools chained together), output data, run the contents of the tools included in the container, etc.), plus a configuration screen like:

1. Refers to the actual interface of the Tool Container.
2. Provides the ability to disable a Container (and all tools within) once it runs.
   • Idea based on actual behavior: When we enable or disable a Tool Container from an interface Tool.
3. Input and output data to the container’s logic, will allow to pickup and/or save files from a particular container, to be used in later containers or persist data as a partial result from the entire workflow’s logic (for example updating a dimensions table)
   • Based on actual behavior: Input & Output Data, Cache, Run Command Tools, and some macros like Prepare Attachment.
4. Order of Execution: Can be Absolute or Relative. In case of Absolute run, we take the containers in order, executing their contents. If Relative, we have the options to configure which container should run before and after, block until previous container finishes or wait until this container finishes prior to execute next container in list.
   • Based on actual behavior: Block until done, Cache, Find Replace, some interface Designer capabilities (for chained apps for example), macros’ basic behaviors.
5. Conditional Execution: In order to be able to conditionally execute other containers, conditions must be evaluated. In this case, the idea is to evaluate conditions within the data, interface tools or Error/Warnings occurrence.
   • Based on actual behavior: Filter tool, some Interface Tools, test Tool, Cache, Select.
6. Notes: Documentation text that will appear automatically inside the container, with options to place it on top or below the tools, or hide it.

This should end a brief introduction to the idea, but taking it a little further, it will allow even to have something like an Orchestration layout, where the users can drag and drop containers or patterns and orchestrate them in a solution, like we can do with the Visual Layout Tool or the Interactive Chart tool:

I'm looking forward to hear what you think.

Best

I've seen this question before and have run into it myself.  I'd like to see a new tool that would allow a developer (of a workflow) to choose a path of logic based upon criteria known only during the execution of a module.

If LEFT INPUT Count of records < 10,000 THEN Path1 (e.g. use a calgary join)

ELSE Path 2 (e.g. use a standard join)

endif

Thanks,

Mark

Similar to https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Custom-Functions-in-AMP/idc-p/845446#M16381, it would be great to have AMP allow for custom C++ functions. Custom XML functions were added in 21.1 for AMP, so custom C++ functions would be the natural next step!

cc: @jdunkerley79 @TonyaS 

The original engine support expanding the formula tool with custom functions either in XML or C++. The new AMP doesn't support these yet.

There is a fair number of user who are using these in E1 and would be good to have this available in AMP

When I proceed with this command in a python tool:

from ayx import Package

Package.installPackages(package='pandas',install_type='install --upgrade')

in Alteryx it only updates to 0.25, but the Latest version is 1.1.2.

When I would like to upgrade from the Python side i get the following:

ERROR: ayx 1.0.54 has requirement pandas<0.25.0,>=0.24.2, but you'll have pandas 1.1.2 which is incompatible.

Can you please make sure we can upgrade to the latest version of pandas without any compatibility issue?

This is important because of json_normalize. Really useful tool, available from pandas 1.0.3!

Idea:

I know cache-related ideas have already been posted (cache macros; cache tools), but I would like it if cache were simply built into every tool, similar to the way it is on the Input Tool.

Reasoning:

During workflow development, I'll run the workflow repeatedly, and especially if there is sizeable data or an R tool involved, it can get really time consuming.

Implementation ideas:

I can see where managing cache could be tricky: in a large workflow processing a lot of data, nobody would want to maintain dozens of copies of that data.  But there may be ways of just monitoring changes to the workflow in order to know if something needs to be rebuilt or not: e.g. suppose I cache a Predictive Tool, and then make no changes to any tool preceeding it in the workflow... the next time I run, the engine should be able to look at "cache flags" and/or "modified tool flags" to determine where it should start: basically start at the "furthest along cache" that has no "modified tools" preceeding it.

Anyway, just a thought.

When I have AMP enabled, I can no longer performance profile my workflows. I get that there may be issues with calculating this across multiple threads but it'd be great to have Performance profiling available for the new engine. 

As we begin to adopt the AMP engine - one of the key questions in every user's mind will be "How do I know I'm going to get the same outcome"

One of the easiest ways to build confidence in AMP - and also to get some examples back to Alteryx where there are differences is to allow users to run both in parallel and compare the differences - and then have an easy process that allows users to submit issues to the team.

For example:

• Instead of the option being run in AMP or run in E1 - instead can we have a 3rd option called "Run in comparison mode"
• This runs the process in both AMP and E1; and checks for differences and points them out to the user in a differences repot that comes up after the run.
• Where there's a difference that seems like a bug (not just a sorting difference but something more material) - the user then has a button that they can use to "Submit to Alteryx for further investigation".    This will make it much simpler for Alteryx to identify any new issues; and much simpler for users to report these issues (meaning that more people will be likely to do it since it's easier).

The benefit of this is that not only will it make users more comfortable with AMP (since they will see that in most cases there are no difference); it will also give them training on the differences in AMP vs. E1 to make the transition easier; and finally where there are real differences - this will make the process of getting this critical info to Alteryx much easier and more streamlined since the "Submit to Alteryx" process can capture all the info that Alteryx need like your machine; version number etc; and do this automatically without taxing the user.

With the release of 2018.3, cache has become an adhoc task. With complex workflow and multiple inputs we need a method to cache and save the cache selection by tool. Once the workflow runs after opening, the cache would be saved at the latest tool downstream.

This way we don't have to create adhoc cache steps and run the workflow 2X before realizing the time saving features of cache.

This would work similar to the cache feature in 11.0 but with enhanced functionality...the best of the old cache with the new cache intent.

Embed the cache option into tools.

Thanks!

Hello Alteryx,

Would it be possible to extend the "Cache and Run" functionality also to tools with multiple outputs? Our clients use the R and Python tools very frequently and the runtimes tend to be pretty long. For the development purposes, it would be great to have the caching possibilities also on these tools.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

The new Cache tool does not function if the 'Disable All Tools that Write Output' option is selected in the workflow runtime properties.  There is no indication of why the cache is not working and this may be confusing because many users won't associate the 'cache' as a normal output.  The interface should be changed to make this more clear or the cache function configured to ignore this workflow runtime option. 

Please evaluate the option to add 2 new containers:

1. parallel - execute tasks inside in parallel
2. serial - execute tasks in strict  order, imposed at design time. In the future the oder of operations could be enforced by parameters or other input conditions at runtime.

Please Give us the capacity to mix and match these 2 containers.

Thank you

Regards,
Cristian.

In the Overview pane - can you please show which tools have completed the current run, when viewing this pane during a canvas run?   That would allow for a progress check at a glance.

The excel driver (.xlsx) converts these values to 0.  If you use the legacy excel driver (.xlsx) it brings in the #N/A values.  This issue was reported in the community and I am forwarding it to the New Idea as a problem that needs to be addressed on behalf of @JohnDoe.

In case of system crash/ upgrade, transfer of Alteryx license from one system to another system or from one user to another. User should be able to surrender/ borrow/ transfer license from one machine to another. This helps for more flexible use of product.

Currently,  using AMP Engine will cause any workflow that depends on Proxies to fail. This includes any API workflow or any workflow with Download tool, etc.

They will all fail with DNS Lookup failures.

Many newer features in Alteryx Designer are now dependent on using AMP Engine, making those features (such as Control Containers) totally useless when running inside a corporate network that uses proxies to the outside world.

Please re-examine the difference between how a regular non-AMP workflow processes such traffic vs how AMP does it, because AMP is broken!

The Summarize tool returns NULL when performing a Mode operation. This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere in Alteryx documentation nor the community. Please fix this behaviour.

We have to run the full workflow at a time, if you can please think of something like partial running of the workflow and also while designing the flow if we add new tools, we have to run the entire flow again. 
Why can't it hold the intermediate data to avoid re-running the entire code.

Hi,

I think it would be great if the run time of a workflow could be displayed by tool or container. This would make refining the workflow at completion a lot easier and also help with thinking of better solutions. Even cooler would be some kind of speed heat map.

Thanks