Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

As a designer, I need to output data only when no data quality errors are encountered within a workflow.  I suppose that I wouldn't want to see any errors, but if I am writing multiple output files and errors are encountered during the output processes (e.g. #3 of 4 fails), then I'm kind of out of luck.  So let's focus on data quality.  If Nulls are encountered in "Actual" data or unjoined records are found or dates are out of range, you name the issue, I don't want to output any data to specific output tools.  Work-arounds exist.  I can output to a staging file and conditionally schedule or use a conditional runner macro to output to the production data.  But what I really want to do is to stop an output tool from receiving any data to output.

Today I handle this by counting error records that would be caught by a TEST tool and appending the count of these bad records to the data that would go to output(s).  I filter for IsNull([Count]) and only when 0 ERRORS are found by the test tool, can data be output.  Otherwise null records are received by the output tool and it quietly makes no changes.

My ask is to configure an output tool to be disabled if ERRORs exist.  That means that the LAST thing to happen in the execution of a workflow will be the output processes.  They will all be blocking tools and can't happen until there are no tools left to run except for the outputs (configured as blocked).  Maybe this is a big ask.

I'd say that 95.437% of the Joins I do are straight Inner Joins.

So each of those times I have to remember to go down to the Select part of the Join tool and deselect all the fields I joined on the Right Side since they'll be duplicates.

I'd like a checkbox like below (defaulted to CHECKED)  to deselect all the joined fields from the right hand side. In the rare cases where there's a need I could uncheck it.

Deselect R join fields

// This is my new formula
MAX([Price] * [Quantity],0)
// This was my old formula
// [Price] * [Quantity]

Imagine being able to SELECT your text block (could be many lines) and right-clicking to see an option to Comment or Un-Comment those configuration statements.  I thought that you'd like it too.

Cheers,

Mark

The desginer autosave feature is fantastic when you need it. However, it's pretty annoying when you don't need it as it seems like it:

• Autosaves blank workflows
• Autosaves workflows that are saved and haven't had any changes made to them

Hopefully all of the above can be filtered out from Autosave: 

The only workflow from the screenshot above that I'd want Autosaved would be the Parse Directory workflow as this is the only one which I made changes to:

- New Workflow1 - Completely blank

- PureGym Log In - Saved and no changes made

- New Workflow2 - Completely blank (however, I had dragged a tool onto canvas and deleted it, so something had changed)

However, Alteryx brings up all of the workflows:

The sum function is probably the one I use most in the summarize tool. It is a silly thing, but it would be nice for "Sum" to be in the single-click list, rather than in the "Numeric" category...

Move sum function

Hello,

Well, the title is pretty simple : it appears that the tendancy right now is to  have web version of any software on a server.

A few notes about that :
-a lot of Alteryx competitors are already in this mode and it's hard to sell you're still with a desktop-only mode for design, even if the product is far better.
-a good idea is the one used by Qlik with Qlik Sense : they still have a desktop and a web version of Sense but the desktop works mainly as an hidden browser plus an engine. The web version is cool too because you can make your own application, or your own data connection etc..
-the main interest of a web implementation of Alteryx would be to reduce installation on client computers (and that means packaging the installer, managing the data connection, the paths, the access to macros... etc) and to have a better control of the users.

PS : this idea is soooo simple and so obvious I'm surprised I didn't find it. It may be a duplicate.

Hi,

The current way to label or annotate a tool is that we need to double click the tool to bring up configuration window, then click on the annotation icon, then click on the annotation textbox.

My suggestion is when a tool is selected, simply press the Enter/Return key, then start typing the annotation right there (inline editing). Save a couple of clicks.

Thanks.

Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can easily store, search, and access their files anywhere, from any device.

Unlike files in My Drive, files in a Team Drive belong to the team instead of an individual. Even if members leave, the files stay exactly where they are so your team can continue to share information and get work done.

Hello .. me again!

Please can you fix the copy and paste of renames across field.  It's a behavior that I see in many tool's grids and drives me mad.  Its not just select. 

Take the attached screen shot.  In the select tool, i've renamed "test 2" to "rename2".  Fine it works. No issue.

I then copy rename2 and paste into the test3 field, and it copys the entire row's data (and metadata) into that little box, tabs, spaces the lot.  I end up with something like the screenshot.  Really not sure it was meant to be designed this way, as I cant really see the point.

Please can you fix this bug

Jay

A recent post solution (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/Can-somebody-tell-me-where-is-quot-Choose...) by @patrick_digan alerted me to a loss of functionality of the Input Tool.  In order to define a range of data via SQL to Excel (e.g. Sheet3$A1:C10) you need to know a work-around instead of just modifying the SQL.  The work-around is to modify the XML.  I would like to see that functionality returned to the Input tool.

Cheers,

Mark

When saving a workflow to the gallery, the manage assets box is a fixed size. Due to the length of our file paths, the full path name is cut off. This makes it difficult when trying to package macros to select the correct box. I understand you can group assets by tool, however with the more complicated workflows this can still present it's challenges. I'd like to see this box to be re-sizeable.

How about a quick method of disabling a container.

Current state - Click on the container, pan the mouse all the way over to the tiny checkbox target in the configuration pane and click disable.

Future state - little icon by the rollup icon that can be clicked to disable/enable, differentiated by perhaps a color change of the minimized pane perhaps?

I know what you're thinking, "talk about lazy, he's whining about moving the mouse (which his hand was already on) 2 cm along his desktop and clicking"... but still what an easy usability win and one less click to do a task I find myself repeating frequently.

As of Version 10.6, Alteryx supports connecting to ESRI File GeoDatabases from the input tool but it doesnt support writing to a geodatabase.  This is something we would really like to see implemented in a future version of Alteryx.  Those of us working with ESRI products and/or any of the ESRI online mapping systems can do our processing in Alteryx and store large files as YXDBs, but ultimately need our outputs for display in ArcOnline to be in shapefile or geodatabase feature class format. Shapefile have a size limit of 2 GBs and limitation on field name sizes. Many of the files we are working with are much larger than this and require geodatabases for storage which are not limited by size (GDB size is unlimited, 1 TB max per feature class) and have larger field name widths (160 chars).  Right now, we have to write to one (or many) shapefile(s) from Alteryx, then import them into a GDB using ArcMap or ArcPy.  This can be an arduous process when working with large amounts of data or multiple files.

The latest ESRI API allows both read and write access to GDBs -- is there a way we can add this to the list of valid output formats in Alteryx?

This idea is an extension of an older idea:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/ESRI-File-Geodatabase/idi-p/1424

We store valuable data in our MS Teams sites (which are sharepoint folders behind the scenes). Currently, there is no way to connect to sharepoint directly (only if I sync sharepoint to my local drive, which is problematic and doesn't work on Alteryx server).

My recommendation is to have a sharepoint connector which works on both the desktop and server.

Thanks!

The new functionality of filtering within the results window is very handy but quite limited for date fields where you can only Filter by 'Is Null' or 'Is Not Null'

Can you please expand the functionality so we have the same options as within the Filter tool.

Lately I've used the 'Add Prefix to Field Names' option in the Select tool. It works great, however when you click the button to add a prefix, the new window pops up and the focus is on the checkbox. I think when this box pops up, the focus should be in the text box so the user can start typing right after they click the button. This is the same case for the Add Suffix option, too.

Maybe it was a lack of planning, but I've had a need to rename a variable within a workflow and would like to (outside of the XML view) be able to rename the variable so that downstream tools don't have to be reconfigured (e.g. formula, join, union).  

Hello,

Regarding the Amazon S3 tools in Alteryx Designer, only 4 file formats are supported.

We would like to see also the following formats: .xls and .xlsx 

Regards.