Add tools to the canvas without your mouse

[oliver_huber]

Dear community,

I like to share my way of adding a new tool to the canvas without using the mouse. It might prove useful to one or another keyboard addicted Alteryx hacker 😉

To my knowledge, there are no build-in keyboard shortcuts to achieve what I have been aiming for, i.e., adding tools to the canvas by keyboard only.In order to do so, I am now relying on an external free of charge program, Autohotkeys. It is a windows only program, however, there might be MAC alternatives around, e.g., Keyboard Meastro.

I use Autohotkeys to achieve the following: A single keypress (F9 in my case) opens my list of favorite Alteryx tools:

The actual work is carried out by the following autokey script, which maps the function key F9 to a specific sequence of events (right mouse click, timeout, key "i", timeout, key "f")

F9::
Send {RButton}
Sleep, 5
Send {i}
Sleep, 5
Send {f}
Return

As a result, by pressingF9 a complete list of my favorite tools (a list that can of course be extended) is displayed. I can then use the respective starting letter of the required tool to navigate through the list, e.g., pressing "r" to get to the R-Tool.

I find that procedure pretty useful. I does, of course, rely on a well curated list of favorites 😉

Best regards

Oli