Error: Detour tools in macros must terminate within that macro

[HenrietteH]

Environment Details

User is getting an error when attempting to run a workflow containing a macro: 

Error: DetourTest (2): Detour tools in macros must terminate within that macro

 

• Alteryx Designer
  • 2020.3

Cause

A Detour tool inside the macro is not properly terminated.

Resolution

Per the help documentation: Both outputs of a Detour tool must end in either a Detour End tool (to bring the 2 data streams back into 1) or an Output Data tool (to output each data stream).

 

[BernardoM89]

Can anyone in Alteryx share a technical explanation as to why this change was implemented to begin with? This change in tool configuration after Alteryx version updates sets up a constraint in the tool that is counter productive to debugging, not to mention that we had to rewrite several tools in a short time frame due to these unexpected errors.

If there's a macro on the side of the detour that doesn't get activated, shouldn't it just pretend the macro is not there instead of erroring out? Any explanation would be appreciated.

[joshbennett]

Bump.  I second @BernardoM89 's question.

@HenrietteH  can you (or someone from the engineering team) weigh in here?

This new requirement seems frustratingly pointness.

Why impose this new restriction, limiting the use of Detours compared to their historical versatility (not to mention breaking any forwards compatibility of existing production workflows that get upgraded to 2020+)?

[Bharrison10]

Hi, I was wondering if anybody had found a workaround for this error. I have a detour tool controlling a series of filters (so the user can toggle the filters on or off) and I want to output both the filtered out and unfiltered records. Ideally, I would have two separate outputs, those that passed through the filters and those that were excluded, but I would settle for the ability to bring the two sets together and output them like that. Any assistance is appreciated, thank you!

[lepome]

@Bharrison10 
If you want to have access to both what is executed and what is not executed, then either use a different way of controlling what happens (e.g. Formula tool conditional statements and Action tools) or write the original (unfiltered) information to a temporary file before you use any of the Detour tools, and then read that temporary file out after all the filtering is done.

Logically, you cannot have both True and False simultaneously.