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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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It would be great if Alteryx created a program along the lines of Tableau Reader. If an organization is not at the point where they want to deploy Alteryx Server, but some people need to run Alteryx Apps, making a low cost desktop application that would allow users to open and run .yxwz files would be great. There are many non technical users who don't need and would not use the full version of Alteryx, but creating a desktop application allowing them to run .yzwz files would be helpful to them and would drive Alteryx adoption. 

Extend the Gallery, so that you can pass a set of parameters to Analytic Apps changing both look and feel as well as feedback of the App, i.e. allow to call the App "Add Two Numbers" without borders and jumping direct to the question page.

 

https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/Add-two-numbers/5cc704bb826fd31188cf8ad8/run?header=N&sidebar=N&di...

 

sidebar=Y|N     allows to hide sidebar (home, districts,...)

header = Y|N   allows to hide header line

questions = Y|N    skip question page (only if no questions are available)

direct = Y|N       directly starts App (i.e. directly jumps to the question page)

Although we can write a temporary file with all the parameters used it would be very helpful to pass simple parameters (or go all the way) between the Apps. I imagine any parameter created using Interface Tools should be available throughout the whole Chained App. 

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

Dear Alteryx Team !

 

When running an app the actual Analytic App Progress window is not very informative and can not help to know where do we stand in the process.

 

In order to improve that issue, it would be very nice to give the hand to developers to let them choosing which message should be display in the progress window.

 

Minimal need :

  • At each macro step : A view of which macro is actually running with their corresponding iteration counter

 

Optimal need :

  • Allowing to completely design and name the messages to display at each macro steps and iterations (free text + iteration counter + time estimation ...)

Many thanks

 

Arno

 

It would be very useful to have a new Grid selection question type. This would allow you to see a grid of data that you can sort and pan through and make selections. Similar to a multi select but in grid form with multiple columns.

As detailed in How-To-Create-an-Optional-Field-for-an-Analytic-App, when using the "Generate Field Map for Input Data Tool" option in the File Browse tool, you can easily specify a field as "optional" by adding "(Optional)" to the field name in the input template. However, when you do this, it no longer automatically matches field names in the selected file unless those field names also include "(Optional)" in the field name. It would be very helpful to the user experience if the tool matched the name of the field prior to the "(Optional)" text with the fields in the selected file.

 

For example, if you include the field "Address (Optional)" in the input template file, and you select a file which has a field named "Address," that field is not automatically selected as a matching field. The user must manually match that field. "Address (Optional)" should automatically match "Address" if it exists. But, of course, if it does not exist, it would not match and it would remain optional.

 

Please give the ability to use formulas when using the "Manually set values" option in the Drop down tool.

 

Screenshot below shows an example:

 

example of desired formula ability

I recently began working with chained analytic applications.  One of the things that I wanted to do was to take the values selected by the end user at each stage of the app and pass them further down in the application.  I was able to do this by dumping the selected values to Alteryx databases and then using drop downs to pull the data into subsequent apps.  However, I was wondering if there would be a better way of accomplishing this.  One reason is that, with my approach, I wind up with several additional drop downs in my interface--which I really don't want.  If there's a way around this, I'd love to hear it.  Alternately, if Alteryx could potentially support doing something like this in the future, I think it would be really helpful.

When creating an Annalytic App, in the Actions tab, when creating an action, have the window display the actions in numerical order.  

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As mentioned in detail here, I think that the addition of a "run as metadata" feature could be very helpful for making the analytic apps more dynamic in addition to enabling the dynamic configuration of the tools included in analytic apps chained together in a single workflow using control containers, therefore mostly eliminating the need to chain multiple YXWZ files together to be able to utilize the previous analytic app's output (this of course doesn't include the cases where a complex WF/App would have to be built by the previous app in chain to switch to it, but Runner helps solve this issue to a certain extent provided you don't have to provide any parameters/values to the generated WF/App).

 

The addition of this feature would be somewhat similar to running an app with its outputs disabled, without having to run the entire app itself, but rather only certain parts specified by the user in a limited manner. Clicking the Refresh Metadata button (which will be active only if there is at least one metadata tool in the workflow) will update the data seen in the app interface (such as Drop Down lists, List Boxes etc.), provided the user selected the up-to-date input file(s) (or the data in a database is up-to-date) where the data will be obtained from.

 

To explain in detail with a use case, suppose you have two flows added to separate Control Containers where the second CC uses the field info of a file used in the first CC to enable the user to select a field from a drop down list to apply a formula (such as parsing a text using RegEx) for example. After specifying the necessary branch in the first CC where the field info is obtained, the user could select these tools and then Right Click => Convert to Metadata Tool to select which tools will run when the user clicks on the Refresh Metadata button. The metadata tools could of course be specified across the entirety of the workflow (multiple Control Containers) to update the metadata for all Control Containers and therefore all tabs of a "concatenated app", where multiple apps are contained in a single workflow.

 

With this feature, all tools that are configured as metadata tools (excluding the tools that have no configuration) will be able to be configured as a "metadata only" tool or a "hybrid" tool, meaning a hybrid tool will be able to be configured separately for its both behaviours (being able to change all configurations for a tool without any restrictions in each mode, MetaInfo would dynamically update while refreshing metadata). Metadata only configuration of a tool could be left the same as the workflow only configuration if desired.

 

For example an Input File marked as a hybrid tool could be configured to read all records for its workflow tool mode and only 1 record for its metadata tool mode. This could be made possible with the addition of a new tab named Metadata Tool Configuration in addition to the already existing Configuration tab, and a MDToolConfig XML tree could be added to reflect these configurations to the XML of the tool in question, separate from the Configuration XML tree, and either one of those XML trees or both of them would be present depending on the nature of the tool chosen by the user (workflow tool, metadata tool or hybrid).

 

This would also mean that all the metadata tool configurations of a tool could optionally be updated using Interface tools. You could for example either update the input file to be read for both the workflow tool mode and metadata mode of an input tool at once, or specify separate input files using different interface tools. As another example, the amount of records to be read by a Sample tool could be specified by a Numeric Up/Down tool but the metadata tool configuration could be left as First 1 rows, without being able to change it from the App Interface.

 

Hybrid tool (note how Configuration and MDToolConfig has different RecordLimit settings):

 

 

    <Node ToolID="1">
      <GuiSettings Plugin="AlteryxBasePluginsGui.DbFileInput.DbFileInput">
        <Position x="102" y="258" />
      </GuiSettings>
      <Properties>
        <Configuration>
          <Passwords />
          <File OutputFileName="" RecordLimit="" SearchSubDirs="False" FileFormat="25">C:\Users\PC\Desktop\SampleFile.xlsx|||`Sheet1$`</File>
          <FormatSpecificOptions>
            <FirstRowData>False</FirstRowData>
            <ImportLine>1</ImportLine>
          </FormatSpecificOptions>
        </Configuration>
        <MDToolConfig>
          <Passwords />
          <File OutputFileName="" RecordLimit="1" SearchSubDirs="False" FileFormat="25">C:\Users\PC\Desktop\SampleFile.xlsx|||`Sheet1$`</File>
          <FormatSpecificOptions>
            <FirstRowData>False</FirstRowData>
            <ImportLine>1</ImportLine>
          </FormatSpecificOptions>
        </MDToolConfig>
        <Annotation DisplayMode="0">
          <Name />
          <DefaultAnnotationText>SampleFile.xlsx
Query=`Sheet1$`</DefaultAnnotationText>
          <Left value="False" />
        </Annotation>
        <Dependencies>
          <Implicit />
        </Dependencies>
        <MetaInfo connection="Output">
          <RecordInfo />
        </MetaInfo>
      </Properties>
      <EngineSettings EngineDll="AlteryxBasePluginsEngine.dll" EngineDllEntryPoint="AlteryxDbFileInput" />
    </Node>

 

 

 

Please also note that this idea differs from another idea I posted (link above) named Dynamic Tool Configuration Change While the Workflow is Running in that the configuration is updated while the WF/App is actually running and for example the Text to Columns tool in the second CC is dynamically changed using the output of a tool in the first CC, unlike selecting an input file and clicking Refresh Metadata from the App Interface before the workflow is run.

 

Attached is a screenshot and an analytic app to better demonstrate the idea.

 

Thanks for reading.

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Hi Team,

 

Hope you are well. I am currently tasked with downloading the contracts from SAP for my analysis.

Is it possible to develop an app or automation which can go to SAP asks for user/Pwd and download the contracts/PDFs to a specific folder?

 

Please let me know your thoughts,

 

Thanks,

Sri

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Dear Community,

 

could you please change the path processing of the alteryx app interface so that we can paste path links with quotation marks without getting an error by the alteryx app?

this would enhance workflow speed because one cannot save folder location for the interface to search for first when browsing files. it always begins at the pc level or something. 

so the workaround would be to just paste the file location path in the browser window of the interface, then pressing browse again to just scroll through the wished folder. 

this idea is not only for the purpose of the workaround but also for itself worth it. 

in windows one can easily copy file paths by holding down shift and right mouse click and the clicking on "copy path" . the copy is in the clipboard which i would like to pass to the alteryx app just like this without the necessity to remove the quotation marks as this costs time and is difficult when paths are long. 

 

thank you

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I'd like to see the size of the data processing through each tool, in say GB. This would be helpful in understanding the volume of data being written to connected systems and would also be useful when cleansing data to determine if a meaningful impact was made to the data cleanliness.

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As the titles says, the move up/move down buttons from the select tool or a similar logic are not available yet.

It would come in handy to have this option when creating apps.

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Hi Team,

 

For a small workflow the current setup is okay to handle but with big workflow where input file count comes 25 at multiple locations then it is difficult to check every input.

 

The idea is: There should be some mechanism to check input/output before running the complete workflow 

 

  • If any of the input file is locked then ask user to continue or not
  • If any output file is locked then ask user to continue or not
  • Or above this message can be combined together

Once this done the workflow can do further processing.

 

From my experience, this will help to improve work process and time to fix the issue.

 

Ashis Sanpui

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When building an analytic app which uses a Map Input, please enable Interface tool functionality which would allow the app user to change the base map (roads, imagery, etc.) within the app map interface.  Currently I believe the only way to accommodate different base maps in an app is to configure multiple Map Inputs – one for each base map.  The resulting map interface duplication clutters up the app and opens the door for configuration errors.

 

Enable app user control of base mapEnable app user control of base map

 

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This is more of an enhancement than a new idea.  When building an application and upon success using separate browsers to display the results, it would be nice to be able to give the browser windows a title.  Currently you see Browse (22) and Browse (38) etc.  My app checks a certain key value in multiple tables/files and presents the table results if found.  I need to rename the data to know which file the data is coming from whereas if the browser windows had a title, you would know from which file they represent.  The titles could be added in the interface designer (see attached)

 

 

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For most of our "Production" mode, we launch our apps with an xml file containing the parameter send to the app.

We would like to have the path of this file in the Engine Constant.

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