Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

Can we have an option to disable all tool containers at once? Similar to disable all browse tools or tools that write output.

Here's a reason to get excited about amp!   Create a runtime setting that gets Alteryx working even faster. 

when you configure a file input you see 100 records.  Imagine the delight that after you run your workflows all input tools are automatically cached.  You run so much faster. 

now think of the absolute delight that even before you run the workflows that a configured input tool causes a background read off the input data.  Whether it is a new workflow or an opened existing flow that reading can start ahead of the time button. 

what do you think 🤔?

Maybe this pointless but my guess is that memory usage could be as important as processing time and is probably a simple addition to the performance profiling feature.

Hello,

More and more databases have complex data types such as array, struct or map. This would be nice if we could use it on Alteryx as input, as internal and as output, with calculations available on it.

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/hive/languagemanual+types#LanguageManualTypes-ComplexTyp...

Best regards,

Simon

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 

When I run a Standard Workflow in the Designer, I can continue to work on other workflows, I can even run two workflows in parallel.

In contrast, when running an Analytical App in the Designer, the entire program is blocked and neither another workflow can be edited or run.

I propose to allow access to the Designer GUI also when running Analytical Apps.

Hi 

I'm really missing a search in the medata phane?

If I am on data phane:

If im browsing though metadata:

When developing and/or troubleshooting workflows, I frequently disable the outputs using the checkbox in the Runtime configuration settings to speed up the workflow and prevent sending emails and/or overwriting data in the output sources... however, 9/10 times I forget to turn off this checkbox when I save my workflow back up to the Gallery. This results in countless emails from users to the tune of "I ran the workflow successfully, but there was no output?" 🙂

Would love love love to see some sort of warning notification (similar to the ones that already shown for data sources etc.) when saving to the Gallery if the "Disable All Tools that Write Output" option is selected in the Runtime settings.

Thank you!!

NJ

Similar to being able change the parameters of a tool using the interface tools, it could be very useful if Alteryx Designer had an option where the configuration of a tool can be modified by another tool's output (which can only consist of one row & column and may include line breaks/tab characters, only first row is used if there are multiple rows) while the workflow is running, therefore reducing the need to chain multiple apps.

This feature could be made possible as the "Control Containers" feature is now implemented, and it could work like below:

Suppose you need to write to a database and may need to specify a Pre-SQL statement or Query that needs to be dynamically changed by the result of a previous tool in the workflow.

In this case, as the configuration of a tool in the next container needs to be changed by the result of a previous formula, there would need to be an additional icon below the tools, indicating that the tool's result can be used for configuration change.

This icon which will appear below the tools will only be visible once at least one Control Container and an Action tool is added to the workflow, and will automatically be removed if all the control containers are removed from the workflow. User can change the configuration of the destination tool using an action tool, which must be connected to a tool in a container that will be run after the one it is contained in has finished running, as a tool (or several tools) that is contained in the next CC in the workflow needs to be dynamically modified before the container it is contained in is activated.

If a formula tool containing multiple formula fields is added to the action tool, the user will see all the formula outputs similar to connections (i.e. [#1], [#2]...) that can be used as a parameter.

The screenshot below demonstrates the idea, but please note that this is a change where adding an action tool may not mean that this workflow will need to become either a macro or an analytic app, so a new workflow type may or may not have to be defined, such as "Dynamic Configuration Workflow (YXDW)". Analytic Apps and Macros which utilize this feature could still be built without having to define a new workflow type.

CI / CD is critical to any production level process, especially when multiple authors are contributing new features to the same workflow. Currently, multi-author editing of workflows is extremely difficult, and something that would be aided greatly by using git to control different branches of ongoing work. Luckily, that's something we can already do today! However, the ability to test before merging a pull request is critical to modern CI / CD pipelines. For this, it we need to be able to run a headless workflow from a CI / CD environment. Also, having the ability to pass in parameters to the workflow would allow for robust integration testing - something that isn't straightforward today without running on production environments. 

@AdamR_AYX,

Limit conversion warning allows for a minimum of 1 message.  Can we set the minimum to 0 to completely ignore the message?

Perhaps we can allow warning messages a similar function as ERROR messages and allow the designer to Ignore, Warn or Cancel?

ConvError: Imputation (441): Tool #104: No demand: 0.200000000000031 had more precision than a double. Some precision was lost.

ConvError: Summarize (456): Data: 0.360000000004675 had more precision than a double. Some precision was lost.

End: Designer x64: Finished running FP Model - Marquee Crew v3.yxmd in 32.3 seconds with 16 field conversion errors and 4 warnings

Thanks,

Mark

In order to run a canvas using either AMP or E1 - the user has to perform at least 5 operations which are not obvious to the user.

a) click on whitespace for the canvas to get to the workflow configuration.   If this configuration pane is not docked - then you have to first enable this

b) set focus in this window

c) change to the runtime tab

d) scroll down past all the confusing and technical things that most end users are nervous to touch like "Memory limits" and temporary file location and code page settings - to click on the last option for the AMP engine.

e) and then hit the run button

A better way!

Could we instead simplify this and just put a drop-down on the run button so that you can run with the old engine, or run with the new engine?        Or even better, have 2 run buttons - run with old engine, and run with super-fast cool new engine?

• This puts the choice where the user is looking at the time they are looking to run  (If I want to run a canvas - I'm thinking about the run button, not a setting at the bottom of the third tab of a workflow configuration)
• It also makes it super easy for users to run with E1 and AMP without having to do 10 clicks to compare - this way they can very easily see the benefit of AMP
• It makes it less scary since you are not wading through configuration changes like Memory or Codepages
• and finally - it exposes the new engine to people who may not even know it exists 'cause it's buried on the bottom of the third tab of a workflow configuration panel, under a bunch of scary-sounding config options.

cc: @TonyaS 

Can we have an option to save a workflow in a prior version for backward compatibility? I think Tableau offers this functionality.

Example:

If I have 2019.4.8 and a colleague has 2019.1.x, I cannot share my workflows because my colleague will receive a notice that the workflow was built in a newer version. I want to be able to save my workflow in 2019.1.x and send to my colleague.

This is predicated on the workflow not containing any tools/features not present in the older version. In that case, give me a warning about the specific tools/features that are not backward compatible. Thank you.

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 opening an Alteryx workflow that has been saved in a newer version, a warning message is shown, but you are still able to open the workflow, provided that it doesn't contain tools that don't exist in your current Alteryx version.

This does not work for packaged workflows that contain macros, for instance. You have to manually edit the xml of the extracted package file.

It would be great if we could have the same ability with packaged workflows that exists for normal workflows, i.e. the ability to extract and execute them with a warning.

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!

In some of our larger workflows it's sometime tedious to run a workflow in order to see some data, when adding something in the beginning of the workflow. Running und stopping it as soon as the tools gets a green border is sometimes an option.

It would be convenient to have an option in the context menu to run a workflow only until a specific tool.

In effect, only this specific tool has an output visible for inspection and only the streams necessary for this tool have been run - everything else is ignored and I'm fine to not see data for the other tools.

This would speed up the development of small parts in a larger workflow much more convenient.

Regards

Christopher

PS: Yes, I can put everything else in a container and deactivate it. But a straight forward way without turning containers on and off would be preferable in my opinion. (I think KNIME as something similar.)

Currently in 2020.2 (but I assume all versions), when you have a workflow running and click on the Tool Name/ID (1 - in the picture below) in the results window it is then not possible to click on the canvas OR get back to the messages for the full workflow as it is then locked to that tool.

The idea is that it should be possible to get back to all of the workflow messages if you click on a tool name in the results window whilst the workflow is running.

However, a neat little tip that I found is if you click on the input, output or browse hyperlink (2 in the picture below), it will open a pop-out browse rather than show the data in the results window, meaning you can still see all of the messages)

This leads me to think that it could and should be possible to see browse anywhere data whilst the workflow is running if this is fixed. Here's a separate idea for that. 

In cases where there are dynamic tools - you often get a situation where there are zero rows returned - which means that the output of something like a transpose or a JSON parse or a regex may not have the field names expected.

However - any downstream filter tools (or other similar tools) fail even though there are no rows (see screenshot below).

The only way to get around this is to insert fake rows using a union or use the CReW macro for Ensure Fields.    However, this is all waste since there are no rows so there's no point in even evaluating the predicate in the filter tool.     Rather than making users work around this - can we please change the engine so that a tool can avoid evaluation if there are zero rows - this will significantly reduce the amount of these kind of workaround that need to be used with any dynamic tools (including any API calls).

thank you

Sean