Engine Works

Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
TaraM
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Last week I sent an email to our Alteryx users asking for participation in a short survey to help us plan and prioritize features for the 5.0 release of Alteryx. I was impressed with the responses, both with the amount of people who responded and with the honest feedback we received.

 

We take pride in improving our products to benefit our current users as well as to entice new users with our offering. Alteryx has had many a feature implemented because of direct client feedback and that will continue.

 

I figured I would take this post as an opportunity to address some of the comments that came up with respect to the survey and encourage those who have not yet completed the survey to do so. Know that your comments will be read, your suggestions will be considered, and your peeves will be logged.

 

Some of the suggestions we received, you can already do in Alteryx, such as:

 

  • Database queries based upon the value of a field (using the field value as a variable)...useful for multiple queries based upon values saved in a text file.
    • Check out the Dynamic Input Tool. There is a Sample (Advanced Samples --> DynamicInputSpatial) that uses the Dynamic Input tool in a spatial configuration. This concept can be also be applied in a non-spatial way. If you get stuck contact our Customer Advantage Group, they will be happy to point you in the right direction.

We received multiple suggestions to incorporate looping into the product and likely will be implementing a few ways to accomplish this in 5.0. We will also address iterative processing, debugging, more statistical functions and other advanced formula library additions, an email tool, better charting and more complete interaction with our other products including Allocate and possibly Geonetx.

 

We learned that some of the help documentation is inadequate. I personally pledge to rectify this in the next release with more detailed instructions on building Wizards and Macros, on String and Date manipulation, and better consistency between topic coverage.

 

We love it when an idea is presented that we haven't thought of already and based on your suggestions we will be improving the GUI, Spatial Match and Summarize tools, as well as tool and file organization.

 

Thanks again for your candid feedback! If you haven't done so already, you can take the survey by clicking here.

Tara

Tara McCoy

Tara McCoy is the Creative Director at Alteryx. Since joining Alteryx in 2004, Tara has held roles in Product Management, Content Engineering, and Community where her focus has always been on delivering an amazing product experience with Alteryx. From designing product icons and community badges, procuring excellent swag, concocting engaging contests, and crowdsourcing content from internal and external Alteryx advocates alike, Tara is dedicated to the Alteryx brand and wants everyone to experience the thrill of problem solving with Alteryx.

Tara McCoy is the Creative Director at Alteryx. Since joining Alteryx in 2004, Tara has held roles in Product Management, Content Engineering, and Community where her focus has always been on delivering an amazing product experience with Alteryx. From designing product icons and community badges, procuring excellent swag, concocting engaging contests, and crowdsourcing content from internal and external Alteryx advocates alike, Tara is dedicated to the Alteryx brand and wants everyone to experience the thrill of problem solving with Alteryx.