Engine Works
Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
Welcome to our first release note roundup, a short and snappy blog covering tips and tricks you may not have seen in 2020.2 hidden behind the big keynote headlines, allowing us to solve even faster!
Hello Again Toolbar!
For those preferring not to use keyboard shortcuts be sure to check at the top of your interface for Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, and Redo buttons back once again.
Data Cleansing
One of my favourite smaller updates comes from the Data Cleansing tool, in the form of two additional cleansing actions...Remove Null Rows and Remove Null Columns! No longer will we need to pivot, filter and re-pivot our data to dynamically remove those pesky null columns or rows, we can simply drag and drop our tool, configure and continue solving.
Formula Tool
There have been two main changes in the formula tool.
Firstly, do you use multiple expressions in a single formula tool? Well we now have the ability to delete an expression whilst minimised!
Secondly, double clicking on a field name will highlight the name and brackets, it is worth noting however that currently this tip only works for fields with no spaces (can we fix this please Alteryx!?)
“Bug” Bear Fixes
It’s not just new features that are worth noting, always keep an eye on the fixes made in each update of Alteryx Designer!
Numeric Up Down Fix - Sample Tool example
Previously, when using a sample tool our numeric up/down “N” would not hold in the configuration unless an action (such as clicking in the canvas) was performed before running our workflows.
Removed Disable Browses & Outputs in runtime tab when switching to macro
Are you a macro or analytical app builder? Well this one’s for you! Have you ever used the option in runtime settings to “Disable All Tools That Write Output” when building your workflow? Previously selecting this option when building our workflow and subsequently changing to an analytic app (.yxwz) or macro (.yxmc) would not re-enable any of those tools writing outputs while also hiding the option to enable them! However now, toggling to an analytic app or macro file type will re-enable any of these disabled tools.
These are some of my favourite smaller new features and fixes, but we always love to hear what yours are too or what you’d love to see coming in future releases! With 2020.3 just round the corner what do Alteryx have in store for us to further help our thrill of solving?
If you haven’t downloaded the Beta version of 2020.3 yet to get a sneak peak you can join right here!
