Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

The idea behind encrypting or locking a workflow is good for users to maintain the workflow as designed. 

However, when a user reaches a level of maturity equivalent to that of the builder or more, or even when changes are required - the current practice is to keep a locked and unlocked version of the workflow so that it allows for a change in the future. 

It would be much simpler if we can have the power to lock and unlock workflows with a password. Users can then maintain and keep the passwords so that they can continue with the workflow. 

Not everybody is on Server yet so this feature is very helpful for control before Server migration. Otherwise it’s just password protecting a folder containing the workflow package, then re-locking a new save file each time a change is made or when someone new takes over on prem. 

My idea is essentially to borrow the keybinding/command ethos of Vim for Alteryx. For those who are unfamiliar, Vim is a text editor from a time before the mouse and the GUI became dominant forms of interacting with PCs. I think the key ideas to take from Vim are the Modes, Commands, and Grammar.

Vim is mode based for its typing. You start out in Normal mode and enter other modes through key commands. For example, to enter Insert mode, you just type 'i'. This mode allows you to enter text into whatever file you have open at the moment. There's also the Visual mode which is for highlighting sections of text for processing with other commands. This means that key commands can take on a variety of meanings in different modes, adding depth in a limited key range.

The Grammar is another key aspect. Rather than hold an arcane combination of modifiers and letters, Vim uses an Operator-Count-Motion approach. The operator will be the primary action: y for yank/copy, d for delete, c for change, v for visual select. The Count is how many objects you want this operator to be applied to. The Motion is where and what you want to work with: w for a word, s for a sentence, p for a paragraph, ( for a set of parentheses, b for brackets. There are also options that extend this so you can have a series of commands like d2w (delete 2 words), di( (delete inside parentheses), yap (yank/copy all of a paragraph), etc. Below is a cheat sheet displaying a wider list of the possibilities with the motions.

The Command mode is the last piece of the puzzle. By typing ':' while in Normal mode, you bring up a command prompt. Here you can enter any of a number of commands including changing user settings via keywords. For example, :s/old/new/gc will search through my file and attempt to find and replace every old term with the new term, the c at the end means that Vim will ask for confirmation before each change. I could also do things like :set nohl which will turn off highlighting for items found during searches. It's easy to imagine using similar functionality to make configuration changes to a wide set of tools or simply to selectively delete tools without using the mouse or scrolling to them.

To take it a step further, current menu functions could be turned into commands, imagine typing v6t to select the next 6 tools on the canvas. You could follow this by typing :Contain %V to wrap the selected tools in a container, perhaps with extra arguments a specific color palette could be applied as well! I say all this to say that the way forward for shortcuts in Alteryx is to break away from the one-handed modifier heavy paradigm that so many programs follow today. By creating commands that can duplicate the actions found in drop down and right click menus, as well as providing a means of navigating the canvas without a mouse, Alteryx can go to the next level in terms of efficiency and ergonomics.

Let me know what you think, if you need more concrete ideas on what this might look like in practice, I can add that. Thanks!

P.S. If you work on side projects outside of Alteryx, consider giving NeoVim a try, it adds a lot of extensibility and customization to classic Vim

Hello all,

As of today, you must set which database (e.g. : Snowflake, Vertica...) you connect to in your in db connection alias. This is fine but I think we should be able to also define the version, the release of the database. There are a lot of new features in database that Alteryx could use, improving User Experience, performance and security. (e.g. : in Hive 3.0, there is a catalog that could be used in Visual Query Builder instead of querying slowly each schema)

I think of a menu with the following choices :
-default (legacy) and precision of the Alteryx default version for the db
-autodetect (with a query launched every time you run the workflow when it's possible). if upper than last supported version, warning message and run with the last supported version settings.
-manual setting a release (to avoid to launch the version query every time). The choices would be every supported alteryx version.

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,

As of now, you have two very distinct kinds of connection :

-in memory alias

-in database alias

It happens than every single time I use a in-database alias I have to create the same for in memory since some operations cannot be realized in in-database (such as pre-sql or interface tools)

What does that mean for us :

-more complex settings operations/training/tests

-unefficient worflows that have to deal with two kinds of alias.

What I propose :
-a single "connection alias", that can be used either for in-db either for in-memory,

-one place to configure

-the in-db or in-memory being dependant on the tools you use

Best regards,

Simon

Hello all,


As of today, we use the good old alias in-memory to connect to our datasources in in-memory. We have several environments so we use constants in order to change the name of the in-memory alias during execution.

To illustrate :

Depending of the environment, the constant « v_gp_contexte » will take different values :

• GP_DS08_SIDATA for la dev.
• GP_EE_SIDATA for prod.

Sounds nice, right? But now, we would like to use DCM and the nightmare begins :

We can't manually change the name and set the question :

if we look at the xml of the workflow, we only find an id so editing it is useless :

(for informationDCM connections are stored in some sqlite db in C:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Local\Alteryx

So, I would like to use the DCM inside the in-memory alias (the in-memory alias is stored and can be edited), just like for in-db connection alias.

Best regards,

Simon

Not sure I'd call this a user setting, but I couldn't figure out the right heading this belongs to. 

When opening files, there are often times a couple of files at that aren't run on any kind of schedule or set time frame but you come back to when you need to run them.  

There should be a way to set "FAVORITES" for a handful of files that you find yourself referring to on a repeated basis, but too far back to be on the 'recents' list because you open too many other files. 

Hello all,

Sometimes, when you have too much time to retrieve your tables metadas, you can have this message

Initialization Timed Out: Workflow must be run for field meta info to be accurate.

From what I understand, it's Alteryx and the source system that drives the time out value. However, I have some cases where the long time is "normal" and that really hurts the user experience.
So, I would like the ability in settings to change the default value.

Best regards,

Simon

We currently have language support for a few major languages. I know Chinese is available, but the writing system is only Simplified at this moment. 

I was recently in conversation with a few people from Taiwan, and they are using the Traditional writing system of Chinese. 

If Alteryx can provide Traditional as an additional to their already available Simplified writing system, I think Alteryx can help capture the market in Taiwan better. 

The people I spoke with never heard of Alteryx before, and after a demo - they were impressed. If it has this language support, then I think it’ll be much easier to get more sign ups for Alteryx from the Taiwanese market. 

Hello all,

Here the issue : when you have a lot of tables, the Visual Query Builder can be very slow. On my Hive Database, with hundreds of tables, I have the result after 15 minutes and most of the time, it crashes, which is clearly unusable.

I can change the default interface in the Visual Query Builder tool but for changing this setting, I need to load all the tables in the VQB tool.

I would like to set that in User Settings to set it BEFORE opening the Visual Query Builder.

Best regards,

Simon

Allow for setting universal DATA SIZE configuration.  ESPECIALLY on V_WString!!   If you want all your V_WString to be 5096, you can set it. If you want all your fixed decimal values to be 12.4 you can set that.  You can set your own values for a workflow or under advanced setting perhaps you set up your own default values that will be used across all work flows. 

At MINIMUM, change the 1,073,741,823 on V_WString to something semi reasonable. That size won't even fit in a Snowflake table. 

Hi

The action of the 'tab' key in configuration window recently appears to have changed from indenting to a navigation function. 

The user should be able to select which action the tab key performs. 

Alternatively, tab should indent and shift-tab (or alternative) navigate. I'm not the only one who would appreciate the choice.

PuffinPanic

Hey Designer Gurus + @NicoleJ ,

Here's a picture of my canvas (running):

I'd like to be able to see COUNTS and PERCENT completion as the workflow is running.  In my case, the numbers are BIG and  they are prioritized as BACK compared with the lines.  In the case of % complete, they  obfuscate (fancy term for block) the progress of the tool.

Currently, if I want to watch the water boil, paint dry or the workflow crawl/walk/run I must change the workflow before saving it to maximize the distance between the tools.  I'd like to be able to see both the COUNTS and % complete without the added effort.  My idea is to have someone at Alteryx figure out an enhancement to this without engaging the likes of @Hollingsworth who'll devise some evil keyboard shortcut.

Cheers,

Mark

when you bring in a comment box or tool container to your canvas it should come in with your preferred defaults for  fill colors, font color & size, etc.  I have specific color schemes to identify what my comments are for and one scheme that I use most often has font size, position & color, and background color that I have to set every time i bring in a new comment box.

 I LOVE working in Alteryx it because unlike excel you set a "macro" to perform repeating operations once and then ignore them to do your real work.  This concept should extend to the little things within Alteryx, i.e. settings for preferred defaults for comment boxes & tool containers. 

Currently, when a new version of Alteryx Designer is released, you get a banner at the top of your Designer to upgrade. You can manually select to disable this for up to 30 days. 

However, this is really causing issues with Server compatibility. Users get notified to upgrade, thinking it's from the Server owners and upgrade then is no longer compatible with Server. Alternatively, it causes differences between users, etc. 

It would be ideal that it would be disabled in general but also controlled when software is pushed to machines through IT policies.

Hello!
Currently i develop on a 2560 x 1440 monitor, and it is great for development of Alteryx workflows. 

However, from an accessibility perspective (and for demonstration purposes), the whole of the Alteryx Interface text and icons are far too small for anyone to read. For instance, this is what Designer looks like at the most common monitor size, 1920 x 1080:

And at my native resolution (2560 x 1440)

And 4k resolution, for comparison:

As you will notice - virtually everything is smaller, and unreadable at higher resolutions. It doesn't appear that this is a setting within Alteryx, and so I have to resort to windows settings to change the size:

Or as @CharlieS mentions here change the size of text across all applications.

It would be useful within Alteryx to have a 'scaling' slider/dropdown, so I do not have to change the resolution or size of applications within windows, to be able to easy read or demonstrate data from Alteryx Designer. 

Thanks,
TheOC

Hello All,

I'm using the dynamic input tool for SQL requests in my Workflow (WF).

I'm using the "Replace a Specific String" to replace elements in the SQL statement dynamically depeding on results of prevoius tools, user input etc.

So the statement looks like

select * from Schema_Name_xx where invoice_number = 'invoice_number_xx'

Since Schema_Name_xx is no valid Schema in the Database, the statement (= Validation) won't work. Only if I replace Schema_Name_xx by e.g. Invoice_Data_Current it will work, same with the invoice number, invoice_number_xx is replaced by e.g. 4711.

Therefore, validation makes no sense and will never work, only if the WF is running, the correct Schema is inserted in the SQL statement by the "Replace a Specific String" function.

It would be great to disable it in the users settings or wherever in the Designer, changing a config file would also be great :-)

Pls. note: I'm thinking (since I'm not allowed anyway ;-)) about changing/disabeling anything in the Alteryx Server settings.

Reason:

1. Speed: Validating a WF with SQL statements that don't work takes time (every time I save it), sometimes I get even a timeout...

2. WF error entries: Each upload with a  failed validation creates an entry in the WF result list which makes it harder to seperate them from the "real" WF errors...

Thanks & Best Regards,

Thomas

Hi all,

In supporting our Alteryx users - we often have situations where users have had multiple different versions of Alteryx installed on their machines over time - and this leads to a situation where settings / configurations are carried forward from one install to another, and there doesn't appear to be an obvious way to force a full & clean reinstall and reset.    This creates a problem when something like the Python settings are broken, since the reinstall does not fix this.

In this line - it would be very useful to have the ability to perform a full & clean uninstall - potentially in 2 phases:

• Initially - a script (e.g. Powershell) which is available on community, which cleans out all files that are installed by Alteryx (any version); all registry entries; an any user settings
• Later - it would be valuable to build this into the uninstaller so that the user has the ability to uninstall and remove ALL traces of the software and user settings.

Many thanks

Sean

Hi,

It would be great if users have the option to display the number of records that go in and out of the different tools in your canvas. This allows users to very quickly see how many records are in their datasets, and especially quickly analyze the results of specific actions such as joins, filters etc. without the need to open each individual tool. Especially when performing joins this can be very useful to quickly see how many of your rows have been successfully joined. I think this will give users a feeling that they have more control over their data and a better understanding of what is happening in Alteryx. Also if you quickly want to review a complex workflow (especially when it is not your own) this could be a huge timesaver. Simply run the workflow and follow the numbers to see what is happening and identify tools that might cause issues.

Love to hear what you think!