Alteryx Designer: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 12. Interface Tools

If all you had to do each day was read an Excel file, clean it up, and output it to a database, Alteryx would be a useful application for you. However, Alteryx also has so many features and functions that make it a particularly useful tool when it comes to analytics. Once you start using Alteryx more and more, you will find yourself building the same workflows again and again or building the same patterns within a workflow over and over.

Welcome to the world of Alteryx macros and apps! Macros and their sister feature, apps (which we discuss in the next chapters), are game changers in Alteryx Designer.

To build macros and apps, your foundation is the Interface tool palette. You’ll use the Interface tools with both. They allow you to build UIs that not only make your workflows more dynamic, but also allow you to build workflows that change parameter settings at runtime based on what the user inputs. In this chapter you will learn about the Interface tools so that you can apply them to build macros and apps.

The Interface Tool Palette

The Interface tools (see Figure 12-1) allow you as a developer to provide an input interface to the user. This will become a critical function that you will use over and over. I am going to walk through each of the Interface tools so that you have a solid understanding of how they work. As you read this chapter, think about how you might build a macro using these Interface tools.

Figure 12-1. The Interface tool palette ...