What's New in Designer

We've enhanced proxy configuration and authentication options in Designer's User Settings. Among the enhancements, you can select a proxy method (Internet Options, PAC script, Manual configuration) and use Data Connection Manager (DCM) to create connections and authentication credentials for use with proxies.

The 2024.2 enhancements to the proxy configuration are specific to Alteryx Designer only. The new proxy settings in Designer and DCM are not synced with Server.

The Multi-Field Formula and Multi-Row Formula tools now use the same new expression editor as the Formula and Filter tools. The new expression editor has a more modern UI, syntax highlighting, and predictive text.

The Rank tool is a new tool available via the Preparation tool category in Designer. This tool has built-in ranking functionality and lets you rank your data quickly and accurately without the need for complex workarounds and multiple tools. Go to Rank Tool for details and configuration information.

A SingleStore data source is now available. You can use the Input and Output Data tools to connect to the cloud-native SingleStore database. Go to SingleStore for details and configuration information.

A Google Cloud Storage data source is now available. Leverage the Input and Output Data tools to establish a connection to the Google Cloud Storage service. Go to Google Cloud Storage for details and configuration information.

Marketplace Add-Ons give you access to all Alteryx-supported Data Connectors that are available via Alteryx Marketplace. Some of these tools might not be compatible with your Designer version. The 24.2 version of Marketplace Add-Ons gives you access to only the tools that are compatible with your version of Designer.

Additionally, if a new version of an Alteryx Data Connector is available, you can use the Update button in the Marketplace Add-Ons window to download it (this doesn't overwrite the existing tool but adds the new version in addition to any older version you have installed). Go to Marketplace Add-Ons for details.

When you modify a tool's configuration, you now have the option to save your settings as a default! Configure your tool and select Save as Default. The next time you use the tool, it will default to your custom configuration.

This feature is in the tool configuration window for every tool, just above the "Apply Current Configuration" button. From here, you can save a configuration as default or restore the tool configuration to the system default. Go to Tool Configuration to learn more.

You can now customize the color of individual workflow connection lines between tools. This customization option improves workflow readability, documentation, and overall workflow organization. Go to Connection Configuration to learn more about your options.

When you create Tool and Control Containers, you now have additional formatting control. Container captions now allow you to manually enter multiple lines of text. This can condense the space a workflow takes up on your canvas, resulting in an improved overall Designer experience, while also allowing users to review workflows faster.

A new setting in the Output Data tool options lets you suppress the output of data if the Output Data tool doesn't receive any records (XLSX and XLSM file types). This means, for example, that a blank tab with header labels isn't written to Excel if there are no records to be written. You can select the Suppress Output if No Records Exist setting when you output to Excel file types. Go to File Format Options for details.

You can now group your data by column in the Record ID tool. The first record for each group is assigned the value you specify in the Starting Value field of the tool's configuration.

You can now elect to retain special characters within column/field names in the Cross Tab tool. Previously, these characters were automatically converted to underscores. Go to Cross Tab Tool for details.

We've added new AMP-only options to the JSON Parse tool to handle JSON arrays and objects with semi-structured data: Unnest JSON Field and Flatten Array. Go to JSON Parse Tool for details on these new options.

You can now use an SSH key as an authentication method with the Download tool to connect to your SFTP. For more information, go to SSH Authentication Configuration.

We've added a One Tool Example to the Expect Equal tool. You can access the example directly in Designer. Select the tool in the tool palette or right-click the tool and select Open Example.

We've added two new formula functions:

Additionally, we've added a new time zone (tz) parameter to the DateTimeFormat, DateTimeNow, DateTimeNowPresice, DateTimeToLocal, and DateTimeToUTC functions. The DateTimeParse function now supports the %z and %Z specifiers for input. Go to DateTime Functions to learn about these updates.

We've added a new tool palette preset that lets you quickly configure your Designer tool palette to display only AMP-compatible tools. Go to User Interface for more information on the Tool Palette presets.

We've made updates to the alerts that display in Designer (for example, when a new version of Designer is available). These alerts now use a modern interface that improves user experience and provides consistency with other Alteryx products. Additionally, you can customize which alerts are displayed in Designer via the Notifications tab of User Settings.

You'll see the updated alerts in these instances:

A new user setting lets you increase the connection timeout limit (in seconds) to ensure that you can connect to remote data sources that might not respond in a timely manner. Go to User Settings for more information.

We have completed the planned Dark Mode updates for all Designer components outside of tool configurations. We will continue to update tool configuration windows in future releases.

Additional keyboard shortcuts are now available for commonly used Designer features:

Debug mode is now supported with all your workflows, including those that contain AMP-only features like Control Containers.

The Cancel Running Workflow on Error Runtime setting is now supported with the AMP engine enabled.

We have upgraded libssh2 to version 1.11.0.

We have upgraded R to version 4.4.0. As a result of the upgrade, we removed the rgeos package. CRAN archived this package on October 16, 2023. For more information, go to the CRAN documentation.

We have updated the embedded OpenSSL module to version 3.0.13. This addresses the following potential vulnerabilities present in OpenSSL 3.0.12, the version shipped in 2024.1:

These CVEs do not affect the status of the Alteryx OpenSSL FIPS 140-2 Provider. For more information, go to Vulnerabilities 3.0.

We have upgraded the Poppler version packaged with Intelligence Suite from 0.68.0 to 22.12.0. This upgrade might lead to minor changes in the output of the PDF to Text tool.