What's New in Designer

We have upgraded the embedded Python version to 3.13.11. Designer tools that rely on Python (including many connectors) must be updated to support Python 3.13. Tools built for Python 3.10 will not work in 2026.1 versions of Designer or Server. For additional details, go to Python 3.13 Upgrade FAQ.

We have also updated the Python tool. Some of the key updates include:

For details, go to Python Tool.

Users with workflows built in Designer versions 2025.2 or later can now publish to supported older Server versions.

For important details (including potential limitations) and ongoing updates, go to Designer Server Version Compatibility.

We’ve updated a number of visual and UX components in Designer. You’ll notice a new Designer app icon (including a new desktop Designer icon). We’ve also updated brand colors, including in notification snack bar messages.

The global app bar replaces the original top-level Designer header and shortcut toolbar when you open Designer in the Alteryx One app. This creates a consistent navigation experience across Alteryx One applications while preserving core window controls. Designer runs within the Alteryx One app. All common Alteryx One navigation experiences are the same while working in Designer.

The global app bar retains standard window functionality. You can…

All Alteryx Cloud instances have now been transitioned to Alteryx One, reflecting a platform unification and naming update for all cloud-based workflows and services.

The Alteryx One app automatically creates and updates Alteryx Links per workspace, ensuring the current user’s selected workspace is always set as the active workspace across login and installation. The app also lets you switch the workspace.

We've added functionality that lets users save, manage, and open Designer workflows and macros (YXMD, YXMC, and YXWZ files) directly in Alteryx One, without needing to package them as YXZP files. Users can leverage platform capabilities like sharing, tagging, versioning, and search while working seamlessly between Designer and cloud services. While saving to Alteryx One is the default, the options to save locally and save to Server are still available.

Starting with the 2026.1 release, Designer updates and upgrades are available exclusively via the Alteryx One app. When you launch the Alteryx One app, the app checks whether your Designer version is up to date and notifies you if an update is available. If you have the appropriate permissions, you can proceed with the update. For more information, go to Version Updates

We have updated the tool configuration UI in the Input Data tool, including an improved connection creation experience.

Additionally, you can now connect the Input Data tool to datasets that you have access to in your active Alteryx One workspace.

For instructions and additional details, go to Input Data Tool.

We’ve made several performance improvements in the AMP engine:

We’ve made updates to the Union tool. It now returns partial results from valid input connections (matching original Engine behavior), so you can avoid workflow failures when some inputs are invalid. For additional information, go to Union Tool.

We’ve improved how disabled connections behave in the AMP engine to ensure consistent results. For more information, go to Disabled Connection Handling in Engine.

The standalone Proxy screen has been integrated into the standardized Connections UI for a consistent and intuitive experience. Additionally, we have extended proxy support to Designer and Server to achieve parity with Desktop.

Added the JSON Schema tool to the Developer tool palette. Use the JSON Schema tool to generate JSON schemas that define structured output for downstream tools, including large language model (LLM) responses from the Prompt tool.

These file formats are no longer supported by Alteryx:

The HTML-GUI Library tool has been deprecated in Designer and moved to the Deprecated category. By default, this tool is no longer visible in the Designer tool palette. In addition, the SDK Examples category is now hidden in the tool palette.

We've added support for configuring a separate billing project for Google BigQuery connections. This allows customers to access data in one project while attributing query and job costs to another project.

We've added support for custom AWS STS endpoints and private endpoint configurations for supported AWS connector scenarios. This helps customers meet private-network and compliance requirements for AWS-based workloads.

We-ve added support for respecting the workflow timezone when writing datetime values to Avro output. This improves timestamp accuracy when Avro files are consumed by downstream systems such as Databricks.

We've added support for using Databricks external volumes as a staging location in Designer write workflows. This allows customers to use external volumes in addition to Databricks-managed volumes when loading data to Databricks.

We've added support for additional DSN-less Databricks SSL and security parameters in DCM. This improves compatibility for users who need to replicate secure Databricks ODBC configurations in DCM.

We've added support for additional DSN-less SQL Server security parameters in DCM, including Encrypt, Trusted_Connection, and TrustServerCertificate. This helps customers replicate secure SQL Server ODBC configurations directly in DCM.

Renamed GenAI tools to AI tools. You can now find these tools in the AI tool palette.

The Prompt tool now supports defining a JSON schema alongside your prompt. This update enables structured outputs without requiring you to describe the format in the prompt. With this update, you can:

An optional validation setting checks responses against the schema to catch malformed or incomplete output.

Added support for running AI tools on Server using a service principal. You can now configure a service principal in Alteryx One, share LLM connections, and authenticate AI tools in Designer to run workflows on Server. Learn more how to Use AI Tools on Server.