In the following, we’ll examine some of our favorite features that are in the newest release of Alteryx – let’s get into it!
Alteryx Designer
To me, it appears that the last few releases really indicate that the Alteryx product team is listening to the community. They are addressing ideas that have been circulating for a bit, while also tackling integrations with newer technologies.
Local Staging for Snowflake Bulk Loader
One example of the latter point above is the Bulk Loader for Snowflake. Adding the internal staging option is very beneficial for Alteryx customers, and is also great news for partners of Alteryx and Snowflake like us at Tessellation. Instead of pointing to an external staging area to load data, which is not always going to be an option, Snowflake will now create and manage these AWS S3 buckets for us. Now our clients don’t need a separate AWS account to load data into Snowflake, which enables them to use the functionality much more easily. Furthermore, this may drive other benefits like increased compliance standards around the management and transfer of sensitive data.
Find and Replace Window
For the analysts out there grinding in Designer every single day, the product team has got your back in this release, too. Here’s what John Emery, Weekly Challenge extraordinaire, likes about one new feature in 2020.3:
In 2020.3 we finally have find and replace functionality (not the tool!) to quickly update comments, annotations, or words within a formula. You can now find and replace specified terms and propagate those changes throughout your entire workflow. For complex workflows where you have to change that one word in dozens of places, this functionality will be an enormous time saver.
Alteryx Server
It can be easy to focus only on all the new features of Designer, but with every new release from Alteryx comes enhancements to Server!
Full Support for AMP Engine
For me, I’m stoked to see that Server now has full support for the new Alteryx Multithreaded Processing (AMP) Engine. AMP is what supports multithreading and multicore processing which equates to some SERIOUS speed gains in workflow execution.
Custom User Groups
And there I went, talking about workflow improvements. What are our Server admins most excited about with the new release? Here’s what Tessellation’s resident server guru, Aidan Bramel, had to say:
2020.3 released the ability to create custom groups on Alteryx Server, allowing us to handle permissions at a group level. Alteryx is continuing to give us features that make life better for both server and collection admins as we make the move from Studios/Subscriptions to Collections. I'm a big fan of collections over studios, so I'm happy that we are making progress in this direction!
But wait, there's more!
Make sure to also check out TJ’s recap of the latest features on community. For every detail and technical update, make sure to refer to the release notes located at Alteryx’s documentation page.
Next up for Alteryx? 2020.4! Join me as a BETA program participant where we can explore the “What’s Next” of the Alteryx Platform.
