A Newer, More Powerful Designer Cloud

What's New   |   Paul Warburg   |   May 15, 2024 TIME TO READ: 4 MINS
TIME TO READ: 4 MINS

This year at Inspire, we’re spotlighting Designer Cloud, a wide array of added functionality, and exciting new use cases.

If you didn’t think Designer Cloud could tackle all your use cases before – now it can!

The main thing Alteryx users want to know when they evaluate Designer Cloud is simple: “Can I accomplish the same goals when using Designer Cloud that I can when using Designer?”

With new tools and features either recently released or coming soon over the next several months, the answer to that question will now be “yes” for Alteryx users.

New functionality for Designer Cloud falls into three major categories:

  1. Tools that help ensure data quality
  2. Tools that empower dynamic processing
  3. Tools for working with unstructured or semi-structured data

We’ve also updated existing prep and blend tools to give them more functional parity with Designer tools.

1. Tools that help ensure data quality

Perhaps the most exciting update for many users is that we’ve significantly updated Designer Cloud’s processing power. That means you can now work with your full data set when desired and see all your data in the Interactive Results Grid (not just a sample!)

Of course, samples are still possible where desired, but with this update, if you’re making transformations and need to validate how they impacted your full data set, you can see that in design time without having to hit the run button!

But that’s certainly not all. We’ve also enhanced Designer Cloud with more robust controls and enforcement, and we’ve added tools like the Message Tool and Test Tool to give you more control to establish and enforce data quality.

2. Tools that empower dynamic processing

One of the things we hear from users all the time is that they want more Dynamic Processing capabilities.

To empower more dynamic processing, we’ve added (or are in the process of adding) several new fan favorite and highly requested Designer tools, including, but not limited to, the Multi-row Formula tool, the Dynamic Select tool, the Cross-tab Updates tool, the Dynamic Replace tool, and the Generate Rows tool.

3. Tools for working with unstructured/semi-structured data

We’ve also received feedback that you want more ways to work with unstructured and semi-structured data.

So we’re working on adding new JSON Parse and XML Parse tools to help you parse text or XML data into tables or individual fields, allowing you to work with more of your data, no matter what form it’s in.

Bonus: enhancements to existing prep and blend tools

We haven’t just added new tools. We’ve also enhanced existing Prep and Blend tools in Designer Cloud to bring them closer to functional parity with their sister tools in Designer.

In some cases, we heard feedback that certain tools didn’t perform in Designer Cloud the way you’d expect them to in Designer. We heard you loud and clear, and Designer Cloud users will be delighted to find many tools operating more closely to what they would expect. Check out the updated Join tool, the Row-ID tool, the Dynamic Rename tool, and the Find and Replace tool for just a few examples!

Don’t forget the Cloud Platform updates

Designer Cloud is just part of our AI Platform for Enterprise Analytics, now available across all major clouds, including AWS, GCP, and Azure.

With Cloud Execution for Desktop, users can now start workflows in Designer on their desktop, then seamlessly transition to the cloud for collaboration or remote access (or, they can begin in the cloud and seamlessly transition to the desktop for resource-intensive tasks or offline work).

Let’s repeat it again: If you didn’t think Designer Cloud could tackle all your use cases before, now it can! What truly sets Designer Cloud apart is its ability to continually evolve and adapt to its users’ changing needs. There are lots of new use cases available, and more are added all the time. Be sure to check out a free trial of Designer Cloud to try it all for yourself!

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