This blog series is AlteryxTips, a weekly series that delivers Alteryx tips from time to time.
Alteryx Copilot, which was announced at Inspire 2024, became generally available (GA) in version 2025.2 and was rebranded as “Ask Alteryx” at Inspire 2026.
It can be used for free with version 2025.2 and an Alteryx One subscription.
How do you use this function? It’s very easy. Input the textbox, AskAlteryx will respond!
Ask Alteryx is not only implemented at Designer Desktop but also the Alteryx One app is.
In this blog post, “Data Awareness” is turned on. This feature samples workflow data and sends it to the LLM, which improves the accuracy of the AI. However, because some data is sent externally, please be careful when handling confidential data. That said, you can rest assured that the transmitted data is not used to retrain the LLM. Please use this feature after confirming your organization’s data handling policies.
Creat a workflow
At first, I loaded some files such as store.csv, receipt.csv, category.csv, and product.csv in advance.
Using these files, let’s try grouping and aggregating data using fields from different files, as shown below.
As a result, it looked at the fields in the files and created the workflow exactly as intended, as shown below.
By the way, while the workflow is being created, a full history remains, showing whether each attempt succeeded or failed, as shown below.
It seems to be good at workflows that involve joins and similar operations.
Since it appears to recognize the data on the canvas, metadata and similar information seem to be used automatically behind the scenes.
Handling errors
Actually, the code page which files loaded earlier were UTF-8, so the text was garbled. Let’s ask Ask Alteryx how to handle this.
It explained the solution properly and even changed the settings automatically. Previously, it did not go as far as changing settings, so I feel it has improved significantly compared with a year ago. However, as expected, it did not tell me about the existence of the ConvertFromCodePage function.
By the way, when you talk to Ask Alteryx, even if you switch workflows, it remembers the previous conversation and will pull you back to that one, so it’s recommended to reload Ask Alteryx when you switch workflows.
Asking for general solutions
Next, let’s try spatial analysis “I want to extract the five customers closest to each store”.
The results are as follows, and the process stopped midway.
What’s interesting here is that, although “geocode.csv” wasn’t initially added to the canvas, the AI retrieved it itself from the same folder as the other input files. In other words, it identified the folder containing the other input files, set that folder in the Directory tool, identified a list of files in the same folder, and automatically loaded the file named “geocode.” Quite clever, isn’t it?
And now it’s asking to continue because it’s still in progress. There’s a button in the bottom right that says “Yes, Add Find Nearest,” so let’s press it.
It was added successfully.
I had a few unnecessary files, so I asked, “Can you delete unnecessary tools?”
AskAlteryx deleted them properly. Excellent!
I don’t like the arrangement; is there anything that can be done? Let’s ask, “Can you arrange the tools neatly and make them easier to see?”
The result is here.
If you adjust it by hand, the containers fit together quite well, as shown below.
Making documentation easier
Next, to make documentation easier, let’s have it add annotations to each tool.
The result is excellent. This will save a tremendous amount of time.
Now, what about containers?
This also looks good.
It looks like it can be used actively for documenting workflows.
Handling an error occurring in a specific tool
There is a tool showing an error, so let’s ask why.
It responded properly. Since errors come in many patterns, I think the only way to know which cases it can handle is to try it in practice.
Trying a vague question
As also mentioned in Alteryx’s blog, I was able to ask what kinds of analysis could be performed.
For simple analyses, it will generate the workflow automatically, but for tools that AskAlteryx doesn’t support, such as market basket analysis, it struggles to configure the settings properly, so it’s better to just get instructions on how to do it.
Asking for SQL and regular expressions
In no-code tools, SQL and regular expressions can be somewhat challenging elements. These are areas where AI excels, and if you explain what you want to do with SQL or regular expressions, it will teach you how.
Let’s ask AskAlteryx to create SQL for Microsoft SQL Server.
It works properly. However, when actually running it, it works as is in SQL Server Management Studio, but in Alteryx’s Input Data tool, the table name must be specified with the full path, so it did not work there.
Next, I asked about regular expressions. I asked, “I want to extract only the destination URLs from an HTML file using regular expressions.”
Can it solve Advent of Code?
Finally, there are challengers who solve Advent of Code, which is originally a programming puzzle, in Alteryx for the purpose of improving their Alteryx skills. I am one of them. So, can AskAlteryx solve it?
I entered Part 1 of Day 1 from 2015 exactly as it was. The result is shown below.
It successfully solved it. The answer was also correct. Part 2 as well…
Excellent!
Tips for good prompts from the Alteryx blog
Finally, I would like to quote tips for effective prompts from the Alteryx blog.
- Be Specific: Provide clear and concise instructions to ensure accurate results.
- Iterate: If the initial response isn’t perfect, refine your prompt and try again.
- Leverage Context: Mention the tools or datasets you’re working with for better-targeted assistance.
- Experiment: Don’t hesitate to test new ideas or workflows with the Copilot.
The first tip is to be specific. The second is to refine your prompt and try again if the response you receive is not perfect. The third is to mention the tools and datasets you are using. If you clearly write the prerequisites, the response will take them into account. The fourth is to test and try various things with Ask Alteryx.
Conclusion
- I tried out AskAlteryx in various ways.
- It configures tools, creates workflows, and even runs them. Previously, there were cases where it did not create workflows, but its accuracy seems to have improved.
- It explains errors and how to use features.
- It teaches complex tasks such as SQL and regular expressions.
- The accuracy of generating code such as Python has also improved compared with before. However, due to the nature of the Ask Alteryx GUI, it does not accept tabs, so the generated code cannot be pasted and used as is. That said, it also explains points to keep in mind when implementing the code in Alteryx’s Python tool, so it is reasonably useful.
- Supported tools are listed here. The lineup includes input/output, preparation, join, parse, transform, documentation, spatial, and developer categories. Some tools are unsupported even within supported categories.
- Its accuracy has improved significantly since the preview period, so let’s keep using it more and more!
The Next Post will be…
A tiny tips about UI.
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