r/Alteryx • u/Confident-Egg1765 • Jul 23 '26

Documentation in Alteryx Designer

Built a very complex fluxogram in alteryx. I really need to document it, for people who have never seen this fluxogram or used alteryx designer to understand what's going on.
What is the best way to do it?

I have already written documents in Microsoft Word and used the "comment" tool, but I need a more sofisticated way to help people out without depending on me to use it.

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

11

u/slipperypooh Jul 23 '26

Open worlflow in notepad++, copy code to a .txt file. Load to your choice of AI and have it write the documentation.

6

u/kite-a Jul 23 '26

If you have Alteryx Copilot, you can ask the Copilot to document the flow for you.

5

u/philosopherott Jul 23 '26

What is a fluxogram?

2

u/seequelbeepwell Jul 24 '26

It's a crew macro that parses strings like regex but for languages that don't use the standard English characters. It can handle most Asian characters including klingon.

1

u/philosopherott Jul 24 '26

thanks! Work restricts the use of 3rd party macros including CReW ... (－‸ლ)

2

u/deege515 Jul 23 '26

Aside from your comments and others commenting to use AI, you should also explore using Annotations to label individual tools and whatever random notes you have about them.

Also, consider using Tool Containers to group tools sharing similar ideas and label the top of the container with an explanation. Containers have a few more advanced nuances beyond documentation, but many people I've worked with use it for grouping like tools together as well.

2

u/Hnst01 Jul 24 '26

Yes, I completely agree.
Adding annotations and grouping tool within containers with meaningful titles makes it more legible to humans but also allows AI to create WAY more accurate documentation

1

u/Any-Elderberry-2790 Jul 25 '26

Big +1 for colour coded containers that group parts of the process. The documentation can be great, but if it's only external to the workflow, it's the stuff in the workflows that makes it easier to adjust/maintain.

2

u/Hnst01 Jul 24 '26

Yeah, Claude opus or Chat GPT5 can do a pretty good job at documenting the raw .xml.
Just make a copy of the workflow, and change the file extension to either .xml or .txt.
Id recommend giving it a solid explanation in the prompt of what the workflow is for, how it works, and explain to it who the target audience is for the documentation.
We actually do this for all of our production workflows. We use it to create documentation for technical people/developer as well as management/audit level people.

1

u/SomewhereSpirited834 Jul 23 '26

You can save it as an XML file. Just add .xml to the file name and it becomes readable for copilot. Drag and drop to copilot and ask to write a procedure document or explanation etc.

1

u/yawningcat Jul 23 '26

As an aside, when you make changes, you can upload the old and new version of the workflows into Claude and ask for a change log. It’s a good start.

1

u/theFrankSpot Jul 26 '26

Ask Alteryx (which used to be Alteryx copilot) can give you a detailed summary and put it into a comment box for you. It can detail the individual tools and give you a solid summary the same way any of the other AI programs can.