Alteryx flow only run when particular file is available.

amsrivastava

Hi Folks!!

I have Alteryx flow that will pick the file from the Network directory, irony is, file will be available any time of the particular day (say Monday), time is not fixed, it can be available at any time, may be at 2 AM, 2 PM,4 PM, 5 PM etc.

I need to build a flow that will only run once file is available OR want to build a capability in the flow that will keep on checking the existence of file and execute rest of the logic once file is available.

Other way around, I tried to schedule it from the Alteryx Server, though I have found where to put start and end date but couldn't be able to find where to give frequency (after every 10 min or 20 min etc ) on which Alteryx flow will schedule and execute.

Happy to have solution either at Alteryx Desktop Designer level or Alteryx Server level.

Please suggest how to achieve the required.

Verakso

I am not really keen on having an Alteryx WF scheduled on the server, that checks if a file exists every 20 minutes, there is ought to be a better/smarter way.

I once made a small Windows NT Service written in C#, that triggered an event, once a file was dropped into a folder. Something similar should be easy to Google or having and AI to write, but next question would be, how to trigger that in Alteryx, and I have no experience with that.

But, depending on if the filename is unique every day, one way to make sure it only run once, it to keep the processed filename in a YXDB, and the check whether that file has been processed.
You can then use the Directory Tool to see the files, and the compare with the YXDB, if the file has been processed or not.

Br (ツ)

Thomas