Problems with specific Workflows in Designer

From time to time I run into an interesting problem with Alteryx Designer. When I click on some Input Files (e.g. the Text Input of the Output Weekly Challenge 003) my Designer stops working.

This also happens when I try to open a certain Workflow (can't share it here) which works perfectly for others but doesn't load for me at all (this is even on another PC!).

It is always a Workflow specific issue, even reopening/restarting doesn't change it. 95% of all Workflows work perfectly fine!

Does anybody know what could be the reason for this - may be some setting I use on both PCs which leads to a certain problem with loading files/Workflows? Do some of you experience the same problems?

This doesn't occur very often but is quite annoying when it does.

Workflow

Bug

Accepted answers

cclarkalteryx

Hi @FrederikE,

That's an interesting, albeit a frustrating issue you're experiencing. Is this something that's come about recently, or always been the case? What version of Designer do you use and are there any other specific tools or processes which trigger this issue?

I can make a couple of suggestions which could help. Where you've mentioned others opening the workflows fine, could they be using different Designer versions? If you haven't already, upgrading to the latest verison of Designer could help alleviate issues, especially with much older versions being used.

Another option you can explore would be to disable auto configure, which may be what is causing specific tools to stop Desginer as sometimes metadata is cached within a workflow, making it behave strangely. You can do this by going to Options-> Users Settings -> Edit User Settings-> Advanced-> Check Disable Auto Configure. This wouldn't be my first choice but may be worth investigating to see if this prevents some of the stoppages before enabling it again.

Finally, you can reach out to support@alteryx.com where you can raise any potential bugs or issues you're having. They will find it most useful if you can catalouge your issues, keeping a log of the errors as well as providing knowledge with the specific tools and processes you're doing which cause issue, attaching the workflows to the email.

Best,

Chris

Alteryx Solutions Engineer

All comments

cclarkalteryx

Hi @FrederikE,

Best,

Chris

Alteryx Solutions Engineer

FrederikE

Hey @csclark,

Thank you for your input!

The disable auto-configure solution works perfectly. The opening time decreased from 10+min to 1 sec, that's awesome!

It seems to be a good solution since the problem only appears in 1 of 100 Workflows and this way I got a workaround for those few cases. I'll dig further into it what could be causing this.

Actually, I used two different Designer Versions (2021.4 and 2022.1), and both had this problem. It didn't change with the update. With one Workflow this has been a problem for 4 months but didn't bother me too much. But then it appeared a few days ago in a second WF on another PC which confused me a lot.

But now I got at least a good workaround to open the WF.

Thanks!

cclarkalteryx

Hi @FrederikE

Glad to hear that this has helped! If you find that the you need to re-enable the auto-configure and the issue comes up again, I'd recommend letting our support team know as they can feed this information to the product team for bug fixing. Until then happy analytics!

Best,

Chris

Alteryx Solutions Engineer

Quick Links

This months top contributors

atcodedog05 19598

Qiu 15881

binu_acs 15708

MarqueeCrew 13708

apathetichell 13703