Asset sniffing & Injestion

[SeanAdams]

The asset sniffers are currently rudimentary - they are Alteryx Analytical Apps which need to be created by the admin team and then scheduling these.

This could be better controlled by a simple UI in the Connect Admin portal rather than requiring users to create their own jobs in Alteryx to do the sniffing. 

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

[KylieF]

Hi @SeanAdams 

Could you please clarify what you mean by asset sniffers and the behavior or functionality they relate to?

Also if you have developed them, could you please link the Analytic Apps that you've developed to complete this functionality? 

Our product team is very interested in updating the existing functionality of Connect but would appreciate further clarification on what specific functionality you believe needs improvement in this idea.

[SeanAdams]

Hey @KylieF 

The sniffers in question are also called Scanners or Harvesters etc - these are the jobs that go out to your alteryx server; your Tableau server; shared drives etc - and then report what they find to Connect.

There are several areas where these harvesters / sniffers could do with an uplift:

a) Derived assets:   If I have an alteryx canvas or a Tableau dashboard which use a DB connection and DB tables - the Tableau dash / Alteryx canvas will be registered in Connect - but the Database TAble will not be.   The DB table will only be registered in Connect when you scan the entire DB.    This is unnecessary, and needlessly reduces the capability of the product

b) same for files

c) Other data sources - Sharepoint; APIs etc?

d) Field level traceability

e) Delta feeds to make this faster (so that your catalog can be updated in near-real-time)

f) field level lineage

g) Ability to recognize the same asset in Dev / Prod.    IF you have a dev and prod Alteryx env - and you run Connect harvesters / sniffers against both - they would register the same asset twice

h) Trigger a workflow to fill in the details.   When you harvest a canvas that has never been seen before, the owner would then receive a task to fill in the mandatory meta-data.