Alteryx Connect Ideas

This would be a great improvement for Connect.

We spend hours on structuring the content within Alteryx Connect so that it serve all users.

We group schemas and databases into themes like "Sales", "Finance", "HR" and so on.

This makes it very easy for users to find what data we have available.

The same we do for workflows, macros and other content.

The problem is that our metadata loaders run every day to make sure our data is up-to-date.

Each run resets custom grouping. Making organizing content totally pointless.

Please vote for this idea

Certified objects should appear in the top of any search.

Today it has no effect on the search if a object is certified. Certified objects should be boosted in the search.

In the administration console, Connect configuration, search boost it should be possible to ad weight to certified objects

Hello All,

We are new to Alteryx and we could see that the Supported Data Sources from IBM are of below :

• IBM DB2
• IBM Netezza/Pure Data Systems
• IBM SPSS

How about adding IBM Sterling to this?

We want Alteryx to support connection with IBM Sterling OMS which will help the Business requirements

Can anyone post some suggestions on this? How we can connect to Sterling?

Thanks,

Praveen C

Hello,

I'd like to suggest a "view as" on each page (like facebook) or a clear identifier that only certain people can view page. 

As an admin, I have to set permission setting for different group. It would be helpful to clearly see the permission setting as sometimes I forgot. 

Thank you.

If you remove the configuration of the SMTP server while you are in development, (the current solution to spamming users with notifications during the setup period of the data catalog) then put the SMTP server configuration back in when you are finished setup, all the changes that have happened in the interim will not be sent as a bulk send. This a risk when an email server is unavailable for a period of time that notifications for changes/comments/tasks will be missed.

Once the ability to switch notifications on and off is implemented, I think it would be worth reviewing how feasible this is.

Unavailability of Connect during H2 DB backup (using backup button in administration console as described in documentation - https://help.alteryx.com/connect/current/Administration/DBBackup.htm?tocpath=Administer%7C_____8) while even View is not possible, no matter the capacity of Java Virtual Maschine, can be limiting while large number of data is stored (so backup and following rerun takes a lot of time).

Our client is considering introducing Alteryx Connect.

They are considering sharing metadata to thousands of users.
So it is not realistic for administrators to create accounts one by one.
Therefore, we want the function to import user lists.

Initially we considered connection with AD,
However, we could not be used because users and server of Alteryx Connect belong to different domains.

Therefore, we want the ability to import user lists.
Or, we want an extension to import account information in AD into Alteryx Connect.

When Alteryx connect is first installed to a company with a small alteryx designer base, you do not benefit from lineage.

There are not much workflows at hand. So in order to realize Alteryx connect's immediate benefits I'd like to suggest;

a company-wide Data Quality Score.

1. Let's score each data element in distributed data stores
2. And automatically give a simple scale between one and five
   • 1 equals to, “we don’t know”
   • 2 data is entered or updated prior to 1 year, has conflicting data
   • 3 would be the norm and means customer provided this data, as accurate and as up-to-date as they have entered it and ‘agreed’ to share with you.
   • 4 means we cross checked the data with 3rd party sources or the addresses work in Google Maps”.
   • 5 equals to “we had the customer or the representative validated the address in last 3 months”.
3. The scale will be based on;
   • Missingness
   • Information value (variance is high or not, if there is no variance no info useful thru the column)
   • How many times that column is addressed in other tables
   • Format (structured like a telephone number ###-##-## or semi structured like an address)
   • Is it an ID column
   • Is it a Datetime column, any discrepancies in date time columns etc.
   • Time since last update of data
4. Once we have some lineage information than we'll weight th data based on how frequently it's needed, how many formulas are requiring the field etc.

And as soon as we install connect we'll have a grand vision of our data and even we'll be able to track the status of our whole distributed data assets with a trend line if we are going better or worse... Here is an example;

@OndrejCsummarizes connect as "a state-of-the-art Data Catalog with a social twist".  

I define it in a broader fashion as data analytics social network, a collective intelligence or #datahive...

I would propose adding Analytics projects and related documents and the relevant relationship data;

• Project charter,
• Solution approach document,
• Data dictionary,
• Project timeline (a gantt chart etc.)
• Roles & responsibilities

 into the picture so that any team can track their Data Science project progress there...

 Here is a nice process flow view of a DS process

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/team-data-science-process/overview

 A Microsoft Project view of the Analytics projects at hand...

Our department has a site that manages request access to database, application...etc. The user will have better experience with the tool when they can click on the request access button and it directs them to the form that we use. 

Wouldn't it be great if Alteryx Connect can show badges earned in a user profile like how you have it in the Alteryx community? It would give people more incentive to contribute their knowledge and engage in the tool. This also give visibility to the leaders. 

It would be great if there is a way to highlight all the certifications ( ex. Alteryx, Tableau...etc.) that our users earned in their profile. This will help promote data literacy in our community and help users connect to the experts. 

Connect has the ability to visually see 1 level of dependancy (in the Nexus view).

For an asset owner - it is very important to be able to see ALL upstream / downstream dependancies to be able to understand impact.   Key here is answering the question "who will be impacted if I change XX"

This should include asset; owner; and depth - preferrably in a tree format.

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

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

Connect offers functionality for users to chat about data & analytical assets.

However - in order to meet regulatory obligations in a regulated Financial Services company - this communication needs to be surveiled by compliance.

Please could  you provide an API for this data to be monitored by compliance teams in near-real-time?

cc: @dataMack

 @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

In a large environment- especially an analytical environment - copies of data will often appear in multiple places.    an example of this is where a copy of a shared dimension or a shared piece of reference data is copied in multiple different data marts.

In order to manage this - we need to be able to mark these as copies of each other so that we can point folk to the golden-source; and so that we don't need to document this asset multiple different times.

Example:

- Client List appears in the data lake; on the Sales data mart; on the Finance data mart; etc

- We would want to group all 3 of these together; and mark the Data Lake version as the master; and all the others as copies.

User experience:

• When I navigate to any Sales assets - it tells me that the Client List is a data asset which is used
• When i click on this - it tells me that the sales version is a copy - and directs me to the one on the data lake

NOTE: There are circumstances where a copy may be deliberately filtered or incomplete (for example - regional subsets of clients) - in this case the relationship needs to be "Partial Copy" not "Copy"

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

In order to ensure that assets are managed through the process from discovery through correct tagging - a configurable workflow is required to ensure that this process can be managed.

•  Asset Owners
• When an asset is discovered – first step is to associate an owner.
• If the database already has an owner, and this is a new table – default to the DB owner.   For Tableau or Alteryx assets you can see the owner from the canvas.    If no owner is obvious - this then goes to an Admin to assign an owner
• Owner can re-assign
• Needs to be two owners for every asset
• Once the owner is confirmed – meta-data needs to be captured
• Then this needs to be checked against standard taxonomy
• Then this description is pushed out
• Admin team need to be able to spot and manage items which are not yet correctly captured or described

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller