Alteryx Connect Ideas

Our users should primary look for certified objects. How ever the advanced search does not have the possibility to search for 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...We've found that when we assign an alternative name to an asset, the alternative name becomes the first name listed, and the main name becomes listed within parenthesis. Could this be reversed? As it's always best to have the main name of the asset listed first, then any alternative names/alias to be listed within the parenthesis. It creates visual order having it displayed this way. We've ended up not utilizing the alternative name functionality to avoid any confusion for our users. 

Currently - CustyID, CID(CUSTOMER_ID)

Request - CUSTOMER_ID(CustyID, CID)

Thanks!

Connect currently provides lineage for a datasource at the table level but we would like to be able to have this at a more granular level i.e. the column level so if a specific column changes in the table (e.g. data type change), we are notified of the change and able to identify quickly assets that will be affected.

@SeanAdams @revathi

We had an idea, when you have an yxdb file, you have all the metadata including the field descriptions column from previous formulas or selects, it would be so usefull to have that in connect so that you can easily write a dictionnary from alteryx designer.

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;

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

In order for us to make sense of Connect assets in an environment with hundreds of users; thousands of canvasses and databases etc - we need to strongly categorise and describe every asset using mandatory tags.

Every asset needs to have mandatory tags

- The admin team set up the list of tags which are required for different types of assets 

- For example - every Alteryx Canvas may need Product; Process; Team - every DB table may need Product and Tech Team

Admin team need to be able to define these tags and the acceptable values (which can be a tree)

When searching for assets - these meta-tags need to be available as filters

Example:

• Asset is identified by the scanners and brought into Connect
• Owner is then required to describe their asset using the mandatory tags set up by the admin team
• Product (this is a tree that would be controlled centrally – admin can add or update this list; users have to select 1 or more products that this canvas relates to)
• Business line
• Team (tree based)
• Is this regulatory (Y/N)
• Public / Private
• Plain-text description
• In this case – every asset needs 6 tags; with the taxonomy(valid values) controlled centrally

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

For assets identified in Connect - we are currently not able to identify an asset as being a UAT version of a Prod asset.   Instead, these are listed as 2 completely different assets with no relationship between them.

This will be confusing for consuming users since they won't know which to use; and wasteful for the people capturing data about this asset since they will need to capture the info several times.

Request: Please create the ability to tag a given Alteryx / Tableau / Database server as "UAT / Dev / Prod", which will automatically tag the asset with this type.   Then allow asset owners to relate the prod and Dev version together as the same thing, but in different states.

Thus, when you search you will find 1 asset with several different states rather than 3 assets.

CC: @DavidM @Arianna_Fuller

Would be good to create an Alteryx Connect plugin for Tableau so that you can access Connect from Tableau?  Would improve user experience if the user can access the information catalog without leaving their BI tool.  So for example, have an Alteryx Connect sidebar in Tableau to allow you to search for a table or file then click and add as a data source and immediately start data discovery/analysis.
 
 

It appears that the connect doesn't currently respect the custom URL for any workflows published to the gallery. ie if the url is https://awesomeness.com/datacloud when I select to open a workflow from connect it redirects to  https://awesomeness.com/gallery#!app/<specific app info>

That means whenever I select a workflow to open the link is broken.