Alteryx Connect Ideas

Alteryx Connect has option for bulk export and import to and from Excel, but doing so is a manual operation.

This idea is to provide Designer connectors that operate like the Connect bulk export and import.

This would allow Connect content to be reported and improved using automation.

The metaloaders provided with Connect do a fine job doing loading a generic extract from many sources.

This new feature would allow Connect customers to improve on that generic extract without making changes to the metaloaders. 

Customer changes to metaloaders makes installing new releases expensive and risky.

Hello!
I have a potential feature enhancement for the database-based Metadata Loaders. This has been tested with the PostgresSQL loaders, however I suspect this is something that is reflected across all database loaders.

This suggestion is simply for constraints of the fields to be brought into connect, with the names of the fields. So for instance the following:

is visible in Connect as:

What would be nice is two additional columns, 'Not Null' and 'Primary Key'. Or alternatively, a 'constraints' column, that contains these constraints, so that it does not have to be documented manually following an import.


Thanks,
TheOC

Hello Alteryx Team,

Would you consider creating a metadata loader for Databricks? I can imagine this being a part of the Analytical workflows section and be catalogued in a similar way like Alteryx workflows. On a number of clients, we are seeing Databricks jobs being used as a complement to Alteryx workflows and a possibility to have them both catalogued in Alteryx Connect would be of great benefit.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

Hello Alteryx,

The Alteryx loader does an excellent job capturing the Data Connection information from workflows and visualizing the data in Connect. It would be an additional benefit if the Data Connection information could get more granular and include the columns utilized from each table in the workflow.

An example where this will provide valuable benefits:

If you have a table with 100 columns and it's utilized extensively in more than 50 workflows, how do you analyze the impact when you're notified that column ABCXYZ is going to be altered? Connect can tell me which workflows are using the table, but it can't tell me which workflow is specifically using column ABCXYZ.

This would greatly aid users who may be searching workflows for specific column usage.

Thank you,

Jason

It would be great if the File loader could recognize the SQL file extension to read and display the SQL script in Connect. An example would be similar to how the DDL is visible when you look at views in Data Sources. This would provide a large benefit when researching overall data usage and mapping to other data sources and workflows.

The addition of the On-Premise PowerBI loader is very beneficial. The current loader grabs PBI workspaces, workbooks, dashboards, and database connections all important to the PBIX files. It would also be an huge benefit if Connect could capture Paginated Reports (RDL file extension) information. 

Thank you.

Jason Melik

Hello Alteryx team,

Can you please includeSAP Crystal Reports loader in the Connect for Future Release.

Thanks

Sri

Our Data Catalogue in Connect has about 2 millions items (tables, views, columns).

I see next issues:

1. We collect metadata from about 10+ DBMS. So after each Metadata loader run, Alteryx Connect will start load_alteryx_db script and process whole staging area (DB_*) tables, not only current extracted metadata set from single DBMS. It will lead huge redundancy.
2. Follows from first issue: One-by-one comparison of loaded metadata will take a lot of time in real environment with 1-2 millions items (ordinary situation in large Bank). And this comparison will be executed several times. It will increase the redundancy in the number of DBMS servers.

3. All queries in this script containing column or table name as a parameter (e.g. src.TABLE_NAME='${query_table_name}' AND                                 src.COLUMN_NAME='${query_column_name}') will be executed as many times as number of columns in Data Catalogue (millions times). It will work very slow because it executes a lot of queries.

Can you optimize somehow this process?

Hello Alteryx Team,

We would like to be scheduling the loaders from the administration console, Connections tab. However, when scheduling from there, the loaders are being sent to the Alteryx Gallery under low priority and therefore can easily end up in a queue. As we are scheduling a number of loaders that run for a significant amount of time, it is essential to have the schedules set on precise times and have a certainty that they will not end up in a queue. However, the low priority in the Gallery prevents us from doing that.

It would be great if there was a priority switch directly in the Connect's Connections section, where it would be possible to select how prioritized should the loaders be in the Alteryx Gallery. Also a possibility to select a specific worker would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

It would be very useful to have a standard metadata loader for chained workflows or apps.

Currently the Crew Macro Conditional runner or the Alteryx Event/CMD based workflow/app chaining or the chaining from interface designer do not have a corresponding metadata loader. 

At the moment the only option of creating a nexus for chained apps or workflows is to manually create the links between various assets and workflows. This can be highly tedious depending on the number of workflows/apps being chained, inputs and outputs involved in each workflow and also error prone.

This creates a sort of blindspots in terms of end-to-end metadata management and showing true lineage when using chained Alteryx apps/workflows.

As the chaining of workflows and apps is a major timesaver and helpful tool to break down larger jobs into smaller manageable jobs it would be massively useful to have a corresponding metadata loader.

Many thanks,

Gourab

Version upgrade of metaloaders gets difficult when customers change or add tools to already complex metaloader workflows.

Please better support customer customization by placing macros in the metaloaders at critical points

• just after data input
• just before data output

These macros would do nothing except pass data in and out

with the intent that customers build these out as they need to improve the resulting data catalog.

Most customer modifications could fit within limits of what these macros could do.

It would be easier to upgrade version when most often it only required replacing entire macros that had been modified.

The improvement would be worth the nominal impact on performance.

Where performance is a problem, un-customized macros could be removed.

.

Hello Alteryx Team,

Would you consider creating a metadata loader for SharePoint? A lot of companies that we are working with have a lot of data stored in SharePoint and they would like to catalog their metadata.

I am aware that it is possible to use the Files Loader when the SharePoint drive is mapped as a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, but the mapping and subsequent scheduling is very problematic, also because of security policies in large enterprises.

Having a SharePoint dedicated loader would be a great benefit.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

The Alteryx Connect loader (found under help / sample workflows etc...) is set up to be run in interactive mode as an analytical app.

However; on any installation of a reasonable size - these loaders will be scheduled to run without user intervention.

Given the fact that Analytical Apps are not easy to schedule (given the interactive nature of the inputs) - it makes sense to provide a version of the loader that is ready out-the-box to be scheduled and run hands-free (built and tested as a yxmc file).

Many thanks

Sean

Hi Alteryx team,

Would it be possible to implement custom URL in the HDFS loader when using Knox Gateway? This could be implemented in the same way as in the normal Input Data tool.

When connecting to HDFS using the Input Data tool, the URL is automatically generated, however, it is possible to change it. Sometimes this is necessary as the 'sandbox' part of the URL is for some companies not applicable, they have for example their company names instead of it:

However, in the Alteryx Connect HDFS loader, this is not possible as there is no such field in the interface:

The 'sandbox' part of the URL is then automatically brought through 2 formula tools:

This makes it impossible to load the HDFS metadata into Connect using the out-of-the-box Alteryx loader. Implementing a field into the interface like in the standard input data tool would solve this problem.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

Hi Alteryx team,

It would be great to have a loader for Azure HDInsight. I am aware that there is a loader available for HDFS but a lot of companies are migrating to HDInsight.

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

Hi Alteryx team,

It would be great if it was possible to load SAP HANA systems using ODBC DSN instead of the normal host name.

From our experience, there is often more than 1 node present for SAP HANA systems and when entering the master node into the loader interface, we can't easily switch to a failover node when an unexpected event happens. Sometimes, it is not only the matter of nodes but for example a migration of an instance to cloud might result in a different host name. As a consequence, the loadcode is different and it is not possible to migrate the previous enrichment to the asset pages created under the new loadcode.

A solution for this would be the possibility of loading SAP HANA systems using the ODBC DSNs (this is already possible for example for Hive and it would be great if it was available for all applicable systems).

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

Hi Alteryx team,

would it be possible to include a project filter in the Tableau loader? Currently, the loader brings in all the projects from the selected sites. However, we have come across a situation when each department in a company has a couple of projects that they do not want to load.

The idea is that it would be possible to list the names of the projects that won't be loaded. It could be done in a way that all the projects containing the listed words won't be loaded. This would give us the possibility to, for example, not load the projects containing 'Ad hoc' in their names.

We are aware that we might keep these projects 'invisible' using permissions, however, for operational purposes we believe that the project filtering capability would be much better.

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

Hi Alteryx team,

Would it be possible to implement an overview table with a complete history of metadata loads? I can imagine there could be a table in the administration console (in Jobs) where you could see the history and number of runs for each source system so that it can be referred to at any time when you need to know the frequency and past runs?

Thank you

Michal

Hi Alteryx team,

I understand that tags applied in the Alteryx Gallery are a completely different tags from the tags within Connect.

Would it be possible to sync these two and when loading Gallery metadata into Connect (workflows), load and apply also the tags?

Thank you

Michal