Alteryx Connect Ideas

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

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

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

Hi Alteryx team,

Would it be possible to add functionality to restrict selected Designer users/licenses Input Data tool to only show a Connect source/file?

This would remove the risk of users investigating data through Designer that they are not be entitled to, and could be used to support/strengthen a data governance/compliance model by ensuring users are only using vetted data, but still gives each user freedom to self-serve and create their own workflows.

Thanks for considering,

Andrew.

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

Hi,

Would it be possible to implement an option to enable a banner with custom notification for users? This would be meant to inform users about scheduled maintenance windows, that they can experience slow performance (e.g. during metadata loading) or to inform them about any important information. 

Thanks

Michal

We can tag all objects but when we want to find all the objects with a specific tag that is not possible.

In the advanced search it should be possible to search for all objects. with a specific tag.

The tag should be a part to the search boost.

Example. I have 10 tables that I tag "Finance". When users search for finance the tables should appear even though finance is not a part of the table name, column names or description

Connect provides users an ability to Certify/Decertify asset or mark the asset as "Do Not Use". 

Problem Statement: Canvases are published to production gallery and scheduled when there is a need for the output without any single person dependency. but when the canvas output is no longer required, users not always remove the canvases or schedules from production gallery. 

Idea: In order to ensure the Server is utilized only for those canvases that are in use, we would like to have a re certification process of assets at regular intervals. eg. Re certification of a canvas required every 6 months from the date of publication to gallery. 

With Connect - we can request users to certify or decertify or mark as Do not use but we will not be able to capture or track the re certification of an asset.  

Ask: Functionality in Connect to recertify assets at regular intervals or ability to decertify assets in bulk based on the publication date, so that we can request the users to certify again.  

 cc: @SeanAdams @jalvarezv  @LizaNemchynova @AshwiniChezhiyan @Kosi

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).

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.

Connect applies a standard set of weightings to different categories of information (people, terms etc.) when returning search results. When combined with likes/dislikes, these determine the order in which results are returned - details below:

Alteryx Connect uses the following scoring parameters for the Lucene engine:

• Likes and Dislikes, using the following formula: (Number of Likes) / (Number of Likes + Number of Dislikes).
• Certified assets: +1.2
• Person: +2.4
• Term: +2.2
• Report: +2
• Report sheet: +1.8
• Alteryx workflow: +1.5
• Table: +1.4

It would be useful to have control over this weighting, e.g. when you have large numbers of Person records being returned before Terms; but advice from Customer Support has been that these are not currently customisable. I'd like to request that this ability be considered for inclusion in a future release of Connect.

If files/tables with the same name are registered, it is impossible to identify on the data sources list.
Our client would like a feature that to classify data sources by folder as like "All Schemas, Tables and Views".

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

PowerBI Report Server is now offered as an on-prem solution. It would be great if there was a loader available to capture PowerBI reports not in Azure. If this could also capture SSRS reports which also reside on the PowerBI Report Server this would also be very beneficial.

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

Currently, the Files Loader in Connect loads all files in a directory regardless of whether they are used in an asset (e.g Alteryx workflow, Tableau dashboard, etc). This becomes a problem when you have folders containing hundreds or even thousands of files that may not actually be linked in anyway to Alteryx or Tableau as those are all populated into Connect.

It would be beneficial if the Files loader was more selective about what files to load into the Connect UI by picking up file relationships discovered using the Alteryx and Tableau loaders for example.

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.

It would be great if we can have a conversation feed like twitter or yammer in Alteryx Connect Homepage!!! That will up the social platform a notch. #PleaseMakeItHappen! 😄 

The current "File_Loader" only pushes data to the Data Sources section in connect. We have a number of reports that are stored in a file location. Our current option is to bring the report into connect under 'Data Sources' and manually move them to 'Reports'. We have to do this every time the file_load is ran. Additionally, the are currently shown as inputs to workflows when they should be outputs.

Having a file loader for Reports would be greatly beneficial to document within the Connect Platform.