Alteryx Connect Ideas

Hi Alteryx team,

Currently, there is the Open button functionality for opening the Tableau projects, workbooks and worksheets. While I understand you may be relying on Tableau API, would it be possible to implement the Open button for Tableau data sources is well?

The idea is that when you click Open in Connect, you will be taken into the Tableau data source or possibly into a new workbook which is connected to this Tableau data source.

Thank you,

Jan

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

Hi Alteryx,

Currently, it is only possible to map first name, last name and email via SAML. Would it be possible to enable mapping of aliases? The idea is, that we cannot map first name and last name with the Full Name field because they are not unique. At the moment, we are pushing email into both Full Name and Email fields, because emails are unique for us. In addition to this, it would be convenient if the Alias(es) field could be mapped via SAML as well. In this way, not only emails but also real names would be automatically present in Connect.

Thank you.

Jan

Hi,

In standard Alteryx Gallery loader (to Connect), would it be possible to implement an option of selecting the public workflows only and ignoring the ones stored in users' private studios?

Thanks

Michal

Hi,

Are you considering building a standard SAP BW loader for Alteryx Connect. I am concious there are some custom solutions available on the market (like DVW loader), but that is not standard and does not allow data lineage with other systems?

Thank you

Michal

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

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

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.

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

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?

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 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.

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.

.

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! :D 

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).

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".

According to the current product functions,

permission management after data search by Connect is not possible.

We request the following functions.

-Added "Approve / Reject" function when Request Access.

-Added a function to set a fixed email address with Cc when Request Access.

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.

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.