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Our users should primary look for certified objects. How ever the advanced search does not have the possibility to search for certified objects.

Hi Alteryx team,

 

Currently, there is a possibility to 'bulk certify' assets from the front-end using the Bulk operations functionality. Would it be possible to add also the 'bulk ownership' assignment feature?

 

We are aware that it is possible to assign owners using the Excel bulk upload, however, for a lot of users it is much more convenient and straightforward to do it directly from the front-end application.

 

This would really simplify the governance of assets in a large source systems like SAP HANAs, where certain users own large amount assets. It would enable data stewards to filter the respective assets using the built-in search functionality and assign the owners for the filtered subsets.

 

JanLaznicka_0-1583143440136.png

 

 

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

Establish lineage/relationship between SAP HANA and Tableau (reports)

 

Issue

By default in Connect, we are unable to see data lineage between SAP HANA and Tableau. The standard Alteryx loaders (i.e. Tableau & SAP HANA) in version 2019.2 are unable to detect the HANA object link due to a misaligned naming convention (“::” vs “/”). This specifically occurs when Tableau dashboards are pointed to HANA synonyms (“::”) as opposed to the views (“/”).  

 

Background

In SAP Hana, there are two types of objects – views (which are present in relevant schemas, e.g. “_SYS_BIC”) and synonyms. The synonyms are created for each view by default and always appear to be in the schema “PUBLIC”, however, this is not actually an explicit schema. According to SAP, public synonyms are the official access interface for the system views.

 

When loading the objects from SAP HANA, the object names contain the package name as well as the object name (view etc.). These two are differentiated with a “/” when loaded from the “_SYS_BIC” schema (e.g. “GSTP_VALIDATION/CA_01_C_PDA_GRA_001”), however synonyms from the “PUBLIC” schema are loaded with a differentiator of “::” (e.g. “GSTP_VALIDATION::CA_01_C_PDA_GRA_001”). An example below, where first row is the view and the second row provides the related synonym:

 

clipboard_image_0.png

 

Thus, the lineage is not established when the SAP HANA objects from schemas are loaded (containing the “/”, and at the same time, the Tableau dashboards linked to the synonyms (“::”). This is because the object names are quite clearly different, and the loader doesn’t currently resolve the synonym to view translation (as per standard SAP HANA SQL parsing behaviour).

 

Loading problem analysis (using standard Alteryx loaders)

On SAP HANA side, when running the loader, user can (optionally) define schema name(s) they wish to load, however:

  1. When schema is set as “_SYS_BIC”, the loader only loads the views from this particular schema, with no synonyms.
  2. When schema is left as blank (i.e. no value entered), the loader loads everything, however in the “_SYS_BIC” schema, only synonyms are loaded and not the views.
  3. When schema is set as “PUBLIC”, the loader does not return anything - fails as there is no corresponding schema in SAP HANA (it is only virtual space, not an explicit schema)

The SAP HANA instance in question is very, very large and due to volume limitations, as well as the potential risk of performance degradation, it is not feasible to load everything.

When we’ve examined the H2 staging tables, we find that Connect has loaded (therefore is technically aware of) the synonyms from the “PUBLIC” schema but they are not ever loaded beyond the staging tables. This is obviously required if we wish to represent these relationships within Connect.

 

Idea/Fix:

  • SAP HANA loader – it seems there is a problem of loading synonyms from the “PUBLIC” schema and the loader should be adjusted in order to allow this.
  • Tableau loader – needs to be able to refer to synonyms defined in a SAP HANA data source, meaning whenever there is a “::” in object name and the schema name is blank (i.e. empty string representing the “PUBLIC” schema), then it should be defaulted to “PUBLIC”. This logic would ensure that a schema name is always present, even in cases where the schema name is retrieved as blank (which then would become “PUBLIC”).
  • In case the schema name is left blank for any reason, it should be populated as “PUBLIC”.
  • @DanH suggested to customize the Tableau loader as a temporary fix to replace the “::” with “/”, which is certainly possible but comes with a risk of incompatibility with future releases. Also the customers strong preference is to deliver a solution which only utilises standard loaders.

Hello Alteryx team,

 

would it be possible to include a switch between All Projects and Top-Level Projects views when looking on a Tableau site in Alteryx Connect?

 

JanLaznicka_0-1585737355729.png

 

 

For many users, the navigation in Tableau is through the 'Explore' tab and then Top-Level Projects view rather than All Projects. This reveals the real tree structure of the specific Tableau site. In Alteryx Connect, currently, there are always all projects listed when looking at a specific site, so also sub-projects.

 

The hierarchical structure is already brought in, when opening a workbook, the route includes both projects and sub-projects. The idea is that there would be a switch between the 2 views when looking at a site.

 

Thank you very much for considering this idea.

 

Regards,

Jan Laznicka

 

 

Hi Alteryx team,

 

In Connect, there is a Table Details section of each page within Data sources, however it only shows the size for Files. It is not relevant for databases. Currently, database tables/views always show the size 0.0 bytes, which indicates the table is empty but it is not true.

 

Since it is not relevant, it should not be visible for DB objects at all. Instead, it would make sense to implement some basic statistics of the object like number of rows, number of columns etc.

 

2019-11-06 22_50_55-growth_published.advantaged_assets.png

 

Thank you,

Michal

Hi Alteryx,

 

From 2019.2 version of Alteryx Connect, there is a new functionality of adding custom fields. However, right now, it is only possible to add plain text (text type) in there. 

 

Would it be possible to add there also URLs (hyperlinks)? We want to add new custom fields with hyperlinks pointing to other Connect pages.

 

Thank you

Michal

Hi Alteryx team,

 

Would it be possible to include the "Status" column in all applicable asset lists? Currently, when looking at Tables in SAP HANA, there is a "Status" column containing the certification states. But for example for Views, though certifiable, there is no "Status" column in the list. Applying the same column structure could simplify navigation in the system and also help with operations such as bulk certification, where a user needs to select only assets in the same certification state.

 

1.png2.png

 

Thank you.

 

Jan

 

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

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.

 

 

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.

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).

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.

 

 

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.

I'm using HP Vertica as a data source of Tableau.

 

At this time I'm considering to install metadata management tool in my company.

But there is no name of HP Vertica on available list of Alteryx Connect.

 

I would be grateful if Alteryx could release a metadata loader of HP Vertica.

The share of Vertica increase gradually in Japan.

 

 

 

 

I published a workflow today that scans a directory for files and then pushes them to a Dynamic Input. I noticed that on Connect there is no relationship there anywhere referencing that we are scraping a directory. 

 

Connect has the db inputs and outputs and the "File Input" that references what the Dynamic input is originally set to go find, but there is nothing referencing the directory other than any notes that I have added to the description. 

 

The reason that I think this may be important. We connect to a folder where FTP files are dumped by a powershell script and we want to go through that folder with Alteryx and pull and upload as needed. However the file that existed in the original input (when we created this workflow) no longer exists. So the visual relationship is broken in Connect as soon as that file is dropped. If perhaps we don't have a tool that references this sort of connection to a directory, having the ability to designate a dynamic connection to the original file might be good instead. We just want to be able for those in the future to reference a location, rather than a file that hasn't existed in a while.

 

Directory Input.png

 

We have some scheduled workflows that utilize the download tool for API calls. When we scrape them with connect there aren't any references to them in the "Relationships" or "Data Connections" areas.

 

Even if this is something that would be difficult for Alteryx to scrape through a workflow, I would love the ability to create entities like this and manually connect them as a data source. Like we have some partners where there 10 to 15 API calls are required to pull the entire data set. It would be great to know which workflows reference those APIs so that if changes are made on their side, we can easily identify which workflows are impacted.

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

In order to fully manage our server environment, across hundreds of users, we need to be able to add a flexible set of metadata tags to each App/Workflow/Canvas - this needs to be configured by client environment, and we need to make these fields mandatory when a user submits a canvas to the gallery.

 

For example:

- Division / Subdivision: This is a hierarchical tag that indicates which area this canvas belongs to

- BI Team: Team name from list

- Owner: Kerberos - tied to LDAP

- Business Process: one or more business processes that this canvas belongs to

 

This would allow us to do enterprise-wide monitoring within the context of our environment; and appropriately deal with any failures.

 

CC: @rijuthav @jithinmony @HengHe @RajK @ydmuley @revathi @Deeksha @MPistone @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller @JoshKushner @samnelson @avinashbonu @Sunder_Sriram @Rahul_Thakur @Rahul_Singh

Can't really tell if you've clicked the Like button already...

Seems like it goes from a dark grey to a light black. 

And the tooltip always shows "Like"

 

Please change the Liked object to blue; like when you hover over it. 

And also update the tooltip for Liked objects to say "Unlike".