Alteryx Connect Ideas

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

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?

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,

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Thank you,

Michal

Hi Alteryx team,

Currently, Alteryx Server loader is pulling quite a several different types of information (e.g. date uploaded, number of runs, last run date, published version etc.).

Would it be possible to add the information about the workflow schedule? It would contain the frequency of how often it is scheduled to run on the server (if applicable), for others, it can be "not scheduled" or something.

Thank you

Michal

In the Alteryx Gallery we have the ability to place workflows in Districts or Collections. This structure should be maintained in Connect. Similar to how Data sources are managed, instead of Data Source Servers, you have an area to select and filter by the various collections and districts in which workflows are contained.

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

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:

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.

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".

Hi, 

I understand it is possible to integrate the users from active directory into Connect but there is no functionality to import actual user groups. Is that something that can be added to the roadmap?

Thanks

Michal

Alteryx notifies thumbs up but does not notify the owner of a thumbs down.... We think this makes sense to have as consistent so that the owner can follow up on issues with the asset, and/or have it removed.

When we were demo'd Alteryx Connect, I am positive that the person demonstrating said that users would be notified of @ mentions. Turns out this is not the case (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Discussions/Tagging-people-in-comments-is-broken-in...)

Given that the Connect brochure promotes the "familiar social interactions" I find this super puzzling that tagging people in does not do what pretty much any other social tool does - let the person know that they have been tagged into the conversation.

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

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.

If you remove the configuration of the SMTP server while you are in development, (the current solution to spamming users with notifications during the setup period of the data catalog) then put the SMTP server configuration back in when you are finished setup, all the changes that have happened in the interim will not be sent as a bulk send. This a risk when an email server is unavailable for a period of time that notifications for changes/comments/tasks will be missed.

Once the ability to switch notifications on and off is implemented, I think it would be worth reviewing how feasible this is.

The email notifications that are received are not easily marked or flagged/prefixed as coming from Alteryx. I expect that this may be on purpose so that data owners can't "hide" from changes/comments on their areas of expertise, but from a time management point of view, it would be good to be able to flag them in some way so that a rule can be run on them in the users inbox, and they can batch up their reviews/answers.