Alteryx Connect Ideas

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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

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

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.

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 

When an Alteryx Workflow/Analytic App is uploaded to the Alteryx Gallery it can be shared with other users. Unfortunately the owner can only see the results of his/her own runs. 

We would like to have the possibility to share the workflow results for certain Apps/Workflows in the Alteryx Gallery with other users. Otherwise the only way to provide these results to the users is via MongoDB.

(Maybe they can be shared within collections or on a user level.)

Deploying Connect on MS SQL Server (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Knowledge-Base/Deploy-Alteryx-Connect-on-MS-SQL-Dat...) we would like to use integrated security option when we setup jdbc connection.

 

For now workaround looks like this:

 

1. Copy the file “sqljdbc_auth.dll” into Alteryx folder:

sergiussrussia_0-1635855989196.png

 

2. Inside SQL Server Management Studio add Active Directory user to logins folder:

sergiussrussia_1-1635855989202.png

 

3. grant him(or her) the rights to connect to database. For test purposes I`ve granted sysadmin role:

sergiussrussia_2-1635855989205.png

 

4. Edit the connect.properties file:

sergiussrussia_3-1635855989206.png

 

Here we don`t need user and password lines at all. We only need to add “integratedSecurity=true”

Because there will be used credentials of user, using which Alteryx Connect was started, not the user which was provided in these red records.

But we still need these two records, because Alteryx will give us an error if it will not see these records inside config file during startup.

That`s why these records still must exist inside connect.properties file.

 

5. Setup Alteryx Connect service to start Alteryx Connect with Active Directory user, for which we granted access in SQL Server:

sergiussrussia_4-1635855989216.png

 

6. Start Alteryx Connect service and check with Ms SQL Profiler the user which is performing requests to database:

sergiussrussia_5-1635855989252.png

It`s Active directory (windows) user.

 

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,

 

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

 

 

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".

 

022501.png

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. 

Would be good to create an Alteryx Connect plugin for Tableau so that you can access Connect from Tableau?  Would improve user experience if the user can access the information catalog without leaving their BI tool.  So for example, have an Alteryx Connect sidebar in Tableau to allow you to search for a table or file then click and add as a data source and immediately start data discovery/analysis.
 
 

Dean has inspired me to want Voice Activated Alteryx Connect so while I'm having my coffee in the morning I can have Alterexa explain the new data sources that were curated yesterday! Please make this happen!

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?

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.

.

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.

 

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.