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Alteryx Connect Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Connect experts.

New in Connect 2019.1

VojtechT
Alteryx
Alteryx
Created

The 2019.1 release of Alteryx Connect brings several new features worth mentioning and explaining in a bit more detail.

New Configuration Options

Customize the Number of Live-Search Results

You can now specify how many results you want users to see in the live-search. The default value is 7, but if you have a large screen, why not get 15? You can change this value in Administration > Connect Configuration > Instance Settings.

Adjust the Maximum number of child objects in the Nexus diagram

The Nexus diagram that shows the lineage and relationships of assets can be really greedy for machine resources, so there is a limit of 50 objects. You can now change this limit if you want to, and show more objects in the Nexus. Please handle this setting with care. You can modify this value in Administration > Connect Configuration > Instance Settings.

Schedule an Automatic Purge of Inactive Entries

As of version 2018.2, removed assets are not deleted from the system and are instead inactivated. Inactive assets can be purged from your system using the Inactive entries option in the Administration menu. If you don't want to purge them manually, you can specify the period (e.g. 30 days) after which the inactive assets are purged automatically. You can change this value in Administration > Connect Configuration > Instance Settings.

ConfigureSearch Boosting Weights

This one is probably one of the best enhancements in this release. When there are multiple results for your search query (which is almost always), Connect has to determine an order to present the results to the user. For this purpose, there is a boosting mechanism in place which adds scores to each result based on several conditions. The most important one is the type of asset. This mechanism allows you to specify simple rules like "Terms are always higher than Reports". But what if you want it another way? With 2019.1, you can now specify exact results weights in Administration > Connect Configuration > Search Boosting.


The weights are part of the search index, so in order to have the changed weights applied, you have to perform the full re-index of the system, which can take a long time if you already have a lot of content in Connect.


In this release, the mechanism was also modified to boost results which have a full or partial match of the search query with the asset name.

Configure SSL using the User Interface

The Connect installer has a new option to configure SSL and make Connect run using the secured https protocol. Say "Hello!"to convenient, user-friendly SSL configuration, and "Goodbye" toimporting certificates using the command line and modifying configuration files manually.

You can set up SSL as either a part of the standard install/upgrade procedure or independently. You can upload your standard CA-issued certificate, or let the installergenerate a self-signed certificate by itself (Note: a self-signed certificate will not be trusted by end machines by default).

Metadata Loaders

All of the database metadata loaders have been modified to use a new version of Connect tools, which come with Alteryx Designer and Alteryx Server 2019.1. It is necessary to upgrade your Designer and Server instances if you want to use the database metadata loaders included with the 2019.1 Connect release.

Microsoft Azure SQL DWH Metadata Loader

The current MS SQL metadata loader has been modified to support the load of metadata from SQL server in Azure.

Workbook Descriptions are Now Pulled from Tableau

Previously, you could find only the description of a Tableau report in Connect. With 2019.1, you can find also the description of a Workbook.

Macro Files are now Included in the Lineage of a Workflow

The macro files on the shared file system are now visible as a separate object in the lineage of an Alteryx workflow.

Fixed issues

In addition to all of these new features, some of the known issues have been resolved!

Resolved: Windows Authentication Disabled Unexpectedly

If you are using the Windows Authentication method to authenticate users, you may have encountered a situation when this option would become disabled unexpectedly. This was caused by an improper saving of another configurations, which lead to overwriting the Windows Authentication setup. This issue has now been resolved. If you are using Windows Authentication, we recommend upgrading to 2019.1 to avoid this issue.

Resolved: New Assets Saved as Version 2 from the Beginning

If you perform any audit reporting of your content in Connect, you have probably noticed that some of the assets are saved as "Version 2" immediately after the first time they are loaded. This is caused by the attachment, which is uploaded separately and triggers an update event right after the create event. This behavior has been changed in 2019.1. Now your assets should be labeled as "Version 1" until there is an actual change made to the asset.

Resolved: Value too long

Another issue solved in 2019.1 is the too long strings that cause anerror during the load of the metadata. To avoid this situation, we have increased the size of the CATALOG_ENVIRONMENT, the Table Attribute STRING_VALUE, and the Tableau Relations EXPRESSION fields.

Comments
JoTP
8 - Asteroid

When is documentation for 19.2 going to be available? I am specifically interested in the following as we are getting inconsistent email notifications which is causing issues with how we want to use Connect:
Notify on my changes
Notify on system changes

TrevorS
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Hello @JoTP


The 2019.2 documentation is here for you to view!

I hope this helps!

TrevorS

JoTP
8 - Asteroid

Thanks Trevor. I saw that (thought I had posted my question in that topic actually) but it doesn't answer my question.

TrevorS
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@VojtechT

 

 

Could you please respond back on JoTPs question?


Thanks!

VojtechT
Alteryx
Alteryx

Hi @JoTP , 

 

I can describe how it used to work and what was changed in 2019.2, so you could tell me if that answers your question, ok? 

 

Before 2019.2, there was only one notification settings - whether to notify on your own changes, i.e. if you are are the owner of an asset and you change the description - should you be notified about such change? By default no. If you want to be notified, you need to switch on the "Notify on my changes".

But what was happening was that some users used to get a hundreds or notification emails after a run of a metadata loader, because plenty of stuff have been changed. Or sometimes the admin decides to drop everything and load all the assets from a scratch. In such case, users who have ever changed or commented on anything got their inbox flooded by notification emails. 

 

For that reason, there is a new switch "Notify on system changes", which is by default disabled and therefore these notifications caused by system, i.e. changes not done by any user, e.g. mostly metadata loaders, are not being sent. If you wish to receive them, enable this switch. 

 

It is true that there might be a little inconsistency between users created before 2019.2 and after 2019.2. Former users might not have the attribute set properly and therefore even though the switch is disabled, they are still getting the notifications. In such case simple enable->save->disable->save should solve the problem. 

 

Does this answer your question or is there anything in particular you would like me to elaborate more on?

JoTP
8 - Asteroid

Thanks @VojtechT 

That makes it clearer. Would be great to have this information in the documentation, or even better in tool tips. It would also be good to have the generated emails have some sort of prefix or something that would allow them to be filtered from the email client... but I have logged this previously.

 

We have had some inconsistent behaviour even knowing now what these settings are, with users not being notified of changes manually made by other users.... Unfortunately we are waiting on our production licence of Alteryx Connect, so I cannot test further but I will do this when the licence arrives. It may be because the users were set up previously as you mention.