Closed Tool Containers are all open when saved workflows are opened back up

[Rob48]

I save and close workflows with some of my tool containers closed and enabled.

I'm finding when I open these same workflows back up to work on them again, my closed tool containers are all open again.  It's very messy and a pain to go back and close them again before working in the file.  Been working in Alteryx for several years and this just started a day or two ago.  It's not all of them, but these are all my own files at my sharedrive that no one else would have access to.

is there some setting I've accidently bumped/changed that I can change back so this stops?  Thanks!

[KGT]

When the workflow has been saved, before you open it, can you open it in Notepad and look for the tool container number? (Search for "29" if the tool container number is 29).

For a container that is disabled, but open, the config would look like this:

<Disabled value="True" />
<Folded value="False" />

This will indicate whether the issue is in the way it is saving, or in the way it is displaying when opened.

[Rob48]

That's not so easy as the WFs I typically work in have many containers it's difficult to know which ones will be open & which closed until I actually open the WF.  I can set up a dummy WF and do some testing based on your suggestion but it will take some time.  I will keep you posted.

[Rob48]

DonnaGill     I think you're on the right track, the issue is sporadic for me so difficult to nail down the exact circumstances but it does seem to occur more often with WFs i've copied & renamed.  I'm going to do some testing when I get a chance based on KGT’s response and provide my findings in this thread

[Rob48]

hello  KGT I had the same issue today, I opened a WF that had a couple containers open that I would not have saved open, here's the situation:

I had a WF open and saved it with the containers in the open/closed status I wanted them to be in.

I renamed and resaved that same WF and did not work in it, so I would have expected the containers to remain in the same status

today I opened the new (renamed) file and a couple of the containers that should have been closed were open.

I opened both the original and the new file in .txt and this is what I saw for the  containers:

in the orignal WF:

<Disabled value="False" />
<Folded value="True" />

in the renamed WF saved:

<Disabled value="False" />
<Folded value="False" />

What does this tell us?

[KGT]

That says that the workflow is saving with a different folded value to the intended. For the actual running, it's only the disabled value that matters, but for usability, it's the folded value. So, the problem seems to be on the saving, not on the open. Given that both @DonnaGill & @Rob48 saw the issue when copying and renaming a workflow, that seems really odd. I can't imagine a situation where those values change without opening and re-saving the workflow.

My hunch was that Alteryx is saving the workflow and not being consistent on that folded value. That may have been the 2023.1 Control Container change, or something else...

The key to any support case is reproducibility, and an issue like this isn't the type where you can just reproduce it when asked. A support question of "Sometimes containers are open when I open a workflow and they shouldn't be" isn't something that would get a positive response. However, if it can be narrowed down to the workflows being in one state and then saved in another state, then that could be tested or reproduced through brute force.

I think it would need to be a support case through My Alteryx, but there is not much point unless you can reproduce the issue. If it really can be narrowed down to "My container is folded, and when I save, it is saved as Folded=False, then that's a specific bug. (This chain will serve as some investigation as well).

There are no end of further questions, but does it get any closer, I'm not sure. 

"Is there consistency on the containers it happens on?" (This could point to something funky with a container setting)

"Are they containers that overlap other containers only?" (Maybe when the workflow initialises the XY values of each of the tools, it gets confused with the placement and so just opens some up)

"Is there Control Containers at all in the workflow?"

[Rob48]

Thank you KGT, appreciate the detailed response. 

I understand the situation better but I'm not clear on my next step.   I would think the My Alteryx  team could reproduce the conditions  that @DonnaGill has also identified and after not too many iterations they would see the same thing that we have with the folded value variances. Or is this issue to uncertain for the team to bother with?

What is your recommendation?

[KGT]

The key is isolating it to happening on save or on open. Without that, you would need to hit someone in a support team with a bit of free time I think, as trying to replicate something that they haven't seen is not in most support teams job description (Not just Alteryx, any company that is big enough to be significantly siloed).

I would log it, with an example of it happening, which the save, check the xml, and open would give. Most files will not change just because the file is open and being worked on (I say most, because some Excel files used to have dates represented differently when you read the file depending on whether it was open or not, but that may have been driver). And so, if a workflow opens with the containers open, then the XML should still be how it was previously. Best case would be to find a workflow where it happens consistently... but that might be dreaming.

The kicker to this is that it's an issue that seems trivial, but is really annoying. When a company like Alteryx tests and demos etc, they have laid out workflows with 50 tools and 7 containers. In the real world, the workflows where this would annoy me the most have 26 containers, some nested within others, and most definitely overlapping if they were all open and are built up over time. Labelling the hurt always helps. Alteryx is a User Experience sale and so if the User Experience is suffering, then that should be top of mind.

I've been trying to keep an eye on this happening on my workflows since reading this post, but haven't noticed it...

[missiecyclone]

I have this same issue. Our workflows are built from templates so all of them are copies from a template but only one template causes the containers to be expanded when opened. The issue is very random in that the same workflow doesn't always produce the issue and not all of the containers become expanded.

[GaryK1604]

I am on 2024.1 and I am seeing the same issue.

[Diederik_vanderharst]

I'm on 2025.1 and facing the same issue. Super frustrating. Following in hope of fix.