ODBC Connection with ExternalBrowser Authentication Issue

[sjohnston]

Hi,

I am working on setting up a new Alteryx ODBC connection into a Snowflake database.

Issue:

• Our company uses Okta authentication to control role based access to our Snowflake DB
• Each time I connect Alteryx to Snowflake via ODBC, I get an Okta prompt in a browser, 2 second wait, then a redirect back to Alteryx
• The prompt is re-opened in new browser tabs each time Alteryx tests a connection (clicking in or out of an in/output, adding additional tools after a connection, etc) and when it runs through each db connected in/output
• As a result, workflow development and run speeds are both painfully slow and cumbersome

Has anyone else run into this issue with an external browser authenticated connection? If so, is there any way to stop it or store the authentication somewhere?

Thank you!

Shannon

[JakeS · Accepted solution]

Hi @sjohnston

Unfortunately, Alteryx Designer does not have the functionality built in to connect through ODBC using SSO\SAML. These settings will be controlled either by the Driver or Snowflake itself. You may want to ask your IDP why the session doesn't persist, but this is not something that we can control on the Alteryx side of things. 

One thing that you can do to minimize the amount of times you have to authenticate when clicking around and adding tools is to make sure the "Disable Auto Configure" setting inside of the advanced settings in Designer is checked. You can find this by clicking Options>User Settings>Edit User Settings>Advanced Tab:

Checking this setting will stop metadata from flowing through new tools every time something is changed in the workflow. In turn, the Snowflake connection will not ask to authenticate with Okta everytime that you make a change. That being said, when you change the connection or add a new tool, you will have to run the workflow to populate the data\metadata into the tools' configuration window.

Jake 

[Tam]

@JakeS Thanks