Poormans Scheduler

[mutuelinvestor]

I'm a startup that's not in the position to purchase the Scheduler Add-on yet, so I was curious to know what others have done as an alternative to schedule to schedule scripts.  At the inspire conference a couple of years ago, I spoke to a user who was successfully using windows scheduler.  

If you have an approach you are willing to share, I would be very interested to hear about it and the steps required to implement it. 

Thanks,

Jim

[Alanmurrayp]

Hi There,

Have been a user for a no. of months now and alteryx has eliminated many headaches.

Unfortunately a scheduler licence is not in my future and began looking for alternatives.

Have attempted to call an Alteryx workflow using a .bat file  - it seems to kick off however nothing happens ?

Am unsure of the syntax ?

Call "C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\AlteryxEngineCmd.exe" "Z:\Team\Adhoc\Test.yxmd"

Any help would be much appreciated.

[fharper]

without the scheduler/api add-on it won't run from the command line.  Get the CREW macros installed and explore the runner macros.  He found a way around it, just use the macro.  You can get a lot done that way.

[Alanmurrayp]

Hi fharper,

Appreciate the reply.

Will look at the Crew runner macros alright.

I did actually get the workflow to open however I couldn't get it to run automatically on open.

Unfortunately was unable to find any information for run automatically on open / close automatically either.

Thanks again.

[fharper]

That's because there is none.  Alteryx does not want you to have that ability and somewhat begrudgingly allows it via the API/Scheduler option.

you can't run a workflow from command line without the add-on and you can run an App without requiring some interaction, actually I think you might be able to pass the app answers in a command line scenario but it was years ago i was trying and for some reason I never got that to work and we bought the add-on.

I later discovered the CREW macros and he built an exe that works magic to run the flows so that is your free alternative.  Not as nice as building dynamic scripts but you can work with it and get further than before.

With SAS Viya and so many others in and coming to the market perhaps Alteryx will rethink its features and price.

[fharper]

I think it was covered in the earlier post and subsequent posts but you can trigger another workflow on completion of the current workflow, like chaining an app.  But you still have to get the initial flow running.