Risks of Automation within Alteryx

Question

Are there any frameworks available to address risks of automation when building an Alteryx workflow?

For Example:

System Risk: Monitor System Updates outside of Alteryx

Format Change Risk: Error and Control Checks within Alteryx

Maintenance Risk

Expertise Risk

Cost > Benefit Risk

AlterMYX · Answer

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the reply. I was looking for more of a framework to help control external forces on Alteryx. It would be more of a documentation approach as opposed to working a solution in alteryx.

DanM · Answer

@AlterMYX

Thanks for the question. I would reach out to your Sales associate or Account Executive for specific frameworks but I can take a crack at answering your questions.

System Risk: Since Alteryx pulls data from your systems and uses temp files to use in the workflow there is minimal systems risk with pulling data. With writing data you can create alerts to let you know when a workflow has finished and or if someone has run a workflow as an app. There are also tools on the server that can be used to check usage, time to complete a workflow, etc. These logs can be checked as you like.

Format Change Risk: Alteryx has plenty of tools within the workflows to lower risk with automations. From Errors tools that will allow you to create errors to stop workflows based on your parameters, to the Events tab in the Workflow configuration that will email you upon a failure of a workflow with details.

Maintenance Risk: This is also fairly low depending on your data sources and the ability to make workflows dynamic. If you go into building the workflow dynamically with an understanding your data may change then the maintenance can be very low. On the other hand if your data sources are constantly changing schema and or where they are located this can create a lot of maintenance.

Expertise Risk: Not 100% sure what you are referring to here but i am assuming if you have an expert create these workflows then leave the company how will they transfer? Best practices for Alteryx are to document and explain you workflows so that users of any level can troubleshoot or enhance the workflows. There are plenty of tools in Designer to do this as well in the Documentation category.

Cost>Benefit Risk: I can tell you that here at Alteryx we eat our own cake! My team alone has saved more than 4,000 of work by automating manual process using the Alteryx platform. I would imagine most of the Community would be able to reply with similar numbers or better. The cost benefit here is extremely high and unless you're not using the automation at all then theirs the risk.

Hope that helps, but definitely reach out to your account team for a more thorough walk through of the benefits of automating with Alteryx.

DanM