Shared Drives No Longer Accessible Within Workflow

[Indira]

I am using Alteryx Admin Designer Version: 2018.3.5.52487 Running Elevated. A few of my coworkers and myself have been encountering an issue where our input files located on a shared drive cannot be found when running a workflow even though these drives are mapped and accessible within file explorer. At times, it runs perfectly and at times, we get this error. Does anyone know a permanent fix? 

Thanks, 

Indira

[DiganP]

@Indira Its recommended that you use UNC paths for network drives. A UNC path uses double slashes or backslashes to precede the name of the computer. The path (disk and directories) within the computer are separated with a single slash or backslash, as in the following examples. 

For ex: \\servername\path 

[BrandonB]

Is it possible that network issues could be causing these problems? Is your team connected through a VPN?

[danilang]

Hi @Indira 

This seems to Windows issue as opposed to an Alteryx one.  When any program is run in elevated mode, any user defined drive mappings aren't visible.

Here are my 8 available network drives when using file explorer

This next image is from File->Open in MS Word run as administrator.

There are only 6 drive mappings available. The 2 missing drives are ones that I added myself through Map Network Drives.  The 6 that are visible are drives that are mapped using an Active Directory GPO that my IT department set up.  

Windows somehow makes the distinction between the GPO drives and user mapped drives.

Dan

[hellyars]

@danilang 

Is this still an issue in 2023?  It appears so.

Literally every other app on my PC can see and access my SMB mapped drives.

Alteryx is the only app that can't.