Freeze sections of workflows with missing tools

[cslunger]

If a macro or tool is missing in a workflow, all configuration and connections of said tool is broken, and if you save, all previous configurations and connections are lost.

I am proposing all connections and configurations of these tools are instead 'frozen'; all connections and configuration are saved but not editable (with the exception of deleting them). This would allow collaboration with users who do not have the tool/macro.

Additionally, functionality to be able to manually point towards another tool and maintain the connections/configurations (in case you have the same macro versioned or named differently) would be nice.

[jdrummey]

+1. This is really painful to run into in a complex configuration because there's no way to recover from it other than by opening up the original workflow XML or having one of the original creator/editor(s) open up the workflow.

There are two places where this shows up for us:

1) When a new user hasn't configured our standard macro folders as part of their set up. We're using Alteryx in a distributed environment where macros are shared via synced folders (on Box).
2) When a workflow editor didn't make sure that all dependencies were set to relative before saving the workflow & sharing it.

There are multiple times when someone has run into the black icon with question mark, saved the workflow (without knowing that would make a destructive change), and then we've had to go to a backup to restore the original workflow to get the configuration back.

Jonathan