OneDrive Connector

[Zas3nfkb]

Hello,

I had an idea and I am sorry if I classified the enhancement incorrectly. In many of our solutions, we are using OneDrive as a source of our input/output files due to its ability to have folder permissions set by the end users, its flexibility in storage space, as well as others. These workflows run great locally as we have the folders mapped to our local machine however we currently don't have a way to connect directly to them on the server. I know there is a OneDrive connector that leverages a Client ID and Secret key however we have not had much luck leveraging them. Would it be possible to create a OneDrive Connector that functions similarly to the Publish to Tableau Server or the SharePoint connector that leverages user credentials and allows you to read and write from OneDrive folders and interface with them similar to a standard Input/Output tool? 

[KylieF]

Thank you for your feedback!

I've moved your idea over to the correct board since all our data connection based enhancements are reviewed and completed by our Designer Data Connectors team. We greatly appreciate the feedback though on how we can improve our connecters and understand use cases where some might be failing the average user. It also looks like you're relatively new to the idea boards, so welcome, if you haven't yet be sure to check out our Submission Guidelines as it both goes over what we are looking for in an idea as well as next steps after an idea has been posted!

[VojtechT]

Hi @Zas3nfkb ,

we have a Beta version of completely new OneDrive connector. 

If you're willing to test it out, please follow this link: https://betaprogram.alteryx.com/key/DataConnectors 

Although the connector can be leveraged in Server, it requires Designer 21.4, which is not released yet. For using it in Designer only you'd need Designer 21.2

Could you please elaborate on the last question? Would you expect to download the files locally and process them using the regular Input tool? Because yes, that is possible with the new version.

Thank you,

Vojta

[Zas3nfkb]

Hi @VojtechT, 

Thanks for the chance to test the beta version! I have signed up. 

Ideally I would like to process the files directly using the OneDrive tool so as to eliminate the need to map the OneDrive folders to our PC and to allow the OneDrive folder to be accessible on the Alteryx server. 

[cjayachandran]

We would like to use the OneDrive files in the Alteryx workflows. Our server version is 2020.2.3. We would like to know, how to use the OneDrive folder to be accessed from the server if the workflows are published to the server. The application runs with a service account and that account does not have access to OneDrive files that user-created with his/her own account.

[salbol1]

@cjayachandran I'm pretty sure what you are running into is an issue associated with how the environment where your server is treated by your IT teams. The battle I was dealing with was being able to establish persistence in a datacenter environment, which our IT considered "unmanaged" because that environment was not subject to IT image updates from Microsoft and other SW providers. Within our company it ultimately came down to the issue of licensing users on these different SW platforms, and I decided to give up that losing battle and instead opted for purchasing a 'Desktop Scheduler' product from Alteryx to go along with the licensed server environment we have. You need to contact your account rep to be able to acquire one of those licenses, but it will resolve your persistence mapping issues. Your trade-off will be having to schedule those jobs directly on the desktop version running the software - it is not licensed to run your gallery functions. This allows us to run jobs with data acquisition from synced OneDrive processes, and also other network mapped drives. You will just need to map to these different drives via UNC pathing, and use the Directory tool to point to those instances - for example. Realize the machine that you are using to do this also needs to be a machine that can be monitored and kept on -- network pushes may force restarts that need to be monitored for being powered back on in case updates aren't power-cycled events.