In a multi-person BI team; or where you have a multitude of different flows hitting similar data - it's easy to loose track of the right connections; the right data sets etc.
Could we please add to the Alteryx toolset, the ability to:
- Register a set of connections with readable names
- Register a set of data-sets which are community managed.
Connection Registration:
I frequently connect to 5 different datastores to bring together analytical results. Because Alteryx remembers the connections once-used I don't have to keep on building these connections from scratch, but these don't have a human-readable name; and they cannot be shared among the team to make workflow creation easier.
Suggestion:
- Create the ability in Alteryx Designer to set up a data-store connection, with a human-readable name (e.g. "Timesheet Server").
- Allow me to share this connection list with my team
- Allow me to either do pass-through password (i.e. don't save a password in the connection); or embed a password but make sure it's masked & encrypted so that the receiver cannot use this to get the password for the DB
- For enterprise customers - it would be great if I can connect to the enterprise connection store and use known good connections that way too...
Known Good Data Sets:
The other part of this is the community effect once a large number of people in the company start to get data-savvy. for e.g. One person has found a good way to query the actual timesheet data (username; project; hours) - and another person has found a good way to query the HR systems to get user demographic information (username; location; contracted working hours).
- Can we add to the Alteryx server, in the same way as Tableau and IBM Cognos / Watson have done; to allow users to publish a data-set connector which is known to work.
- That way - if I want timesheet data - I just browse the known good data-sets through Alteryx designer, and if I have questions I can go back to the connector owner
- additionally - the central administration team can then identify the ones that are certified as "golden source" or "clean; valid; governed data", and which ones are in a state of "user supplied - use at own risk"
For enterprise customers - this would transform alteryx from a stand-alone tool where everyone is re-inventing the wheel every time - to a Data Platform where each additional piece of work done increases the net value of the full ecosystem in a virtuous cycle. It would also MASSIVELY accelerate every workflow build.
Happy to talk through this live with the Alteryx team if that's appropriate and helpful.
Thank you
Sean
