Regression testing of workflows during Alteryx version upgrade

[rajiv]

A user may need to perform regression test on their workflows when there is a version upgrade of Alteryx. To save users time and effort, users can be encouraged to submit a few workflows in a secure area of the Alteryx Gallery. Prior to a version release, the Alteryx product testing team can perform a regression test of these workflows using automation. Thus when users receive an upgraded version of Aleryx it is more robust and with the added assurance that the workflows they had submitted will continue to work without errors.  

[JulieM]

Hi @rajiv - thanks for the input.  Do you envision this as being an area available in the private version of the Alteryx Gallery that comes with Server where internal Alteryx testers at your company could use automation to test against the newer version?  Or, is this something you would like to see as a space available in the public Alteryx Gallery to perform some testing before doing an upgrade internally?  I'm marking this as Comments Requested just to make sure I'm understanding what you'd hope to see here.  Thanks for all the feedback!  

[rajiv]

Hi @JulieM,

The intent behind the suggestion is for the Alteryx Designer product team to perform regression testing on behalf of the customers before a version upgrade so that customers save time and are assured that their workflows will not fail in the upgraded version. I envision it as below:

1) Customers may optionally opt in to submit their workflows and sample datasets to a restricted secure area in the Gallery to which the Alteryx product team will have access.

2) As part of the testing cycle before a version upgrade release, Alteryx product  team will test the workflows that have been submitted.

3) As part of version upgrade release, Alteryx can send an email to customers stating that their submitted workflows have been successfully regression tested. This will improve customer delight

[JulieM]

@rajiv Thanks for the additional detail.  I'm marking the post as under review and look forward to see if anyone else expresses interest via comments and stars.  Thanks again for the excellent feedback!

[rajiv]

Like to add an example:

In the case of Multi-field binning, I noticed in the help section as below:

"A fix was made to this macro between 9.0 and 9.1 that may cause existing workflows to break. The macro now outputs an Int64 field instead of a String field. This was a necessary change as the tool was not sorting records properly due to the fact it was sorting a string instead of a numeric value."

With pre-submitted workflows in gallery, the Alteryx product team can directly notify impacted customers.