Server Macro Bank - Reference Macros on the Server

[ephij]

Current State:  When a macro contains nested macros the only method that reliably works to share them is via yxi (which I fondly refer to as my wixies). 

Future State:  Allow macros published to the gallery be their own tool palette so that when I or any user connects to the server the macros are there and just work, no import, no visible install just a single set of tools that work on that server. 

Side task - also get export to yxi 

[joeGade]

We Should be able to use the Published macro  in the server/ Gallery in any Designer workflow and Re-use it Multiple Times in Different Workflows.

[SeanAdams]

fully agree with you @joeGade 

In fact there are several themes around this which are worth you adding your thoughts to:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Defect-Deep-dependancy-management/idi-p/1397...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Server-Macro-Bank-Reference-Macros-on-the-Se...

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Add-Macros-and-Gallery-within-Designer/idi-p...

[ChrisTX]

When we started using the Alteryx server, we thought we would be able to centrally manage our macros by storing "gold copies" on the server, then calling any macro from any workflow.  We thought each department would also have their own department-specific macros maintained on the server, but these macros would not be available publicly.

Little did we know, centralized management of macros on the Alteryx server doesn't exist.

We have SOX and other internal code management implications, so we need secure options for Macro Management.

An Alteryx Sales Engineering Manager recently mentioned:

• Publishing a macro to the server isn’t going to allow you to call that Macro from within another workflow
• My recommendation is still a network drive that is controlled and/or with Github or something like that on-top of it
• It’s a roadmap item for us to be able to publish something as a macro that will then be able to be pulled down into another workflow from the server, but right now it doesn’t work that way

When is this Alteryx roadmap item going to make it into the product?

Our current analytic tool (ACL) suffered from the same significant shortcoming: the inability to call re-usable code without storing that code outside the server.  Alteryx is so much more advanced than ACL, I would have thought your product would have a basic solution for this.  For a development standpoint, it’s always best practice to re-use code whenever possible.  Having to store that code outside the server is, at best, a workaround that will require additional work on our end.

[KylieF]

Thank you for your idea and feedback! After reviewing this idea with our Product team, we’ve set the status for this idea to Revisit.

This feature is being heavily considered for our next generation Server product that was demonstrated at Inspire 2019. The team felt that our new Server product would be the most appropriate place to release such a feature.

To properly implement this feature into our current Server product would also be a large undertaking requiring a fair amount of time and careful planning. We would prefer to invest that effort into building it on the new platform at this time. 

[ChrisTX]

Thank you for the update. I look forward to hearing more about the next generation Server product.  Here are a few ideas that might fit into such a product:

Summarized view of only failed workflows, defaults to 30-day-view, sorted by date descending.

Disk space management:

   list of top 10 workflows that consume the most disk space

   disk usage over time with trend chart

Ability to search across all workflows that I have security access to. Example use: many workflows created over time use the same formula.  When we want to create a macro to centralized maintenance of the formula, we need to identify all existing workflows that contain the old formula.  The only current option is use Notepad++ to search across multiple workflow XML files.

Centralized option to control the number of workflow results to retain on server.  One default option per server, overridden at the Studio level, overridden at the individual workflow level.  Separate "number of days of completed workflows to retain" for manually submitted jobs, versus scheduled jobs.

Ability to easily backup all workflows to one text file, or to separate files for each workflow.  Why this is needed: our IT department (like most) regularly backs up our server, but NEVER tests the restore capabilities.  A separate user-initiated, scheduled, backup to text file provides confidence that our workflows won't be lost to a "system" backup or restore failure.

Centralized ability for continuous performance management:

Enable Performance Profiling at the server level.  Include more "workflow results" data in one centralized log file, across all workflows.  A new centralized, structured, log file would contain:  table format. Columns: Date, Time, workflow tool metadata, tool response, record count input and output, profile time for each tool, ability to export log to HTML

Incorporate multiple "server management" pieces into one dashboard:

Add/remove users, user security, disk usage, view for only failed jobs, backup all scripts to text file, top 10 workflows that consume disk storage, centralized log file, structured log file, search across all workflows.

I would be happy to participate in a beta program for a new Server product.

Chris