Support for Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication for various Azure Services

[tmschbgr1]

With more and more enterprises moving to cloud infrastructures and Azure being one of the most used one, there should be support for its authentication service Azure Active Directory (AAD).

Currently if you are using cloud services like Azure SQL Servers the only way to connect is with SQL login, which in a corporate environment is insecure and administrative overhead to manage.

The only work around I found so far is creating an ODBC 17 connection that supports AAD authentication and connect to it in Alteryx.

Please see the post below covering that topic:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Alteryx-Designer-How-to-Connect-to-Azu...

[esar]

This feature is more and more required. The workaround has problems also.

[Jclark]

It would be ideal if the Alteryx Connectors Team could connect directly to Azure Delta Files and authentication through AD Accounts (without the requirement to share the Shared Key)!

[VojtechT]

Hi @tmschbgr1 ,

I'm accepting this idea because it's definitely our goal - to provide you with Azure authentication for Azure services. We've already implemented such method in  multiple connectors - Azure Data Lake, Sharepoint Files, OneDrive, Dataverse, Power BI. 

But you're explicitly mentioning the SQL Server, which we're going to support through ODBC and thus using version 17 will be the only possible way. 

Since there are multiple services (=connectors) that can be covered by your idea, could you please let me know which connectors you'd need to support this auth method in order for me to mark the idea as Implemented?

thank you

[esar]

Hi @VojtechT ,

This is great news.

Data input tool using SQL server would be the most important.

Currently, the workaround is to use the ODBC driver but it pops out auth window every time you run the workflow.

The same authentication types should have available than the Azure data lake store tool has.

[imaran_669]

Hi @VojtechT , great news you are working on this!!

I add you Snowflake as a requirement. Since you have a new partnership I think it will be interesting to have a simpler connection than we have now. Currently you have to configure de ODBC connector and when you try to pull data using Azure AD you get a browser popup that is very annoying. Plus it makes it unusable in scheduler.

Thanks!!

[CiaranA]

@VojtechT is there any update on an expected timeline for AAD & Azure SQL connections?