Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!

Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

Find answers, ask questions, and share expertise about Alteryx Designer Desktop and Intelligence Suite.
SOLVED

Block Until Done not waiting for run command to finish

StephenMack
10 - Fireball

I pass some data to an external application, and then want to pick up the resulting files when done. I have it all working nicely, except I can't get it to wait for the run command to finish.

 

Leg 1 of the block until done is to save the file. The second leg leads me to my run command, then the third should be the leg that picks up the resulting data. The problem is the third leg of the block until done is running before the run command is done.

 

Anyone know a way to fix this? Thanks!

run command.PNG

 

6 REPLIES 6
Treyson
13 - Pulsar
13 - Pulsar

Totally spitballing here. 

 

Maybe Alteryx is moving on because the command tool is considered "finished" even though the actual command is not done. Maybe try adding an output to the command tool and?

 

Treyson

Treyson Marks
Senior Analytics Engineer
DanM
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team

@StephenMack

 

In Alteryx, any Input tool will run first no matter what section of a workflow the input tool is in. Your command tool is running a bat I am assuming you are creating in this workflow. This is considered an input, so it will run regardless of the Block Until Done . You have a couple of options to resolve this issue. You could create a second workflow with the Run Command tool executing the bat file. You can use the Event command found in the Workflow Configuration window to kick off that workflow once this one is completed. You also can use the Event command to kick off the bat file at the end of the workflow as well.

StephenMack
10 - Fireball

Obviously chaining workflows together is a whole other level of complexity, and I would love to avoid that if necessary. If it's unavoidable, can that even be done if I want to upload this to our company gallery? Can I point workflows to other gallery workflows with events?

DanM
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team

@StephenMack

 

You would point to another workflow, but it wouldn't be located in the Gallery database itself. You would save the second workflow saved to a drive to have the first workflow pick it up. The second workflow would need to be in a location your server has access to to launch. You could also use your scheduler on the gallery to kick off the second workflow as well. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Scheduling-Workflows-Using-Event-Run-Command... Then you wouldn't have to chain anything together.

StephenMack
10 - Fireball

Treyson, I think I just got your method working. If I point the 'read results' of the run command to the file that the external program spits out then it waits for it and I pick it up immediately after. I don't need the third branch at all.

 

Thanks for the help!

Treyson
13 - Pulsar
13 - Pulsar

@StephenMack Heck yes! I am glad you got this figured out!

Treyson Marks
Senior Analytics Engineer
Labels