COMMAND TOOL ALTERYX SERVER

[tommasoBicocchi]

Hi everyone!

I need to develop a workflow that opens a new web browser page, on Designer everything works fine but unfortunately it does not work once is uploaded on the server:

- I've used a command tool to run a cmd.exe;

- as a Command Arguments I've written to start Google chrome;

- I've tried to express both the command sentence and the arguments using UNC path.

Unfortunately this set up is not able to open a new browser page on the server...

So:

1) Is it mandatory to use a share drive?

2) Are there any alternatives to start a browser page on server?

Thank you

[Thableaus]

Hi @tommasoBicocchi 

I'm pretty sure that UNC Paths are not supported using CMD (which it's basically what the Run Command tool does).

You would have to specify a drive with this one. Would you happen to know in which drive the browser is installed in the Server? That would make it easier.

Cheers,

[danilang · Accepted solution]

Hi @tommasoBicocchi 

A browser like Chrome has to run in the context of a login session, i.e. when I run Chrome on my computer, I see it on my display and it shows up under my user in Task Manager.  Workflows running on the Alteryx server might be able to launch Chrome, but the instance of Chrome will be relative to the session that is running on the server.  The person running the Analytic App from a remote computer won't be able to see the UI that is displayed in the server session.  What you want is a way for the application running on server to tell the instance of Chrome that is running on the user's computer to display a specific page.  Since the link in your example is constant, you can replace it with a Link in the Interface Designer of your analytic app.  

That way when the user runs the analytic app, the Link will show in the questions.  Clicking on the link will launch the URL on the user's computer in whatever browser is default for that person.

Dan     

[tommasoBicocchi]

Thank you all!

At the end I've chosen to display to the user of the App the link to be clicked (as the solution suggested from @danilang).

Anyway(apart from this specific problem), are there no alternatives to the network share drives for reading or writing tasks using the Server?

I've read different posts about this topic but it does not seem that any solution is completely reliable(sharepoint, dropbox etc...)

T.