Changing Gallery Data Connection via Dropdown within an App on the Gallery

[Greg_Murray]

I have an app that returns data about a table based on a couple of, user selected, parameters. I would like for the user to be able to select which database (data connection in the gallery) that they want to run the app against. I have had success from the desktop version of Alteryx with a dropdown tool that swaps the gallery connection key (the selection in black on the right of "file - value" below) with the value of other Gallery connection keys. But when I try to run the same workflow published on Gallery I get an error that it is "Unable to translate alias" and the name of the default connection saved in the app. I have tried having the app update the cachedcosmeticname as well as the connection key, but that didn't seem to work either.

Any help is greatly appreciated. 

[SophiaF · Accepted solution]

Hi @Greg_Murray - the Gallery data connections unfortunately don't function in a way in which this can work easily. In order to have the alias translated, a few things need to occur:

1. The alias must be packaged with the data connection when you publish - as you can only package one connection (in your example, the default one in your Dynamic Input tool), this won't work

2. The uploader of the workflow must have the Gallery data connection shared with him/her - you'll need to make sure all the connections you wish to use are shared with you in this case

You can work around the first part - short explanation is that there are 2 files to keep in mind here. One file is the file that is the packaged alias. Since we can't have a packaged alias as mentioned in point 1, we can also use a file that can be synced on the server. To do this, you need to have the Run As user on the server log into the Designer on the server machine. You will then need to have the Run As user connect to the Gallery from the Designer, and all of the gallery connections you wish to use in your app will need to be shared with the Run As user. This should then create that other file that can be used to translate the alias.

A couple things to note:

- If running a multi-node server, this process will need to be done on each worker node on the server

- This file will need to be re-synced each time a new data connection is added. To sync, the Run As user will need to go into the Designer and go to Options > Advanced Options > Manage Data Connections

- If you are using Workflow Credentials, the process above will need to be done with each user who is using credentials

[cam_w]

@SophiaF- Thank you for the description of the workaround on the server!

I checked my GalleryAlias.xml file in my %appdata%\Alteryx\Engine folder and the contents appeared to be encrypted.

Our situation is that we have 300+ Run As accounts that need Data Connections defined in that file, so that the aka: from a macro can be resolved at run time. Are you aware of any new ways to create this file without the manual process to log into the server to create the file through Designer?

[SophiaF]

@cam_w unfortunately not 😞 I'm guessing you are using workflow credentials for each user? In that case, you would need that file to be generated for each user on the server.