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SOLVED

Maximum Individual Workflow Size

Hydra
7 - Meteor

Hello!

 

Does anyone know the maximum size for a workflow in terms of individual icons? The workflow I am having a problem with is approximately 3,500 icons (total size is less than 15mb, all external data). Trying to paste in a new section with another 400 icons or so and it won't seem to complete after I move it (Not Responding). Do I need to paste in smaller amounts? Do I have to move individual pieces to macros to reduce the total visible size? Don't want to waste time trying different things if someone already knows the answer :).

 

Thanks!

Andrew

2 REPLIES 2
SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hey @Hydra

 

I don't know the maximum size of the workflow - the problem though is that with a workflow of 3500 controls, you will run into a maintenance nightmare. 

I've faced this in the past, both with Alteryx and with regular coding - creating something this large means that the only person who can adapt, fix or grow this is the original creator (which means that the original creator can also never be promoted or given new projects :-))

 

What I'd suggest, and what's worked very well for us, is to break this down into chunks, and wrap them into macros - happy to mock this up if you need.

 

For example - if your flow has 5 main sections: 

- reading some data

- cleaning the data

- filtering out stuff in a complex way....

- saving the results

- sending some results.

 

Then what i'd do is to group these into macros and then chain them together on a workflow.   This way your workflow gets way more simple, and each piece becomes easier to test and maintain because they are isolated in size.

 

Let me know if you struggle with this - happy to mock up an example for you.   If this helps and gets you where you need to be, would you mind marking as solved, or if not - just reply with ongoing questions.

 

cheers

Sean

Hydra
7 - Meteor

Ended being able to get it to work by deselecting the the individual icons after the copy and paste. Relatively easy and stupid fix.

 

I agree that it should be broken down into smaller chunks although executing on that would take too much time. Additionally have a fixed amount of time for everything to run so if we broke it down into logical sections we would need to load the same data source multiple times in order to extract specific pieces from it (unless we rewrote the structure). Just simply isn't worth it at the moment.

 

Thanks,

Andrew

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