Conditional Launching of Chained Applications

[bwall]

A problem that recently came up for us was the need to be able to build an application, called App A, that would launch App B and its set of choices under one set of logical circumstances, launch App C and its set of choices under a second set of logical circumstances, etc.  After working with our Alteryx rep and trying to use the Run Command object to launch the apps from the command line (which caused a licensing issue error), we've been told that this is not something that is currently possible in Alteryx.  We were wondering if it would be possible to get functionality like this in a future edition of Alteryx.

[patrick_digan]

Until they add this feature, I wanted to share a workaround that I've used for a somewhat similar situation. Since I can't include the file here, I've put it on the gallery so you can download it: https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/Chained-Apps-Simple-Example/57ff7a64a18e9e10d80b6d58. The idea is that at the end of AppA, you can use input tools to read in both AppB and AppC. You would read them in as .csv data type with \0 delimiter (which means no delimiter). Then you can use your logical circumstances to decide which xml data (AppB or AppC) you want to write out to the name of your chained app (I've used chosen.yxwz for my simple example). Then you make sure that you package that file (chosen.yxwz) if loading it up to the server. The concept is that you dynamically decide with app's data to write out, and then you immediately turn around and load that app as your chained app. 

[bwall]

Thanks, Patrick!  I'll take a look at your solution and see if I can figure out a way to integrate it into what I'm doing.

[AQIL-KURJI]

Hey Patrick, How do you select the Alteryx App as an input?

[sarcia1]

Clever!

Hey Patrick, what if this workflow is saved on the Server? Let say we have several users running this app at the same time, won't the chosen.yxwz will get overwritten?

[patrick_digan]

@sarcia1 great question. I had the server in my mind with my response. The server will have each person's instance created in its own subfolders on the server backend, so there is no risk that people collide with each ether.

@AQIL-KURJI hopefully my example on the public gallery can point you in the right direction if you download it. If you drag an input tool onto the canvas, you can type in the file path (for example "chosen.yxwz") and then chose the filetype as csv and delimiter \0.

[JanLaznicka]

Hi @patrick_digan,

I wanted to have a look at your example but it is not available anymore. Would you be willing to re-upload it? Also, would this work also when uploaded to Gallery?

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Jan

[patrick_digan]

@JanLaznicka Hi! I've moved it to the new gallery. And yes, it would work when uploaded to the gallery. Like all chained apps, you may have to be careful about which assets you're packaging if it's not working as expected. 

[JanLaznicka]

Thanks a lot, I will have a look and try it out.

Cheers,

Jan

[JanLaznicka]

Hi @patrick_digan, thanks again for the suggestion. It works well if we want to chain something conditionally. What we found to be a problem though is using it for a chain that does not have a clear end. Our use case is that a user should be able to loop through an app, adding some information each time. After all the important information is added (variable amount of runs in that loop), the user selects a second option and runs a report - which is the ultimate end of our chain. In Designer, this is working as expected, however, when trying to upload it to Gallery (or packaging it), it stops responding and fails. Have you experienced such a problem? Would you have an idea how to solve that? Thanks! Jan

[anuninan07]

Hi All,

I recently tried to created chained app interface suggested, but in Server I am getting the below output and hence cannot run the selected app as expected. Is there anyway you can think of to resolve this issue. 

Server version used - 2021.1.4

Output