Download Tool - support corporate proxy

[SeanAdams]

Hi there,

The download tool currently does not work if the user is behind a corporate proxy setup - and the only way to download web-content is using CURL.

This is a significant impediment because this prevents almost all corporate alteryx users from being able to access this capaibilty

Could you please look into using the proxy settings that the workstation uses to access the internet in a corp env?

thank you

Sean

[SeanAdams]

Hi all,

Any possibility of getting an updated version of the download tool, which works behind a corporate proxy, released before the end of the year?

For anyone currently in a corporate environment, behind a corporate proxy - the download tool is essentially useless for any external sites, and the only way to get access to external websites is by using a hack with CURL (which is beyond the means of most users, and should not be necessary)

Thank you 

Sean

cc: @Ned @AshleyK 

[SeanAdams]

Hey @TashaA

This is the issue we mentioned that Alteryx does not currently work in environments that use a PAC file setup or other kinds of corporate proxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config

This impacts not only the ability to call external web assets and APIs, but it is also now impacting the new licensing method.

[RachelW]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Community. This is on our roadmap in the next few quarters. We'll include the support in the release notes when we ship. 

[SeanAdams]

+ @TuvyL + @JulieM + @TashaA + @TedF + @BradW + @LizaNemchynova

Hey Tuvy - thank you for your time this evening!

This is the matter we were discussing.   Alteryx has historically not supported corporate proxy setups - and this was originally more of a nuisance because that the Download tool could not be used for anything outside of our firm (only for internal APIs).

However - with the 2018.2 release using a different licensing mechanism which requires a punch-out through the proxy, we've realised that we cannot upgrade to 2018.2 at all because of this issue.

So this has now changed in nature from an inconvenience to a blocker for us to use 2018.2 and onwards until the support for Corporate Proxy is included.

Is there any possibility of a patch release being built quickly that can address this need for all the large enterprises that use PAC?

Thank you

Sean

[tonyzhu]

Hi Alteryx guru, any updates on when we can have a patch release for this issue?  The download tool is useless without the support for PAC type proxy.

[GreggD]

If you are in a more secure corporate setting, all of your internal applications are required to run with SSL turned on. So micro-services with Rest APIs is the target state architecture for a lot of companies and being able to submit REST API calls to a SSL enabled site is a basic requirement. Just adding my voice. We would really love to use Alteryx to get and pass data between applications, however until this SSL issue is solved, we can only use it for our lightweight challenges. It definitely hampers major adoption of Alteryx as a ETL solution. So if you are working on proxy support, maybe while you have the hood up, you could also add the SSL support. Just a thought.

[TonyaS]

I wanted to provide an update on what I have learned related to the issues mentioned in this thread.

For the PAC proxy for licensing system, a solution was delivered in 2019.1.

For the PAC proxy for Download tool, a solution was delivered in 2019.2.

To bypass proxy for local licensing system, a solution will be delivered in 2019.4.

To bypass proxy for Download tool, a solution is in progress.

[SeanAdams]

Thank you @TonyaS 

We've been testing this internally (internally we use PAC files like many other corporates, to route different traffic to different proxy servers) and we can't get this to work on 2019.2.

Is there configuration required? How should we set this up so that it functions in the download tool?

NOTE: this PAC file process works in all browsers and office tools without any configuration - so presumably it works with your logged in windows authentication token.

[ksaldana007]

Hello,

My company too is struggling with having the Download tool connect outside our network. Our network is blocking Alteryx because it is using Basic Authentication instead of something like NTLM or Kereberos. 

Are there any updates on the plan to support more secure authentication?

Or any updates on having the Download tool bypass the proxy, a solution described above that was in progress as of 12/2020?

Thank you! 

[simonaubert_bd]

This is still an issue for me with complex proxy configuration in customer organization. The worst case I have :
-internal sites are allowed with proxy A

-external websites are allowed with proxy B

And alteryx has to be used with both. A nightmare, I have to use curl in bat and that kind of thing.

Best regards,

Simon