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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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For companies that have migrated to OneDrive/Teams for data storage, employees need to be able to dynamically input and output data within their workflows in order to schedule a workflow on Alteryx Server and avoid building batch MACROs.

 

With many organizations migrating to OneDrive, a Dynamic Input/Output tool for OneDrive and SharePoint is needed.

 

  • The existing Directory and Dynamic Input tools only work with UNC path and cannot be leveraged for OneDrive or SharePoint.
  • The existing OneDrive and SharePoint tools do not have a dynamic input or output component to them.
  • Users have to build work arounds and custom MACROS for a common problem/challenge.
  • Users have to map the OneDrive folders to their machine (and server if published to the Gallery)
    • This option generates a lot of maintenance, especially on Server, to free up space consumed by the local version when outputting the data.

The enhancement should have the following components:

 

OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool

  • Ability to read either one folder with the option to include/exclude subfolders within OneDrive
  • Ability to retrieve Creation Date
  • Ability to retrieve Last Modified Date
  • Ability to identify file type (e.g. .xlsx) 
  • Ability to read Author
  • Ability to read last modified by
  • Ability to generate the specific web path for the files

OneDrive/SharePoint Dynamic Input Tool

  • Receive the input from the OneDrive/SharePoint Directory Tool and retrieve the data.

Dynamic OneDrive/SharePoint Output Tool

  • Dynamically write the output from the workflow to a specific directory individual files in the same location
  • Dynamically write the output to multiple tabs on the same file within the directory.
  • Dynamically write the output to a new folder within the directory

My organization use the SharePoint Files Input and SharePoint Files Output (v2.1.0) and connect with the Client ID, Client Secret, and Tenant ID. After a workflow is saved and scheduled on the server users receive the error "Failed to connect to SharePoint AADSTS700082: The refresh token has expired due to inactivity" every 90 days. My organization is not able to extend the 90 day limit or create non-expiring tokens.

 

If would be great if the SharePoint connectors could automatically refresh the token when it expires so users don't have to open the workflow and do it manually.

Connecting to Smartsheets using Alteryx Desktop (and by extension, Alteryx Server) is extremely cumbersome. If a user wants to read data from Smartsheet, they are required to get an API token (preferred) or use a username/password

 

Then do one of the following to read data from Smartsheets:

1. a. Install a ODBC driver

    b. Configure a DSN connection for ODBC
    c. Use the input data using a generic ODBC connection
or
2. Use python

 

To write data to Smartsheets, a user can use Python or upload the data using an API call - both very hard for end users to use especially if they're not Python developers.

 

Regardless, all of these are problematic. On the server I manage, I have over 15 ODBC connections to Smartsheets and it's getting very hard to upgrade the server hardware because of them. Creating a native connector for input/output of data to Smartsheets will eliminate a headache of managing ODBC connections, and make it simple for Alteryx Desktop users to read and write data.

 

 

Hey all,

 

At present, if you have an existing canvas and you want to move to a DCM Connection - you are asked something like "this will reset all of your connection details - are you sure".    If you have complex queries; or pre+post SQL - then you first have to copy all of this out into Notepad before you can convert to DCM and then reconfigure it all again.

 

However, if you are not using DCM you can change data sources when you go into Workflow Dependancies without losing your queries etc.

 

 

Capture.PNG

 

 

Could we revisit the user experience of changing to or from a DCM connection to eliminate this "start from scratch" phenomenon - if you are converging from an existing SQL ODBC or ODB or SSVB connection to a SQL connection via DCM then it should allow you to make this conversion without losing your current configuration; and the same for any other database type.

 

cc: @mbarone 

When you start using DCM - you may have existing canvasses which use regular old connection strings which you want to migrate to DCM.

 

Currently (in 2023.1.1.123) - when you select "Use Data Connection Manager" - it shreds the configuration of your input tool which makes it difficult to just convert these from an existing connection to a DCM connection

SeanAdams_0-1685363363519.png

 

 

The only way to then make sure that you don't lose any configuration on the tool then is to use the XML editing functionality of the tools and copy across your old configuration.

 

Could you please add the capability to keep my current tool configuration, but just change from using a regular old connection string to using DCM?

 

Many thanks 

Sean

 

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

 

The Sharepoint file tools are certainly a step in the right direction, but it would be great to enhance the files types that it is possible to write to sharepoint from Alteryx.

 

The format missing that I think is probably most in demand is pdf. If we're using the Alteryx reporting suite to create PDF reports, it would be awesome to have an easy way to output these to Sharepoint.

 

https://help.alteryx.com/20213/designer/sharepoint-files-output-tool

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Public-Community-Gallery/Sharepoint-Files-Tool/ta-p/877903

 

When email body gets imported using latest version of the Outlook 365 tool, this tool removes the new line separators from the message body, which makes it difficult to parse relevant information out of the message body. New line separators are there prior to message being imported into Alteryx as can be verified when importing same message using different tools (for example, Python or Power Automate). Without new line separators it is not possible to accurately parse message body using Alteryx. Please add the enhancement to the Outlook 365 tool so that it doesn't remove new line separators from the message body.

This limitation of the Outlook  365 tool has been discussed in the community 

Outlook 365 Input - Separate Body lines - Alteryx Community

It would be wonderful for Alteryx to be able to connect to and query OData feeds natively, rather than using a 3rd-party driver or custom macro.   

 

OData querying is supported by quite a few familiar products, including Excel and PowerBISSIS/SSRS, FME SafeTableau, and many others. And the protocol is used to publish feeds from Microsoft Dynamics and Sharepoint, as well as many of the 10,000 publically available government datasets with API's (esp. those hosted by Socrata)   

 

I didn't see it as in the Idea section, but questions and workarounds have been discussed in the community a few times (11/15, 3/18, 4/18), and suggestions seem to be just to buy the $400-600 ODBC driver from CDATA (or ZappySys), or I could use a VBA script in Excel trigger a refresh, or create my own Alteryx connector macro (great series btw, though most was beyond my understanding!) 

   

While not opposed paying, kludging, or learning to program, they're just one more thing to build/buy, install, maintain, and break at the most inconvenient time 🙂

 

Thanks,
Chadd

 

OData Overview:

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO/IEC approvedOASIS standard that defines a set of best practices for building and consuming RESTful APIs. OData helps you focus on your business logic while building RESTful APIs without having to worry about the various approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, URL conventions, media types, payload formats, query options, etc. OData also provides guidance for tracking changes, defining functions/actions for reusable procedures, and sending asynchronous/batch requests.  OData RESTful APIs are easy to consume. The OData metadata, a machine-readable description of the data model of the APIs, enables the creation of powerful generic client proxies and tools.

More info at at http://odata.org

Currently Alteryx does not support writing to SharePoint document libraries.

However there are success sometimes but not at other times.

Please see attachment where we ran into an issue.

See this link for additional information.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Connect-to-and-Publish-Back-to-SharePoint-Online/m-p/4...

 

We need official support for reading and writing to SharePoint document libraries.

It's an important Output target, and will becoming more so, as Alteryx enhances its reporting capabilities.

 

In order to make the connections between Alteryx and Snowflake even more secure we would like to have the possibility to connect to snowflake with OAuth in an easier way. 

 

The connections to snowflake via OAuth are very similar to the connections Alteryx already does with O365 applications. It requires: 

  • Tenant URL 
  • Client ID 
  • Client Secret 

 

  1. Get Authorization token provided by the snowflake authorization endpoint.  
  2. Give access consent (a browser popup will appear) 
  3. With the Authorization Code, the client ID and the Client Secret make a call to retrieve the Refresh Token and TTL information for the tokens 
  4. Get the Access Token every time it expires 

 

With this an automated workflow using OAuth between Alteryx and Snowflake will be possible.

 

You can find a more detailed explanation in the attached document.

When creating a connection using DCM (example being ODBC for SQL) - the process requires an ODBC Data Source Name (see screenshot 1 below).

However, when you use the alias manager (another way to make database connections) - this does allow for DSN-free connections which are essential for large enterprises (see screenshot 2 below).    

 

NOTE: the connection manager screens do have another option - Quick Connect - which seems to allow for DSN-free connections, but this is non-intuitive; and you're asked to type in the name of the driver yourself which seems to be an obvious failure point (especially since the list of all installed drivers can be read straight from the registry)

 

Please could we change DCM to use the same interfaces / concepts as the alias screens so that all DCM connections can easily be created without requiring an ODBC DSN; and so that DSN-free connections are the default mode of operation?

 

 

 

Screenshot 1: DCM connection:

SeanAdams_0-1685360285460.png

 

screenshot 2

SeanAdams_2-1685360473900.png

 

cc: @wesley-siu  @_PavelP @ToddTarney 

 

 

Hey all,

 

The join tool currently does not allow case-insensitive joins, but the find/replace tool does.    Additionally- even if both sides are identical, the join tool will not join "Sean's house" to "Sean's house" because of the non-letter character in the middle.    Finally - if one side is a string(2), and the other is a vString(200) - even if you have a single identical character on both sides you get uncertain outcomes unless you force the type

 

Please could you consider amending the join tool to include 3 new options or capabilities:

- Case insensitive join

- Allow full Unicode character set in join

- Full match across text types (irrespective of string size) - this would allow a string(2) value to match to a string(100) value as long as the string(100) value only has the same 2 characters in it as the string(2) value

 

That would remove a load of work from every text-join that's being done on every canvas we do.

 

Thank you 

Sean

 

 

Hi all,

 

The SalesForce Input tool is great.. but has some really bad limitations when it comes to report. 

I think there are 2 main limitations :

 

A - It can only consume 2000 rows due to the rest api limitation. There plenty of articles about it in the community.

B - Long string such as text comment are cutout after a certain number of characters. 

 

Thanks to this great article : https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Salesforce-Input-Tool-amp-Going-Beyond... , I had the idea of going through a csv file export to then import the data into Alteryx. 

I've done it using two consequent download tool. The first download is used to get the session id and the second to export a report into a csv in the temp folder. This temp file can then be read using a dynamic input workflow. 

 

Long story short, I think Alteryx should upgrade the Salesforce connector to make it more robust and usable. Using the export to csv feature, this should enable Alteryx to be fully compatible with Salesforce report.

 

Regards,

A few suggestions that I think can improve the Sharepoint Files Output Tool:

 

  1. Maybe I'm missing it, but I cannot see how you can delete a file from the output list once you've added it:
    1. Joe_Lipski_1-1643795491697.png

       


       

  2. Have the write headers output checkbox ticked by default as I expect this is the more common expectation:
    1. Joe_Lipski_2-1643795558506.png

       

  3. Take the file extension by default based on the users selection in the Options tab as I shouldn't have to write .xlsx for the extension:
    1. Joe_Lipski_3-1643795713015.png

       

    2. Joe_Lipski_4-1643795723518.png

       

@VojtechT 

Hi there,

 

When you connect to a DB using a connection string or an alias - this shows up in the Workflow Dependancies in a way that is very useful to allow you to identify impacts if a DB is moved or migrated.

 

However - in 2023.1, if you use DCM then the database dependancies just show up as .\ which makes dependancy management much more difficult.

 

 
 

screenshot1.png

 

Please could you add the capability to view the DCM dependancies correctly in the dependancy window?

 

BTW - this workflow Dependancy Window would be a great place to build a simple process to move existing DB connections to a DCM connection!

 

CC: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

Hi,

A lot of companies now are deploying on both AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Alteryx supports AWS S3 object storage out of the box, it would be important to support Microsoft Azure blob as part of the native Alteryx product as well. 

Cheers,

Adrian

It would be great if we could have a Windows Active Directory data connector tool added to the standard Alteryx toolset.

 

MS Excel Power Query and PowerBI both can connect to Active Directory for use as a data source, but are both very cumbersome to use.  Having a connector in Alteryx that can read AD data into a workflow would be super helpful for a long list of use cases.  A couple that are top of mind for me are:

 

-Leveraging group membership info for dynamic distribution of reports or datasets

-Being able to build reporting and dashboards about the organization (useful for Tech audit, HR, etc.) 

 

I've seen links to an old project on GitHub of someone that started development on this, but the method (just copy these random .dlls into your program directory) is seriously frowned upon by any enterpise IT.  Would be great if Alteryx could pick up that work, polish it a bit and add it to the actual Alteryx Designer toolset.

Please could you enhance the Alteryx download tool to support SFTP connections with Private Key authentication as well.  This is not currently supported and all of our SFTP use cases use PK.

At our organization we are required to change our passwords every few months forcing a change to my Tableau Server password.  How does this relate to Alteryx?  Well, every 90 days I have to change my password in the "Publish to Tableau Server Tool" for all of my workflows.  This is quite a cumbersome process that could be eliminated with AD.

 

If you dislike manually changing your for each workflow that uses this tool then "star" this post!

 

 

 

Hi all,

 

The Publish to Tableau Server tool is great.. but requires username and password. If you are using AD, there is a chance that your users don't have a password. In that case, you probably have a technical user that you share across the team. This is not an ideal situation and you loose the governance around the data. 

 

Fortunately, there is an easy workaround. You can leverage personal token authentication : https://help.tableau.com/v2019.4/server/en-us/security_personal_access_tokens.htm 

 

The advantage of this method is that it logs in with your user and your data source is uploaded under your name. This is still using the Tableau REST API so the changes to do in the current macro is MINOR. 

 

Changes to do in the current macro : 

 

1- Add a parameter authentication method with choices : Username/Password ; Personal Token 

2- If Personal Token is selected, add two parameters : Token_Name and Token_Value

3 - In the TableauServer.Login supporting macro, improve the formula(13) to change the payload based on user selection. If Username/Password, keep it as is. Else use the syntax here : https://help.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/REST/rest_api_concepts_auth.htm#make-a-sign-in-r... 

 

 

This is quite a straight forward change but could help a lot of companies using Alteryx.

Can you please implement that changes to strengthen this tool ? 

 

Thanks a lot,

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