set a log location by workflow for local designer

[Claje]

There is a great question in the Designer space right now asking about saving logs to a database: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Save-workflow-messages-log-in-database...

This got me to think a little more about localized logging options in Alteryx.

At a high level, there are ways to accomplish this in Designer at a User or System level by enabling a Logging directory and then parsing those logs with a separate Alteryx job.  However, this would involve logging ALL Designer executions, which seems like it may be overkill for this need.  A user can also manually save a log after each execution, although this requires manual intervention.

I think adding an option in the Runtime settings for Workflow Configuration to Enable Logging and (optionally) specify a Logging directory would be a great feature add for Designer.  In my opinion this should not apply once a workflow runs on Server (Server logging should be handled in a fully standardized way), but should apply to designer "UI" execution.  Having the ability to add a logging naming convention (perhaps including a workflow name and run date in the log name) would be icing on the cake.

This would allow for a piecemeal logging solution to log specific flows or processes that might be high visiblity or high importance, while avoiding saving hundreds or thousands of logs daily of less important processes, and of dev test.  It would also reduce or eliminate a manual process to save these logs individually.

[SeanAdams]

Fully agree with you @Claje - we would be supporters of a mechanism to drive central logging in a common way in a well managed database table - that way in a large enterprise you can start to track across your entire infrastructure for things like performance, who is accessing which lookups - and you can also create a "log this" tool which allows folks to explicitly log things like ETL lookup failures on an enrichment of a field.