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Alteryx Server Discussions

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Alteryx Server and shared drives (permissions) and How to handle it

joejoe317
8 - Asteroid

Hello everyone, I would like to get some advice on a current situation.

 

here is the setup with SCHEDULER:

 

-We have a shared drive that only our internal group can access that requires a username and password.

-Server cannot access this set, and we also publish to tableau so we run our schedule as "User must specify Credentials"

-The above option allows us to both read and write to our shared drive, but also allows us to use publish to Tableau that needs to be accessed by the server. If I choose other options like run as server then I can't write to shared drive, if I do specific credentials I cannot write to tableau dependent files on server.

 

So all is good there. 

 

The issue is that we have to change our passwords. My boss wanted me to look into possible ways to do this without having to enter passwords.

 

He recommended a folder on the server with our info in it, but then lock it to only us. 

I then pointed out (and its a discovery process so I might be wrong.) that if its on the server and required credentials for us, wouldn't it just be the same thing as having the shared drive where we put in our credentials? 

 

I would test this, but I am not the server admin and would have to have a plan set before I approach them.

 

Are there any other ways to do this? It doesn't have to be this combination of things, out of the box solutions could work.

 

for example, I saw a post on password protecting files. I haven't messed with it, but I would think (even though it could be a pain) that if it were possible to put a password on the files we want to protect and just make the password the same, that we could just have a subflow that locks and unlocks the files. 

 

The other issue I see is that publish to tableau required username and password, which basically puts us back to square one (needing to update password).

 

My boss thinks it would be tedious to update passwords, but then said if we didn't have to do that we would only have to worry about changing the password in tableau, but in reality what I'm currently doing only makes me change the password under credentials under the scheduler and also tableau.

 

Is it possible to take the credentials from the scheduler and pass them to tableau? I kind of see that as being better then my bosses option considering I wouldn't even have to open the flow at that point, I could just do it from the servers schedulers interface.

2 REPLIES 2
MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus

Have you considered using a service account with a non-expiring password?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Alteryx ACE & Top Community Contributor

Chaos reigns within. Repent, reflect and restart. Order shall return.
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joejoe317
8 - Asteroid

I wasn't aware that this was an option. I will have to talk to some co-workers and see if IT will permit something like this. I remember talking to the sharepoint admin a while back when we had to start changing pw's a lot and he said they wouldn't allow something like this for security reasons, but maybe he wasn't aware of this type of account either.