Alteryx zLib Error thrown on Server but not on Desktop

[ccagle]

Hello, 

We have a workflow that uses an outlook input tool to grab some email attachments and write them to a blob file. We then pick that file back up via the dynamic input tool and proceed to load the data to a SQL table ultimately. 

The problem is that this workflow will run on our desktop, but not on our Alteryx server - it throws the zLib error I've attached. I've already troubleshot this a bit - I can get it working on the server with a generic file, so this is telling me it isn't an access or path issue. It does say "To: email address must be specified" - this is specific to our case, but I'm wondering how this error can appear only on the server and not on the desktop. 

I'm attaching a copy of the error as well as a pic of the workflow with the tool where the error is thrown. Any help would be appreciated. 

[DanM]

@ccagle ,

Are you running an Event in the workflow to send an email? If a tool had an error it would give the tool number, but it looks like you have the email option setup in the workflow configuration window. Can you also tell the Community which tool is tool 51?

The Alteryx Server is basically another version of Designer. Everything that you have access to and all macros you use the server has to have all of that. Typically if something runs locally and not the Server, the Server is missing either permissions or a tool from your workflow. The Server will run as the machines user, so if that user doesn't have access to the data you need, the workflow will fail. Use the Run As user to allow your server to gain access to the data you need to run the workflow.

DanM

[ccagle · Accepted solution]

So I ended up finding and fixing the error. The issue is that we were passing a blob object to an excel file, and then pulling from that excel file (using the dynamic input tool) to put the data back into a sql table. 

The problem in this case is that the excel file we were using was corrupted, so the solution here was to create a new excel file, and point the data and retrieval there. 

So I'll accept this as a solution - I think the tricky part here is that the error that was throw was a 'zLib' error which seemed very hard to figure out what that actually meant.