Logging Individual Workflow Changes

[robertfishel]

Hello Alteryx Community!!

Is there a way within Alteryx Server, or by some other means (custom workflow perhaps) to trace the individual changes made by users to workflows stored on the Alteryx Server?  Down to the tool/code change level?  Thanks.

[CharlieS]

I think there haven't been any replies because there isn't a concise answer to this one. There's a couple ways to approach this that will depend on the development environment.

- XML Changes. This would involve building a workflow that compares the XML of two different versions and summarizes changes. This would be great for quantifying changes in formulas (ex: [A]+[B] was changed to [A]+[C]), but gets tricky when there are tools or connections are modified. Alteryx Gallery conveniently allows access to previous versions. Workflows saved locally will need to depend on differences from the .bak file. 

- User Input. My organization has many awesome Alteryx users, so most workflows that are put into production have notation included. This includes a change log in a Comment box at the top for workflows used by all users. 

[HasanHb]

Documentation is definitely the way to go.  You could have your workflows (read xml file) under source control and have a change log for everytime a user checks in the changes.  

You could also use a file compare tool like Winmerge to show you what sections were added or removed but, to CharlieS' point, that will get messy and it will be hard to know what the changes mean.   

[agitol]

I have the same issue. Can you share some useful documents here?

coreball

[esoden]

Workflow Admin Manager (WAM) has a change history report that goes down to every tool, configuration, etc. It also provides full documentation of the workflows. Again, every tool, config, SQL statement, etc. Because we capture and index all of that, you can also search all workflows for any tool, config, SQL statement, etc.

It provides the above for all workflows in Server but also workflows stored on local drives.

Friends don't let friends Alteryx without WAM :-)

https://capitalizeconsulting.com/workflow-admin-manager/ - Tons of videos on this page showing different parts of WAM.

This is available as an add-on directly from Alteryx or from Capitalize.