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SOLVED

Using a Custom Macro in Gallery Workflow

mcarrico
9 - Comet

I am working on building some macros to put into a company-wide library.  However, when I try to publish a workflow with a custom macro to our Analytics Gallery, I receive an error during the validation stage stating that the macro could not be found.  To try and fix the situation, I went into the server and within Designer added the folder location of the library into User Settings-->Macros (while logged in as the service account that runs server workflows).  This did not seem to fix the issue.

 

I also pushed the macro itself up into the gallery, but I'm not exactly sure how to use that published macro within other workflows (much less get it into Designer's ribbon on my local machine).  

 

Ideally I would like to point the server to a Macros folder on my network filesystem so that all users and the server are operating off of a common bank of Macros.  I know that there was some work recently on adding macros and other workflows into the gallery, but I can't seem to dig up documentation on using these macros.  

 

The only way that it looks like I can get it working is to package the macro as an asset with the workflow.  While this may work in the short term, it would make maintenance difficult if we update the company-wide macro and everyone has to republish any workflow leveraging that macro.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

15 REPLIES 15
The_Dev_Kev_Env
9 - Comet

Hi Everyone,

 

Quick question. Where is this metadata stored that points to the specific folder? We have an automated build of Alteryx, and I don't think we will be able to request to go into the server and create this macro directory through designer. I was fairly confident that it would have been stored in "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx\Engine\11.3\UserSettings.xml" , but I could not find the tag that indicates the folder that we choose to hold the macros. Any help would be appreciated

 

Best,

dK

mcarrico
9 - Comet

There is an ini file that specifies the macro folder location within C:\ProgramData\Alteryx\DataProducts\AddOnData\Macros\.  To setup multiple users, we just have a script that copies the ini file to that folder on their respective systems.

The_Dev_Kev_Env
9 - Comet

@mcarrico - great info! Was happy to find that the folder paths of the library do not need to be the same and it will still pick up the right macro that is on the server.

 

While I have you, does the naming convention of the ini file have any meaning/impact, or is this just a random id that it is given? 

 

Best,

Kevin

mcarrico
9 - Comet

I don't believe that the name of the ini file matters.  I give mine user-friendly names based on the macros that are referenced, and have had no issues.  

paulhet12123131
6 - Meteoroid

Hi, 

 

Have a similar issue. I have created a Macro , which is called by a Workflow. When running the Workflow locally , everything works fine. If I want to run it from the Gallery , I get some strange messages. From the end-user perspective , it would be expected that Alteryx would manage such details and if a WF using a Macro works correctly on the local machine, when publishing into the Gallery it should have the same behavior ( since there were no errors / warnings during the publishing process) . 


Please advice what I could do in order to fix this issue.

Thank you in advance.

carlosmartinezm
7 - Meteor

Amazing! 

Thanks a lot for the summary of your little research on this issue