Using a Custom Macro in Gallery Workflow

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.

Publish

Gallery

Settings

Macros

Accepted answers

mcarrico

Thank you both for your continued help. I ended up speaking to Chad Martin yesterday on a few other matters and found a solution. So we discussed that there were two options for handling custom macros within gallery workflows:

Include the custom macro as an asset - This will package the custom macro with the workflow and essentially lock that macro into the workflow as it was when the workflow was published. While this may at times be desirable, I was curious if it was possible to have the workflow reference a centralized repository of macros that could be updated should a bug be found in the macro or enhancement desired.
Add the folder containing the custom macro to the Macro Search Paths within Alteryx Designer on the server itself - This way, if both my local PC and server reference a common folder on my file server, they are utilizing the same custom macro set. This allows me to include macros without having to package them as assets. While I indicated that I tried this in one of my previous posts, there was a nuance that I was unaware of that Chad helped me uncover: drive pathing. Apparently including a network drive location into this Search Path using a drive name (i.e. G:\Macros\mymacro.yxmc) will not work on the server. Once I switched this Search Path to an explicit UNC path (i.e. \\myfiles01\Macros\mymacro.yxmc) the Macro Search Path was properly picked up and I was able to use a common set of macros between my local PC and the gallery server.

Thanks again to everyone for the help in figuring this out; your help is much appreciated.

All comments

Aguisande

I came across this in the Gallery (Installer App). I had no time yet to try it myself, but the description sounds very promising:

"Use this app to add any custom macro to Alteryx Tool Palette. Add to an existing category or create a new one."

https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/Installer-App/565c1ff33df7da129096733b

You may give it a try and see if it solves your issue.

mcarrico

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, it looks like that is modifying your local ini, which I believe is what is being accomplished through the User Settings. I need to add a Macro to the gallery itself, not my local PC. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the intent of this workflow, but that's how I interpret it.

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