Overwrite Existing Gallery Workflow

[mcarrico]

I'm really enjoying the new Save As functionality to push to the gallery, but had a request that would make it even more useful for me. 

I saw that you can open workflows directly from the Gallery and edit them with version control, but it would be nice if it was possible to do a Save As on a local workflow and point it at an existing copy on the server.  I need to maintain a local copy of my workflow for dev/prod separation, but currently my way to push to prod is to do a Save As to my Private Gallery, remove the existing copy from the company gallery, and then share my newly created workflow into the company gallery.  This causes some headaches like no version control, switching out icons everytime, and overall just a messy way to push to prod.  

It would be helpful if there was a way to overwrite an existing workflow in the gallery rather than editing it directly.  

[KylieF]

Hi @klonergan ,

Could you please describe what functionality is unintuitive and how you'd like us to improve it? As the Server currently stands in version 2019.4, workflows pushed to the Server that share the same name of an existing workflow will automatically replace it.  If desired, the owner of the workflow also have the ability to control what version is available for use through the Publish feature. The Replace Workflow functionality also allows for workflows that do not have the same name to replace a workflow without losing the version history, which can occur during the steps described by the original poster.

Also can you confirm what version of Alteryx Server you're using? This would help us a great deal in understanding where the functionality failure is for you.

Thank you!

[klonergan]

Hi Kylie,
Ok, sorry, I perhaps misunderstood (or you did change the functionality 2019.4/2019.3). In which case I apologize for my comment.
We are currently using Server 2019.2.5.62427. In that version, if I open a workflow from Gallery and then save it locally (which is common thing to do during development if I don't want every save to re-publish immediately back to Gallery), and then do want to publish it back to gallery, I'm not given the option to overwrite the existing one. It will publish a new workflow with the same name. And I then need to remember to go into the Gallery Server interface to replace the old one. In Tableau (which I also commonly use), it doesn't matter if you've opened a workbook from the server or locally - if you try to publish something with a name that already exists on Server, you're presented immediately with a dialog box that says "A workbook named xxx is already in use. Overwrite it?" Cheers,
-Kevin-


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[KylieF]

@klonergan 

Thank you for clarifying! There appears to have been some muddling of concepts which cause this status to get applied when there could be some disagreement. So I do appreciate you bringing this up as the discussion was getting lost in our product view.

Most of the concerns, if not all, from the original post are handled via the Replace Workflow, migration endpoints and new Collections permissions. These new Collections permissions allow any user who has been provided permission to update a workflow in a collection.

However the conversation in this post appears to have diverged to a discussion about the current Save As functionality, which this status would not apply to. However the implementation of a new Save As functionality would be tricky and likely won't occur in the near future. As our statuses typically apply to the original idea, I would like to keep the Implemented status. However I would also like to encourage you to post the requested functionality described to a new idea as this will allow our Product Team to directly look into the desired functionality and allow the Community to show renewed interest in this idea. (Also if you could please DM me once you've created the new idea, I would greatly appreciate it).

Thank you for posting and calling this out, it helps us understand what topics are still of high interest from Community.

[klonergan]

I'll do that - thanks so much for the detailed reply!

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[MPohlers]

I find it also very, very unintuitive that there can be multiple workflows with the same name in one private studio. The reason for this is the described problem.

Example:

I save a workflow to the gallery. Then I open my local worfklow and make edits. I might make edits over the course of days - the workflow is therefore in draft status and not ready to be deployed to the gallery.

When the workflow is done, I want to hit Save As, type in the name of the workflow in the Gallery and replace this workflow when saving. This is how pretty much any tool I know works. 

Alteryx not, unfortunately.

Going into the Gallery, then to the workflow, hitting replace, finding the workflow on my disk and then replacing it is just a lot of extra steps that cost time.

Additionally I might not even know that there was a version already on the Gallery. If I save it in this case I am left with two workflows of the same name that have a different content.