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.  

[KoryC]

Thank you for the feedback, @mcarrico!

While we don't have a specific "Overwrite" option within the Gallery, we do have a "Replace" function available, which allows you to replace Workflow A with Workflow B, maintaining all of the shares in collections, permission, runs, and version history of Workflow A.

This functionality is available within the Gallery from the app details page. There is a link to "Replace Workflow"

 

Clicking that link will then present you with a dialog where you can find the workflow you would like to replace this one with. Once the workflow has been replaced, and collections that contained the original workflow will still maintain that link, but will now be using the newer "version" of that workflow. You'll also notice that the version history of that workflow contains an entry that the workflow had been replaced, and still allow you to go back to previous versions of a workflow.

For the future, we'll look at improving this experience, perhaps offering an option to overwrite existing workflows during the save process.

[kevinbird15]

This would allow a user to save to a specific app in the gallery.  So where it says workflow name, there would be an option to browse to an app.  

[kevinbird15]

The replace workflow is kind of clunky compared to having a save as feature.  Definitely think this is worth looking into to save time. 

[patrick_digan]

I think this would be a great feature.

[Philip_Burrow]

Hello, is there any update on this? I see it was changed to under review about 2 years ago.

I think it would be great to be able to 'Save As' and overwrite a current Gallery workflow, instead of having to manage them via Replace.

[JulieM]

Hi Philip, thanks for asking about this.  I don't have any exact specifics on when we might be able to deliver this functionality but I can say that we are in the process of looking at a lot of improvements for how workflows are saved, published, and shared in the Gallery.  We are definitely taking this specific feedback into consideration and we should have some updated information in the near future about when some of these changes will be making it into production.  Thanks again for checking in and please keep the feedback coming our way!

[EEdLoh]

@JulieM, I would like to note that one of the things that bothers me most about the current Replace Workflow feature is that it negates any Version Control Comments and history whenever you use it. Perhaps looking into a forked presentation for version history like Git would be better?

[djoyus1]

Just adding a +1 for the Save As functionality to update a gallery workflow feature.

[TimGarstin1]

Has anyone managed to automate how we push production workflow changes from Designer and override the existing copy on the Gallery (which has the correct permissions, scheduling, etc.)

The current approach (below) maintains scheduling, version history, and permission control, but is a manual process and is not scalable.

For the example below, WF1 is the original copy of the workflow on Gallery and WF2 is the updated workflow that is locally saved on Designer.

Currently, the method is to:

1. Save WF2 (the local version) to the Private Studio on Alteryx Gallery using ‘Save as’
2. In the Private Studio on the Alteryx Gallery, click into WF1, then click ‘Replace Workflow’ and select the name of WF2. This will replace WF1 with WF2 and maintain WF1’s scheduling, permissions etc. note - The original pushed version of WF2, in step i), remains in the private studio
3. Delete the copy of WF2 from the private studio.

If anyone has an alternative method/workaround, your help would be much appreciated! 

Thanks