Situation:
As your analytics work grows - you find yourself using the power of Alteryx to create shared macros. These act as an accelerator for a team because one team member can us a reusable solution created by another team member. For example - many teams need to get data out of JIRA (or some other system) so you create a connector that everyone can use.
That's going well - and now you have 20 teams all publishing canvasses to your server (possibly 100s of canvasses running in production) which make use of your JIRA connector - all good so-far!
Problem:
BUT THEN - you discover an issue with the JIRA connector and you need to fix it and publish a new version!
It's at this point that you realise that the canvasses on your server which use your JIRA connector are NOT pointing to it, but they have made a copy and included this inside their canvas. So when you fix the problem with the JIRA connector - no-one gets the fix!
This is because every application uploaded to the server is a yxzp file, which zips up a COPY of all the shared macros and uses this in an isolated way.
So - in order to get the new JIRA connector (with the defect repaired) used instead of the old one you now need to:
- Download EVERY canvas on your server
- Unpack them all to expose the sub-macros being used
- Inspect them to see if they are actually an instance of the JIRA Macro
- Make a list of the owner and application IDs
- reach out by e-mail or phone to every one of these folk to ask them to republish their Alteryx workflow with your new version of the JIRA connector.
Proposal:
Please can we revisit this - we really do need the power of shared macros - and we also need the ability to fix and manage these like a product over time. This will have an impact on the engine (hence copying @AdamR_AYX )
Desired end-state:
- When you build a canvas using a shared macro - it doesn't store the macro itself, but rather a reference to the version on the server - unless you explicitly decide to break the connection and take a copy.
- When you check this canvas into the server - your application / yxzp does NOT include a copy of the shared macro - instead it has a reference link
- this means that Alteryx Server can now track which canvasses use this shared macro very simply
- When I fix this shared macro - I can then do an in-place update; or if the interface is not the same (i.e. different inputs or outputs) then this has to be a new version and the users will stay pointing to version 1.
This is how shared assets are managed in a micro-service world, which is the way that all of our architecture is going - and it seems important that we build this thinking into the Alteryx infrastructure too.
@AdamR_AYX ; @Treyson ; @SteveA @DerekK ; @BlytheE
