Alteryx Server Ideas

We have the Local License Server installed.  Right now, if a Designer user changes roles, or leaves the company, they have to release their license from their client-side machine.  If they don't release it properly, and IT can't get us into their machines, then we have to wait 7 days for that license to roll off the server.  There should be a way for a system admin to forcefully revoke someone's license.

Would like to see a Notification hierarchy implemented to Gallery. Currently, the settings that control notifications are at the Gallery-level....where only the admin can control, for example, notifying users if a new workflow was added to a collection they belong too. Could this setting be inherited, but then, for example, a Collection owner can implement their own notification settings that overrides the Gallery default? Using the same example as before, perhaps the Collection owner could disable notifying their Users if a new workflow is loaded to the collection.

Nick

We have a lot of Alteryx users that generate their workflows in Private Studios and set them up as scheduled Workflows, but the assigned Workers/job tags in Private Studio aren't carrying over to the scheduled workflow, which has to be updated by someone with higher access.  This is creating a time consuming task for our administrator who have to update these scheduled workflows to make sure our unassigned Worker node isn't overloaded.

We really like the idea of the Server Usage Report.  But the PDF is somewhat limited and we use Power BI instead of Tableau.  It would be great if the Workflow had an option for outputting to Power BI.

Currently, this is completely manual with whoever is assuming the schedule creating it under their profile and then the old schedule being deleted.

This can happen often in organization where a user leaves the company or assumes a new role requiring some else to maintain those schedules. It would be convenient if there was an option to reassign the owner of a schedule to simply this process.

Hey there,

Below you can see few of my suggestion to improve Alteryx Server. 

Idea for Alteryx Server monitoring:

• Increase data what could be seen on workflow results.
• Possibly create a report with filter option (to filter by user, gallery, workflow and etc.), which would at least contain data like:
  • Successfully ran workflows, count, percentage.
  • Failure rates, counts and etc.
  • Live data for monitoring purposes.
  • etc.
• Possibility to connect to workflow results data (live data) with other tools like Tableau or Power BI to create dashboards and etc. to monitor and act on the error as soon as possible.
• Give a chance for other users to check on the workflow statuses and etc same like workflow owner.

Give server more functionality with:

• Ability for server automatically retry workflow based on configurations: in example:
  • retry flow in specific time (for example in 30 minutes)
  • number of possible retries
  • based on specific workflow (other) results ability to trigger to run another workflow
  • (Maybe there is a better way) ability to run macros which would for example open MS Excel, and run macro inside it. I have some of the workflows where workflow opens excel, runs macro inside, that macro triggers special Add In which connects to Essbase, it pulls the data, saves excel file, and then alteryx continues working with the file. So if such or similar workflows could be run on Server that would be awesome.
  • This is extremely exiting one: possibility to create environment for self-service users, which it would not be something like gallery (because gallery is more suitable for Alteryx Designers/users).
    • in that one environment admin could grant access for user and tick what specific user could see and run.
    • so for admin it would be one environment, and user would see only what is needed for him/her.
    • in that environment user would also be able to schedule self-service workflows to be received in example by email, or BOX drive or any other way. Scheduled workflow would have to be approved by an admin before it would be actually scheduled. 
  • I have not tried this one myself, but that would also be great if all alteryx server environment could be accessed by mobile devices (of course, some features would be limited).

 Hopefully you will find these suggestions interesting and useful. 

Regards,

Aurimas

@SteveA did an article about server logging a few years ago which was very helpful.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works-Blog/A-deeper-dive-into-Server-logging/ba-p/22389

... and in the training events at Inspire this year there was a session on how to find and interpret server logs.

it would be very useful for large server environments to move away from discrete log files as much as possible, and instead move towards a world where the logs are stored in a data format, and one logging infra is used for all so that an admin team can see these all in one place.

Granted - the initial boot-up of a server, where it needs to connect to the logging DB is going to be a challenge - but after this initial primary boot sequence it would be great if all server logs and logging events were stored in a database of some kind so that we can analyze and collect events.     That way, server admins can have a great UI experience; as well as a great analytical experience without having to regex through multiple different .LOG files.

Today in managing Alteryx server, we manually configure new connections using the front end.  However, this has some potential drawbacks as it makes it hard to easily track change history, or make bulk updates to multiple strings, and it also leaves room for user error on configuration.

In this case I'm pretty specifically looking to modify aliases on the server itself.  I'm not particularly concerned with distribution to a wider audience, and the usernames/passwords associated in this case should not be available for use locally by users.  As a part of this, I am trying to identify a method to reduce or eliminate the need for anyone (including the data connection manager) to need to know the password for the specified accounts.  As some of these accounts may be used by multiple systems, it would be significantly simpler to integrate this maintenance into existing automated processes, rather than have a manual step to update the Alteryx connection values on the Gallery.

This is specifically a challenge today with regards to specific usernames or passwords which need to be stored.  Alteryx saves these values using machine-level encryption, but that is difficult to generate automatically.  Having a supported method that would easily allow creation of this file with password-level information would greatly improve maintenance of the Alteryx Server, particularly from an IT automation perspective.

each canvas in our environment goes through initial dev; then a testing phase; then into production usage after completing testing & peer review.

Currently the server environment has no concept of progression or promotion so we have to set up our own Dev; UAT; and Prod gallery & server - this really is very clunky because assets have to be manually copied across.

What would be more effective is:

- Allow a single asset to have a lifecycle (like you do in GIT) - so that it can go through dev and testing as a branch of the main code

- Once ready - user then changes the lifecycle type to "testing" or "UAT" and pushes it to users

- Once signed off, the user then promotes this to a production flow, and it replaces the current production version

There are a few areas where we'd need to do some thinking (dependancy tracking; branching; changing connection details as you promote so that you can hit the prod data stores etc) - but fundamentally this would go a VERY long way towards eliminating much of the admin involved in running the gallery.

We've confirmed with @KevinP that the Alteryx Gallery / Server API does not currently support downloading canvasses in unzipped data-stream format. (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Server-API-Download-packages-for-surveil...)

Please can we add an API end-point that allows the following:

• Connect to the gallery and download a canvas; along with all of its sub-canvasses and helper macros. 
• Format required:
  • Plain XML (not zipped)
  • Provided in a data stream so that we can perform analytics and surveillance on this data
  • Fields required
    
    • Canvas filename
    • Application ID
    • Some unique ID per macro / sub-macro
    • XML for the canvas
    • Last run date
    • Last changed date
    • Environment (this is important once Server actually allows a Dev; UAT; Prod progression cycle - so we can see which environment people are in)
    • User details who uploaded
    • User details who are marked as the owners
    • Any other meta-tags on the canvas (important once server allows for meta-tagging of canvasses for categorisation)

Current API only allows this to be downloaded to a zipped file; which then needs to be unzipped; and then loaded back into a data stream.

Thank you

S

CC: @revathi @AshwiniChezhiyan @LizaNemchynova 

Hi there,

Currently, when we download a version of Alteryx - we need to download a very large number of binaries across many different download locations.    Once we get these in, they need to go through InfoSec audits; then be packed for deployment etc.     this creates a very large admin overhead in that folk need to check for updates across multiple binaries and also create a significant number of different installs which then need to be rolled out across hundreds of workstations.

The request would be to change the approach to downloads for enterprise customers:

- Admin logs into the download portal

- They then select the components which they need (Designer; predictive; CREW macros; Microsoft starter pack; Tableau starter pack; JIRA connector from the gallery; additional predictive tools from the gallery)

- this then becomes the defined selection set.

- When any of these items are updated - the admin is notified

- When they download - these are then all built into a single installer binary which we can then download and roll out to all our workstations.

Many thanks

Sean

cc: @dataMack @adrianloong

Hi,

Currently on Alteryx it is possible to add visibility of a subscriptions scheduled workflows to all members of that subscription.

What we would quite like is for the ability to turn on or off the ability to edit workflows within that subscription for all members.

As in if a member goes on leave, or leaves the company, or is ill, other members can edit, update and cancel the scheduled workflow as needed without needing to go through an admin for it.

Many Thanks,

Oli

As an Admin, I would like to be able to see, from the Gallery, a single place where the history of workflows that have been run is displayed.  Right now I can only see workflows running or queued.  I would like to be able to look back at past executions and see status, runtime, errors, etc.

This data is currently available in Designer on our Alteryx Server.  But right now our system is just one environment.  I'm not sure if when we expand to multiple Gallery and Worker machines where I will have to look for workflow history.

Also, Workflow schedules can only be seen in Gallery, and not Designer.  So it would be nice to have everything in one place.

Hello,

I've used a standard configuration to set up an Alteyx server. The gallery is available at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/gallery

I'd would be really helpful if you enable to create a landing page at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/ and add a possibility to host add extra pages. The easiest way to do this is to add an option to the Alteryx Server configuration wizard and read the pages from Alteryx workspace location.

Additionally, such landing page should have redirection from HTTP to HTTPs.

Best,

Piotr

Hi,

We have more clients that would like to prioritize their scheduled jobs based on run time and importance. 

It could be a simple priority number, that decides which job that need to run next. Further it could be nice to be able to allocate certain workers to certain jobs. 

I am looking forward to your feedback.

Daniel

It would be great if the admin could change some default settings on the Alteryx Gallery page. For example, where we have the list of apps, show Detail view and sort by App name ascending by default.

 

Please keep in mind that this is a suggestion from a container novice! 🙂

However, our situation is such that our release upgrade deployments are taking significant time to install, test and sign-off from DEV through PROD for the four main life-cycles involved in our server environment. Even if we script the deployment to save time, there's still manual configuration needed to confirm the new version works in the next server environment.

Similar to how Promote can deploy from DEV through PROD using images/containers, my suggestion is to package the Server components into images/containers that can be similarly deployed through the life-cycles. While the container with mongoDB doesn't need to move to the next life-cycle, the containers with the web server, load balancer, and engine nodes could move with the click of a button. And if needed, reverted to prior version with similar ease.

I forgot to ask about this idea at the UX lab during Inspire, but would be very happy to hear if it's already in the pipeline!

Thank you for your consideration!

Many organizations have IT applications (Splunk, OSIsoft PI, etc.) that can consume, historize, and monitor Windows Performance Monitor items.  If would be great if Alteryx wrote application-specific information to PerfMon.  Things like: number of engines running, number of workflows in the queue, number of people logged into gallery, time it takes for data to pass between DB/Controller/Gallery, etc. This would go a long way in helping admins to properly size systems and monitor them for upsets.

With Version 2018.3, you removed the Autodetect SMTP button, and with it, have rendered the Email Tool virtually useless for many people, which is a shame because it is a critical tool for some of us to share reports produced in Alteryx.

In requiring an SMTP path, there are a host of authentication issues that need to be addressed, and we can't seem to figure out how to configure the path and From emails properly to allow the tool to work without errors. 

My only solution at this point is to rollback to 2018.2 so I can continue to use the Email tool. 

Please address this so we can use the tool as before, or provide the necessary configuration options to allow for proper authentication with popular email services (Gmail, etc.)