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Alteryx Server Ideas

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At some point we would like Alteryx Gallery to support SSO via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. The way I want is to have Authentication via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. For instance one of our apps Tableau: It does authentication via SAML (SSO) and for authorization, we import AD groups into Tableau thrice a day(stores the groups in a .xml file), once the groups are in the Tableau, we secure the objects within Tableau using that LDAP groups (which kind of become local groups after import). Basically the userid after the successful authentication step is used by the app for authorization.

I just stated Tableau as one of the ways to implement Authentication and Authorization for an enterprise app. If Alteryx Gallery needs to be an enterprise app, you will need to look into this idea. 

 

Thanks
Raj

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We have configured the service account for Alteryx services on workers, controllers and Gallery. Kindly go through the below problem statement and current scenario and help to provide solution.

I will appreciate if we can setup a 30 minutes call and discuss on it.

 

Purpose/Current Design :

  1. Our purpose was to on board the account in EPV-AIM/gMSA solution so that password won’t be hard-coded anywhere in the config for service LAN account.
  2. Use same LAN service account to run the workflow on workers and write the output at destination paths [ Shared paths, Mailboxes]
  3.  

Problem Statement  :

As we have added service LAN account  in multiple AD groups [ global and local ] it has become member of 440+ groups which has resulted in the approx.. token size to 8421.

Active directory has a limit of having approx.. token size to 10000 (10k) for LAN accounts and after that it will fail to authenticate with AD ; which will result in failure of starting Alteryx services.

 

Please refer below link to know what exactly issue we are facing and looking solution from Product team[Alteryx].

https://www.jijitechnologies.com/blogs/active-directory-token-bloat

 

 

We are looking from the Alteryx team :

  1. Find a solution and provide some enhancement where we can use multiple (more than one) LAN accounts to run the workflows.
  2. In Large scale when we are running workflows of different team’s it is obvious that LAN ID will be member of multiple AD groups and it will reach to Token bloat threshold.
  3. We are looking something which can be provided as solution within the same setup to add multiple accounts or any other solution .

 

We already explored the option you suggested [https://help.alteryx.com/current/server/credentials] but as per our firm’s password policy we cannot save/use/withdraw privilege account passwords.

Because if we go with the suggested option we have to add the particular accounts in Windows server privilege group [ Log on as service, App_Security Logon locally and run batch job].

To meet compliant policy ; Any account which is privilege should be considered as app to app account and it should be integrated with Microsoft’s gMSA or CyberArk’s EPV-AIM solution to be on boarded account in vault. [ No human interaction with account ]

 

Feel free to reach out to me for any additional clarifications.

Hi

In a heavily used server environment, and depending on how workflows are deployed, it is possible to accumulate a vast number of "one off" workflows that could/should be deleted  as they would never be used again. In one of our environments we have over 1 million of these.

 

Currently we are manually deleting them 500 at a time but have asked if there is a way to script the delete process to make it more efficient. We have been told that to really delete a workflow you would need to touch at least 4 collections.

 

Can we have a Delete workflow API in one of the next releases in order to address this issue?

 

Thank you

 

Tom Diroff

I am noticing what I think it's a big gap in terms of turnover and job changes.  Even though you can add workflows to a Collection for development and update purposes. Only the original owner/publisher can see the version history for a workflow. At least that appears to be the case in 2020.1

 

Is there any discussion for the road map to include a way to transfer the ownership of a workflow from one user to another? this would alleviate the need to publish a brand new version and then reset all the scheduling. 

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Alteryx server APIs are associated with Subscription ( private or shared studio) and an Artisan could be part a of either a private or shared studio. In an enterprise environment you want the ability of scheduling workflows from private studio ( automation of private workflows) and shared studio ( production automation). You can achieve both in an enterprise environment with governance and control if Artisans ( along with Curators) have the ability to switch subscriptions. This will enable them to publish workflow in their private studio for automating personal workflows and in shared studio for production automation. In this way admin or curator still control the data connection creation and assignment , run as credentials but switching subscriptions can be provided to Artisans as well.

 

Shared studio's private api key and secret can be setup in other scheduling systems such as Ctrl-M and individual leaving or moving departments will not have any impact  on the scheduling configuration.

Within the Mongo database on the Alteryx Server, when using WinAuth,  if you use AD Groups for Permssioning, there is no direct way within the Mongo database to go from the AD Group to the User table.  This is important if you need to report on who, base upon their AD group membership with their associated role is a user.  Example.  AD Group 'Example-AD -Group'  is assigned Permission Curator.  The AD Group contains user 'Jay Smith'.  'Jay Smith'  is on the user Collection.  activeDirectoryPermssions Collection  contains the Ad Groups and permissions.  But,  in order to connect the two collections,  you will need to go externally to define the AD Group memebership to join these two collections together.

 

I would like to see the enhancement of being able to schedule a start and stop time for specific jobs that need to run multiple times per day, so they don't run during the nightly backup periods of the Alteryx server. This can cause the daily backups of the Alteryx Gallery to fail. Currently SQL Server Management Studio/SQL Server has the function to able to schedule start and stop times for specific job. Currently Scheduler page on Alteryx Gallery/Server lacks this feature.

 

SQL Server Management Studio

mackedet_0-1590532280855.png

Schedules on Alteryx Gallery/Server

mackedet_1-1590532639645.png

 

 

The search for replacing a workflow is poor (and I get that it is probably challenging to write on the back end) but as a result even if I type in the exact title of the workflow (aka copy and paste) Alteryx replace can't find it. Not only does this mean I have multiple workflows with the same name running around (loads of fun with lack of version control) but it also makes this entire thing more frustrating every time I update a workflow (as normally this also means the scheduling of said workflow breaks).

 

It would be awesome if instead of having to search by title for your workflow that you wish to replace with if you could instead use the URL where Alteryx Gallery put the workflow and then there wouldn't be any confusions about which workflow and you wouldn't have to type.

For scheduled jobs, there should be an option to include performance profiling in output logs globally.  Basically we are looking at how we can understand which custom macros are in use, and in which workflows, and one way to do this would be to get the output logs into another tool (i.e., splunk), and then set up some queries there.  It would work, but I would have to tell N developers to go set performance profiling on, re-upload their workflows, ect.  

 

But why not have a switch on server / gallery that just turns this feature on globally for every scheduled workflow?  

 

Thank you for attending my TED talk on why performance profiling should have an option to be set globally. 

*This is an idea from @cneivam  from the Portuguese Community*

 

  • Being able to control the workload in Alteryx Server (for example, making sure that a workflow can run only when another set of workflows finish running)
While adding or editing use permissions in collections, instead of admin option only, there should be option to choose between admin, user (run only) and custom, something like on the attached prinstscreen.
 
The way it looks now is confusing.

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.

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The workflow execution log file is locked while execution is in progress. Can we look at making the log file available in read only mode while execution is in progress. This will to triage any performance issues on run time and track the progress on run time, rather than waiting for completion of entire process.

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I am leveraging the server as much as possible while working remote.  I usually use it mostly for scheduled workflows when I am in the office, but limitations come up with the efficiency of the VPN and poor bandwidth when I am remote.

 

A typical process is to save to server, validation cycle runs, then open the workflow on the server in a browser, click run.

 

An ideal would be a macro or option that would combine two steps; for example, instead of "Save to Server", "Save to Server and RUN".  At that point you can collect your workflow when it is down running. 

We're looking to use the worker setting that cancels jobs that run over a certain amount of time. However, In testing we noticed when the server kills the job it does not trigger the workflow event for 'after run with errors'. That said, it does trigger the 'after run without errors' event, but there is no detail in the email as to what happened. This behavior seems counter-intuitive. We primarily use 'after run with errors', so our users could potentially have their workflows cancelled and never hear about it. 

 

is it possible to do one of the following:

  • Trigger the 'after run with errors' workflow event if the server cancels a job
  • Have a server notification that emails users when a job is cancelled due to run length

 

We're currently running server 2019.1, so please ignore this idea if this issue has been resolved in later releases. 

 

Here is the server setting I am referring to

Greg_Murray_0-1580323613304.png

 

It would be good to have these table headers sizable, so that it can be expanded to display complete Name (and other fields).

 

nanda419_1-1578508155151.png

Currently the e-mail settings for the server are set up using a wizard and are not available within the admin UI.

 

Please could you add an explicit section to the Admin UI to allow the admin team to set up approved SMTP settings, allowing this all to be managed in one admin console.

 

Further: Can you allow the admins to push these settings down to the desktop users.   This would allow the admin team to control the SMTP usage and prevent data leakage.   It would also reduce complexity for the user since the SMTP settings are all pre-set making eMail tools; and Events easier to set up.

 

CentralEMailSetup.png

It would be very useful to have a standardized method to set up notifications to the server admins and to the job owner themselves if an alteryx canvas fails (error).

 

My understanding is that currently the only way to do notifications on failure for every canvas is for every canvas to individually set up events.   On a large implementation, this becomes very difficult to manage.

 

Standard notification for job failures.png

Hi Alteryx, 

 

Now, under the Job Tab, it is only show the status of running job.

 

Suggest to add one new page for showing the run history of each workflow/job.

 

1. Workflow name

2. Priority 

3. Assigned Worker

4. Start time

5. End time

6. Duration

7. State

8. Job Type (schedule or manual tracker)

9. Owner

10. Message ( e.g. error log)

 

Best regards,

Samuel

With Alteryx Server 2019.4, new users cannot create Collections by default. 

 

As Alteryx Server admin this causes much manual effort on my side, because I need to configure new users manually. 

Alteryx claims to be a tool for automatization and I do not see how this new feature fits into Alteryx's vision.

I wish that there were tools, which allow me to automatize the management of users on the Alteryx Server. 

With a growing number of users on the Alteryx Gallery, manual user management is not an option!

 

I wish there was a way to create custom roles on the Gallery and assign them to AD groups, similar to "Permissions".

Those custom roles could include the privilege to create Collections, schedule Jobs, etc.

I would also love, if there was a way to give granular access to the Data Connection menu to users. 

 

I have already addressed this topic to the Alteryx product manager in Q1 2019 and I hope this feature will be implemented in the future. 

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