Alteryx Server Ideas

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.

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.)

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.

Right now, if you are using Windows Authentication, you can map AD group and users on the Permissions and Collections tab.  But for some reason, you can't use AD groups on the Data Connections tab.  Most of our databases are already secured by in-house AD groups in which you have to be a member in order to access that database.  Instead of managing a 2nd, most likely duplicate, list of users in the Data Connections tab I would like to be able to map the pre-existing AD group to that data connection.  That also means I don't have to service access requests.  If someone wants access to a database, they talk to the database owners, get added to the group and then they automatically can pull that data into Alteryx.

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.

We have several clients that operate in a Multi-Forest environment due to mergers and acquisitions.  Currently with Alteryx Server the only option we can offer them is to use Built-In authentication.  A lot of corporate and particularly finance institutions prefer a single sign on approach and utilise Windows authentication to do this.

Would it be possible to add support for Multi-Forest organisations into Server to support organisations going through mergers and acquisitions?

This would really benefit us in selling Server in to organisations with complex structures and reduce friction in publishing or preparing workflows.

I'd love the ability to have one schedule for a workflow at specific times. 

Currently you have to create 4 different schedules if you'd like a workflow to run at 10 am, 3 pm, 5:30 pm and 11:30 pm and doing this makes the "Scheduled Workflow" section of the server not only cluttered, but a lot more difficult to manage.  (like spotting accidentally duplicated schedules- which also happens more often than i'd like :)

Thanks!

When installing and configuring Alteryx, the wizard allows the administrator to select the Gallery authentication to be used among:

Built-in

Integrated Windows authentication

Integrated Windows authentication with Kerberos

SAML authentication

The note states:

Once an authentication type has been selected, it should not be changed. Changing it may cause technical problems.

The gallery manual states "Once an authentication type has been selected it should not be changed or Gallery functionality may be compromised." 

https://help.alteryx.com/server/current/admin/Configuration/SystemSettings/Gallery.htm?Highlight=%22...

If you are reading this idea suggestion, I hope it is not too late for you. Why allow the user to change the authentication method once the install is completed? What are the options to solve this?

One option would be to grey-out the "Authentication Type" section in the  "Gallery Authentication" screen, so the user is not able to change authentication methods once after the first configuration is set. This would still allow the user to change SAML settings.

Another option, if somehow there is a reason why a user would want to change authentication types even though it is not supported, what about changing the layout to make it more difficult to change the authentication type.

What are your other suggested changes?

This is not relevant if this idea is implemented https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Allow-changing-of-Gallery-Authentication-witho...

However, I would imagine that a UI change would be a lot easier to implement that supporting overhauling the user management in the MongoDB.

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

Mongocontroller.log during its MongoDB dump processing records DB admin password in clear text.    This poses a security risk now only to the company but to the MongoDB itself. 

Is there a security patch ready to be pushed out to eliminate this risk?

As part of the Persistence Expiration processes, within Designer we have the ability to set a retention threshold of the results tab.   i.e. 30 days.

After enabling this - all completed results are purged  but all the "error" results remain.  And this depending on the original count can run into the thousands, such as in my environment.   Id like to see the "Error" results become part of the clean up processing because of the following reasons:

1.  We do not have dedicated admins that have time to manually or by group delete these error result items.

2.  Most if not all - errors are resolved immediately.   if there were to be kept as a reference, a screen shot of the results are normally taken and filed away.

Support says this is intentional for resolution tracking purposes - but to counter - as I stated in item 2 - most errors are immediately looked at and worked on. So there is no reason to keep errored results. Especially when they are time-stamped dates greater than the expiration values selected.

Hey Sever Gurus - 

There might times where it would really nice to have a group of workflows that were logically related that you wanted to run without having to invoke a 'run now' for each workflow individually.  Sure, you could technically get there with the Runner macro, but in my case, there are intermittent scenarios in which I'd like to be able to run a set of related workflows to kick the tires, but they run at different schedule frequencies during normal operations.  As it stands now, I have to go hunt through 39239 different workflows, find the 12 associated with project X and tell it to blast away individually.  This brings me a great sadness.  

So what I'd like to be able to have is some flavor of named / logical grouping I could attach to a workflow at upload to scheduling time, I could then tell the scheduler to show me / run everything attached to that grouping.  

Thanks!

brian

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.

Currently only 5 workflows are displayed per page in a collection.  Currently we have about 30 workflows (soon to be about 100) and paging through workflows to find the one you want to run is time consuming.

It would be great if there was an option on the page so the user could select the number of workflows per page.

@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.

As the Server Admin I'd like to have the ability to view ALL "Workflow Results" for all Subscriptions.This will give the highest level admin the ability to monitor all schedules (on the entire server instance) and monitor if they are unable to complete successfully (example- unable to allocate memory) and any other errors are occurring. 

Knowing this information will help the server administrator understand if there are issues with the server itself (e.g. if we need more workers or to simply adjust actual server system settings..etc..)

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.

Please Enable OAuth 2.0/OpenID Support for Alteryx Server  & Connect. Currently, it supports only AD , SAML . 

Current SAML has limitations, Unable to import Security groups from LDAP/AD if SAML is enabled.  

Given the need for administrators to be able to perform analysis and monitoring on server performance; user usage etc - it is necessary to provide full documentation for both the API and the database underlying the server so that admins can use this to good effect.

Ref: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Server-API-Download-packages-for-surveil...

Although very limited documentation is available on the server API (https://gallery.alteryx.com/api-docs) what we're looking for is a much more fully formed and navigable experience like some of the examples below.

• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/data_dictionary.html
• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/help.htm#REST/rest_api.htm%3FTocPath%3D___...
• https://community.lithium.com/t5/Developer-Documentation/bd-p/dev-doc-portal?section=commv2

This will make building helper processes substantially easier; as well as allow admins to fully manage their environment.

Many thanks

S

cc: @HeatherMHarris @revathi @AshwiniChezhiyan @LizaNemchynova