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Alteryx Server Ideas

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Featured Ideas

Current State:

Currently, all workflows and applications are in list-form within "My Workspace" (formerly Private Studio) and Collections.  In My Workspace, I might have workflows and applications that support a broad range of domain spaces and audiences.  As the developer (or Artisan), they're all in My Workspace, but shown as an exhaustive list with no categorization unless I name them to represent not only the function of the workflow/application but also the domain. 

 

Once those same workflows/applications are moved to collections, there can exist confusion over whether the workflow/application is intended for a schedule, manual run, or application.  Separating by naming convention gets messy and degrades clarity for non-developer roles.

 

 

Proposed Solution:

I would like to see folders, only one or two levels deep, be added to My Workspace and to Collections.  This proposed solution would not alter permissions, as those would be common for the parent collection and any assigned roles would function the same for that entire collection.  The solution is simply adding organization to enhance the user experience.

 

For example:  I might have a Collection that is intended for my Finance team....


Finance_Collection / Scheduled_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Scheduled_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_ReceivablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_PayablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Manual_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Manual_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / etc...

All persons who have been assigned the role connected to the "Finance Collection" will still see everything in all of the folders but would have a better sense of what "workflows/applications" are intended for their use according to the folders the workflows/applications are organized into.

 

 

Value Added (Why This Matters):

  • Enhanced user experience (easier to find the correct workflows
  • The volume of roles and collections can be reduced, thus reducing Admin strain
  • The solution does not impact roles and permissions
  • Overall management of workflows and applications is enhanced for the Artisans

 

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I welcome input and feedback from the community and would appreciate your support if you find this suggestion useful for your Alteryx experience!

Given the security requirements of our company collections need to be created centrally, which is fine for sub-organizations that only require one collection. However, the large sub-orgs require more than 1 collection, ideally we would create the top-level collection and give the sub-org the access to create their own sub-collection within that collection, but not the ability to create collections at the top-level.

When I create a DCM Entry in Gallery, it would be great if the users I share it with would also be able to reference the credentials in their desktop designer when they sync their connections to the Gallery. 

When you add a workflow you have to add its schedule to share the results in collection menber's.
A workflow can be in several collections and therefore different users can schedule it. (why not)
This results in multiple schedules for the same workflow. There is no reason why a workflow cannot have multiple schedules.(mandatory in some cases)

 

Automatically adding schedules to the collection would allow users to see that there is already a schedule on the workflows in question and not to recreate one!

 

it should also be possible to create a schedule from the collection.

User who share Apps/Workflows with other users in a collection are not able to see the results of the other users executions directly in the gallery.

Could you please add the possibility to share workflow results in the Alteryx Gallery?

This idea has been touted in different flavours over the years (but not implemented), but I'd like to push it a little further:

 

1. Create the ability to collaboratively edit an Alteryx workflow - e.g. like you can edit Microsoft documents collaboratively. If the front-end is primarily an XML interface, this should in theory be possible?

2. Version control (not version tracking) - i.e. automatically state the differences in scripts between versions and allow for checking in and checking out of code

3. Power BI & Tableau Prep have the ability to see exactly what changes were made and to reverse steps to get back to a specific stage of development: it would be great to have a panel that tracks all the edits you've made since you started editing the workflow

 

In simple terms, a modern, interactive way for multiple developers to work together, but also to encourage the use of Server to "check in" your application and to avoid developers saving the same file over & over again locally.

Currently, in order to run an app via the API, you have to have uploaded the app to your private studio. Frankly, I don't find this function useful because you have to download then re-upload an app in order to gain access to the API. The API would be more useful if when an app is shared with you (or a collection is shared with you), then it would also allow for that app to be run via API by the user it was shared with. Right now, the only person who can run the app via API is the user who originally uploaded said app. 

There is a strong need for more APIs to be introduced in Alteryx Server so that our Admin teams can provide automated solutions to our users. My understanding is that a lot of these will be introduced into Alteryx Analytics Hub however, it is also needed in Alteryx Server.

 

I would propose that the internal APIs for Collections and Scheduler be exposed to the Admin Key/Secrets so that we can use these APIs to move our Users workflows directly to their collection or automatically schedule for them, if needed. It seems that all this would take would be to release the Authorization from internal to the Admin on the API.

 

APIs I am requesting be released:

  • PUT .../gallery/api/collections/{collectionID}/apps/{appID}/
  • POST .../gallery/api/scheduler/

In the Alteryx Gallery Collections the Workflow Upload Date doesn't sort properly. Instead of sorting chronologically (ex: Jan first Dec last) it sorts by number (Dec goes before April because Dec starts with a 1 while April starts with a 4), see attached for an example. 

 

CMMartinez_0-1649944723939.png it flips back and forth between 2022 and 2021

 

 

In the example November and December are first because the month starts with a 1. Then April follows because it starts with a 4.  Then it starts to get messy because it does this:

  • 12/16/2021
  • 4/04/2022
  • 4/26/2021
  • 5/02/2021

That 2022 is in the middle purely because 4 < 5, that's not right.

 

I tried exploring the settings to see if I could change this but I didn't find an option to do so.

 

Two potential solutions:

  • Change the format of the date to YYYYMMDD, then if it sorts numerically it will still work
  • Don't sort numerically and instead sort chronologically, ex: April goes before December

As collections get big sorting for the most recent workflow becomes a nightmare with the current improper sorting mechanism.

 

If I'm mistaken and this option already exists please let me know.

Thanks!

Chris

 

Some of our artisans are unable to publish straight from designer and it would be great if there was an "Upload workflow" button in the private studio just like there is for curators in the admin panel.

Hello,
One of the frustrations we have faced in using Alteryx Gallery is the question "How do we set up many users with their respective collections easily?".

If we take for an example, the scenario where a company has 300 potential users of the gallery, who are all going to login and generate a report based on their department.
In order for them not to be able to generate the reports on other departments, the report generation workflows are put into collections. The current solution to this (atleast on SAML Authentication), is for a user to sign up, and then a Curator to assign them to their given collection. This is fine for small scale solutions, but the purpose of server is allowing for large scale deployment and automation of tasks, and this is far from ideal for a larger company.

If the server is setup on Windows Authentication, the users are able to be categorised within the Windows Active Directory, and then these groups (which may pre-exist) are able to be added to the gallery straight from the AD (see here), however this is not a feature within SAML Authentication.

From my knowledge, SAML Authentication should easily allow for this functionality, and it works very similar to Windows Active Directory. I mentioned this on a call with a Customer Support Engineer, and he explained that this wasn't part of his known roadmap for the Alteryx Gallery. 

I do believe this to be an extension of a current post on the Alteryx forum, however, this details opening the API to allow for this on an API level, however I would also suggest for this to be integrated within Alteryx Gallery, as not all users are experienced with using, or building tools around, the API.
 
Cheers,
TheOC

Currently you can only view the workflow results / history for other users workflows that are scheduled and the schedule is shared in the collection.

 

A lot of our workflows are set up to run on-demand, some as analytical apps and some as standard workflows. 

 

The first point of reference when a user experiences an issue should be to view the workflow results, but currently this is not possible and just gives an error "Access Denied" even when the tick box is selected within Workflow settings.

 

My suggestion is that you should be able to see the workflow results of any workflow that is shared with you (regardless of whether it is scheduled or run on-demand) as this would make fault finding and user support much easier.

 

Thanks

Rob

Hi Team,

 

We have new idea which we dint find on Alteryx community, also Alteryx expert confirmed for now this is not possible.

 

Please find the below details:

 

Use Case: Automating Onboarding Process for collection creation.

 

Idea: Currently we are doing this onboarding manually, such as user fills up the form in Sharepoint with all relevant details for Collection Creation.

We as an Alteryx Support team, check the form and create the collection Manually.

We want to create a Workflow, such that it will read the form from SP and create the Collection Automatically without any Manual user intervention.

 

Benefits: If we Automate this then we can save manual user efforts and also avoid any manual mistakes.

 

Note: If this can be possible with any other feature of Alteryx like API, then also we are good.

 

Regards,

Niharika

 

I would like the ability to add Groups to a collection as well as individual users. This would make things a lot easier for situations where large sets of users needed to be added to a collection at once, or removed at once.

Ability to change the default workflow settings when to also include [Others may view this workflow's history] in a similar way to the other attributes in workflow settings that are set by default.  This would prove beneficial for workflows which are shared across a large team and need to be run on a consistent frequency and are not run headless.  The inability to set this by default leaves a risk that the setting remains unchecked and more than one user triggers that workflow in a given month which could result in a material impact if the output of that workflow is posting to another system in the firm.

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Currently users have to be manually added to groups and those groups linked to collections.

 

For large organizations this is time consuming, it would be better if users could automatically be assigned to the relevant collection based on matching an attribute of the collection with an attribute of the user/group.

 

To take this further, when using SSO the information, such as group could automatically be passed in by the claim and so fully automate the process.

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Allow Collection owner to be a point of contact rather than a sub-Curator. We want a ticket process to control access to collection workflows and users in a SOX-dedicated gallery and giving those permissions outside the ticket process would be a hole in our control environment. Currently we make a service account the owner, but that means we need a list of contact people on the side.

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I have inherited admin duties, and have been running to many problems. Some of which will escalate when the subscriptions go away. 

The pages desperately need to be updated for a more streamlined admin experience.

Couple examples I came up with below. 

 

Naming Convention

  • Allow workflow renaming without the replace function.
  • Force a unique plan name across all private studios. instead of being unique on just ID.

API Access

  • Allow any user who can access the module from Collections to be able to trigger it from the API using their own API key.
  • Store results of "API" triggered workflows on the page.
  • Groups:
  • Identify Users without a group
  • Identify users in more than one group
  • Add multiple users at one time (Muticheck box) with filters.

User Page

  • Add/remove Users to Groups
  • View, add, and remove Collections from Their User Page

Collection Page

  • Add Collection from the Admin collection Page

Designer "save" window.

  • Give the ability on Save As & Save for the user to automatically share the plan with their collection(s).
  • Default all "Workflow" assets to be unchecked by default, rather than relying on users to click "workflow options"," manage workflow assets", and then uncheck everything.

Workflow Page

  • Change Owner (Can be limited to admin only)
  • Add directly to collection from this page.
  • Do not reset the "private data exemption" to default every time an updated version is updated.
  • Allow admin users to see logs of all users who run the plan (Also add this to the admin page while you are at it)

 

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When I publish a workflow, I want it to have different behaviour based on the collection from which it was executed or scheduled. Let us suppose that I create a DEV collection and a PROD collection. The workflow is shared in both. If the workflow is executed from DEV, then I will have some logic to do X (output to specific folders, etc). If from PROD, the logic will do Y. The logic will be up to me. If the collection information is captured in the MongoDB layer, then I can pull it out on the fly by joining the collections, appInfos, and AS_Queue or AS_schedules collections. Querying the DB on the fly during execution and pulling that value is trivial. Once I have it, I can use it for any sort of logic as an environment sensing variable. Can you please store the info in MongoDB?

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