Alteryx Server Ideas

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.

Our corporation has multiple private studios set up (depending on various teams within our infrastructure); when we provide a user access to one private studio, they cannot be part of another private studio (to update/add/remove their workflows); they can view/see them within the collections, but cannot action them.

If possible within the Alteryx Server interface, could users be added to multiple/different private studios (and be authorized for all), and have a toggle that would allow them to switch back and forth? This would alleviate a lot of our issues we have with users reporting/being involved with multiple teams (who are requiring access to different private studios).

I've seen various solutions/workarounds but this seems to be a table-stakes ask?  When scheduling a workflow I should be able to specify which parameter values to run with.  Just two of many use case examples - 

Use case #1 - a single analytic app could be scheduled multiple times, each schedule specifying a different line of business

Use case #2 - credentials, allow the user to schedule a workflow with their saved credentials.  When their credentials change all they would have to do is update the schedule parameters

(If you know a better way I'm all ears, not the API thought that isn't a bad way to do it, just not super Easy)

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)

Can we make API function available to assign specific worker node while submitting job request using api.

We are looking for the ability to use Alteryx as PaaS in the Azure cloud similar to how Databricks is working on Azure. So servers spin up when demand shows up and then they spin down.  Where we are not on the hook for server patching etc., but instead, we lease processing power/time from Alteryx in the cloud on an as needed basis. The licensing model will also need to be a scalable to support this type of usage.

HI,

I could not find any possible way to send an email if the Alteryx workflow is taking more than expected time.

I was wondering if any such feature is available

In my organisation, Alteryx workflow keeps running sometime due to memory issues. It will be great to know about these delay and handle them.

Regards,

Vish

My company uses R Shiny and maybe in the future Python Dash to create multiple analytic apps, dashboards, etc for multiple people to run across our company. One thing that would be nice to to have these R Shiny workflows run off of the Alteryx Server as that would allow us to use Alteryx Server to keep permissions and ease of use.

I propose an update to the Alteryx Server that would allow for R Shiny apps to be run in the Alteryx Server with all functionality of custom R interactive plots, etc etc just like what you'd see in one hosted on a R Shiny Server.

The benefits of this would allow for my company to only have to manage one server instance (Alteryx) to run all of this. Since R/Python is allowed/used in Alteryx workflows already, can you add the ability to visualize R Shiny code/plots/interactions/etc within Alteryx Server itself?

A nice to have is a connector for Microsoft Flow to trigger workflows.  With Microsoft Flow, users can automate processes, or set conditions that can trigger services across many different providers.  

Having the ability to use a Microsoft Flow can enable alteryx users to run workflows and feed in data that could be used by Microsoft Flow to feed into other processes. 

This would be a game changer for many users.

It would be great if each user could persist their gallery UI sorting/view changes and leave them as default. When I log in I nearly always immediately switch to list view and sort by most recent modified. This means everytime I access a set of workflows there are at least 3 click actions before I can even start working.

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!

Hello,

I think there should be option to test save data connection during setup and after. Perfectly, if there was possibility to schedule connectivity check, however, just adding option to test it manually will be the step forward.

Best,

Piotr

Hello,

Current Data Connections options are limited to db connections: MSSQL, Oracle and Others.

In my opinion, it should be expanded by at least:

- FTP/SFTP addresses

- URLs to webservices or resources

- Cloud resources like AWS S3

The server should manage resources as much as possible

Best,

Piotr

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

Hello,

I can't find an option in Alteryx Server wizard to enable redirection from http to https. Alteryx Service occupies both ports so I can't (and I don't want) to deploy a redirection on port 80. Such feature would be really helpful if it comes out of the box.

Best,

Piotr

I would like to have the ability to configure my company's Gallery to display more than five applications/workflows to a page.  This is a waste of screen space and creates unnecessary clicks for browsing.

Hello Alteryx Team,

we would like to customize SAML login with additional claims (departement)?

We want to grant authentication based on claims we are using in addition of firstname, lastname, email. 

So we need custom code as well, is this possible to integrate or merge with alteryx code ?

simple example would be:

we add city to the claims and on user with from city "New York" will be accepted all others will get access denied page.

Best regards,

Heinrich