Alteryx Server Ideas

Currently, to allow a user to schedule jobs, prioritize jobs, assign jobs, create collections, or have API access, toggles must be set at the user level.  

As a server administrator, I want to configure these toggles at the group level, so that a) I don't have to modify a large number of users individually to grant them such permissions, b) I ensure consistency across groups of users that doesn't rely on humans clicking all the right things for each of the relevant people, and c) I can easily change these settings for multiple people, if needed.

If two users sit in the same studio and have multiple scheduled workflows in that studio, both users can see the results of those schedules under "Workflow Results" -> "My Jobs"/"Jobs Shared with Me" 

It gives both users in the studio good visibility of all the workflow results they have access to.

Now if we move to a 1 studio-1 user environment and share workflows and schedules via collections, this "Workflow Results" -> "Jobs Shared with Me" functionality is empty. Instead users have to go to each schedule individually to see the results from them there. 

So if you're in a 1 studio-many users environment, there is a single place to go to see all workflow results. But if you're in a 1 studio-1 user environment and sharing via collections, you have to go to infinitely many places to see the results of all the schedules shared with you.

So my idea is to have results from schedules shared via collections appear in Workflow Results.

Hello!

Currently one of the pain points when looking at integrating Alteryx Server into an organisation, is the role of a Curator, and who should be given that role. Of course, from an IT perspective, they want governance and control over data connections, users, and configuration - as it is important that users aren't simply able to change the default role to Curator and give all users access to the Administration portal, for instance. On the other hand, a Super User is typically given Curator access to allow for adjustments to all other sections of the Administrator Portal, that IT quite frankly don't care about.

What would be useful, is for a new role to be created, elevated from Curator. Let's call them 'Super Curator'. These 'Super Curators' (or, User-Curators, for a less exciting name) have access to all of the Admin portal as usual. 'Curators', would now only have access to the following (Highlighted yellow for Curator access):

This would aid the conversation from an IT perspective, allowing them to take control of user, data connection, and credential administration, whilst leaving the rest of the control to the other Curators. As this wouldn't always be a requirement, it would be useful to allow for a toggle of this setting within the Configuration on the Gallery. This would also not effect pre-existing setups of curators, as in the update of implementation, all current Curators should be adapted into 'Super Curators'.

Thanks,
TheOC

Add Admin ability to place the Alteryx Service (Engine) into Maintenance mode allowing current workflows to complete, but all new workflow processing moved into Queue to allow for server configuration and/or maintenance.

Currently, if I want to make a small configuration change (like a memory setting in the Runtime settings) I have to hunt for a quiet window or the lowest level of activity to kill the service (and the running jobs).

It would be helpful to flip a 'switch' and have all new jobs go into 'Queue' allowing for the change and service stop/restart ... then pick right back up with the queue in configured order. (execution time, priority level, etc...)

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. 

 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

Hello, I would like improved user management features and/or training

• Display 100 does not seem to work consistently
• Click /navigate from user to user – once I select a user would like to go to next user
• Changes I make with filters refresh every time I go back – which means I have to constantly reset my view in between each user
• Modify user settings in collections – would like to modify user settings instead of delete and re add user

Issue: When Workflow names have similar beginnings on server a user cannot distinguish between them because the columns on this GUI are not expandable as would be expected. A user has to make their browser larger and all columns open proportionately.

Solution: Change column settings so users can drag column widths to make changes. A bonus would be to allow a user to set a default along with an option to always auto expand all.

Alteryx Server does not presently support any file encryption systems. Many people need to encrypt there Fileshare as a secure measurement and use safeguard lan encrypted. Please provide a solution so workers are able to read and write encrypted files through safeguard lan encrypted.

User setting possible for:

1. Sorting of content to be saved: Cohoseing wether to sort by name, date, type or all

2. number of entries displayed to be saved, 10 is not a good default

3. 1.+2. should be valid for all content like: Workspace, Collection overview, Collection content etc.

The publishing endpoint, a POST to api/admin/v1/workflows/, is useless whenever workflows, apps, or macros contain Gallery Data Connections.  The workflow will get published but valid Gallery Data Connections are ignored and the apps will not run.

Please add the same dependency checks against Gallery Data Connections as is performed when a workflow or app is manually published from Designer.

This might be considered a subset of the Idea Server API to extract / submit workflows.

Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

David

The Schedules tab of the Gallery currently lists all schedules, 20 to a page, with no option to filter.  I am currently managing 183 active schedules.  In order to find a single schedule, I have to sort by Workflow name, then page through 10 pages of schedules to find the schedule I'm looking for.

Please add an option to filter this list. 

Ideally, I would like to be able to filter on multiple fields at once (example:  Priority = High, Status = Active, Owner = Bob Smith, Times Run > 20).  Barring that, a simple search option on workflow name, similar to the search option on the Collections tab, would be enough.

Hi everyone,

Since the Home page has been replaced by the My Workspace page as the main page on the Gallery, end-users are getting confused or at least uncomfortable with this transition.

It would be amazing to change the default main page to the Public tab or even remove/deactivate the My Files tab for these users. 

Removing /deactivating the My Files tab will also correct an issue generated when an Artisan is downgraded to an end-user. Currently, these users can see their workflows in the My Files tab but can't access them.

Idea based on @phottovy 's question: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Change-quot-Public-quot-to-default-view-...

Hello,

We recently upgraded our on-prem instance of Alteryx Server/Gallery to version: -

• Client: 2020.1.0
• Server: 2021.3.3.63061
• Server Binaries: 2021.3.3.63061
• Service Layer
• Master: 2021.3.3.63061

We have noticed that the search functionality in various areas (top and right-side) no longer return results using a "contains" but rather it is doing an "exact" or "starts with" keyword search. This is very frustrating to many users as we can't easily find our workflows quickly compared to previous versions.

Please improve search functionality.

It should be possible to schedule chained apps. Particularly useful when the first workflow in a chain runs a check and if the check returns true then the next workflows run and if the check returns false then the next workflow should not run. 

Possibly related to:
Schedule Configured Analytic Apps - Alteryx Community

The workflow result window shows the Name/workflow, AMP, Priority, Assigned worker, Run as, Completed at, Runlenght, and Runtyp of the workflow. The following feature would also be useful on the page.

1. Showing the creation date of the workflow without taking queue time into consideration
2. The option to change the time zone would make it easier to analyze the logs
3. Detailed insight about the particular workflow results, such as average execution time, failure count, and success count with date filtering. 

Hello!
I found a weird bug in my travels today.

The TL:DR is that when a date input tool within the interface tool is used within a collapsing radio button, it defaults to "dd/mm/yyyy", breaking any app when this is not filled out: 

Both values are default - i have not edited these values. The weirdest part is, this is Server/Private Gallery specific. When this workflow is downloaded and run within Designer:

And the workflow runs fine.

I have not tested this with any of the other interface tools, however I suspect this to not be the only tool this issue resides within.

I have attached the workflow I used (not that it would take long to recreate) for testing.

Good Day.

We would like a built-in process that would search or, and resolve, workflows that are stuck in the "initializing" state. These seem to happen for various reasons but communication problems between the controller and workers .. usually a socket timeout.. which appears  to be most problematic. It seems  that these type of errors should be expected in all but the most stable environments,

Currently, the only tool that we have to solve this problem is to restart the Alteryx Service on the controller and while this works there tendency to cause some collateral damage in workflows ...erroring or restarting from their beginning.

There may be a way to solve this without restarting the service by editing Mongo using a tool like Robo 3T but that is unproven and has its own risk.

After dealing with this issue and struggling for quiet some time we think that the best option is to implement a "clean up" DB process that will run every 5 min or so, capture a list of workflows in the "initializing" state , then compare that list to one in the next 5 min cycle and fix any workflows that appear in both lists. We think that returning  any stuck workflows to the queued state would be the best Fix  option.

We just don't want to continue to use Restart the Service process to solve this issue and accept the collateral damage.

Thank you for your consideration

Tom D  

It would be nice to have workflow version information on the Workflow Results page for every running status.
The reason for that is after workflow was scheduled and then the published version has been changed, there is no way to follow versions.

The job timeout function is a perinate issue on the the Alteryx server because scheduling workflows on the server that overlap with another workflow can cause bottleneck issues. Depending on the number of workers and the other workflows, the workflow in question could fail to run or not complete running at the desired date and time. I recommend a view option of the Schedule Forecast feature for all users, so as to allow all users to effectively schedule workflows on the Alteryx server that do no conflict with other workflows.