Alteryx Server Ideas

I remember when i started using Alteryx and the gallery i was able to display the results of a workflow run and then copy a value from the screen to complete checks on.

Now when i run a workflow and the .yxdb results and displayed ever if its one record i have to download a file and open it just to copy the value.

Can we not get the screen to allow highlight and control c of text as required?

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 all,

It appears that every time we have a talk about the gallery organization, people bugs around the difference between district and collection. Adopting a new semantic with less confusion would lead to

: -a more intuitive product for everyday life

-less question and less confusion during pre-sales/POC/Training.

Best regards,

Simon

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

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.

Currently Alteryx has a timeout setting at a worker level which applies to all of the workflows/schedules that run on that node. 

It'd be great and very useful is that setting is made available at a granular level like at the Collection/User Group or workflow level. 

I've been told by Alteryx support that this is not a feature that is currently available. Hence proposing an Idea on the community requesting for such an ability!

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  

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.

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.

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-...

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

When rerunning a failed manual job, the same Priority is used, but the Optional Job Name is not and cannot be re-entered on submit.  User has to go to Workflow results page and Edit to add the Optional Job Name for a rerun.

I suggest the Optional Job Name text box be added to the rerun submit page.

Prefill using the original job's value if one exists.

Thanks,

MJ

As we look at upgrading Alteryx Server - one of the challenges is that it's an all-or-nothing approach; and there doesn't seem to be a guided wizard approach to upgrading.

The upgrade process would be much less intimidating if we could create a Migration tool which can work across versions - similar to Microsoft SQL Server which has the.    This would allow us to:
- Migrate a subset of assets up or down versions

- Migrate across servers to do consolidation or to split loads into different servers for the purpose of segregation

- Progressively migrate over time to limit the risk.

cc: @JohnPelletier 

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.

We have situations where some workflows that are scheduled end up having intermittent connection issues to other databases that result in the workflow running to timeout. The timeout settings are set in the server, but it would be nice if you could set an override value for a lesser timeout in the runtime settings for individual workflows and basically use the server setting as a not to exceed value. We have a multi-node environment with multiple worker nodes and about 250 artisans. We have some regularly scheduled workflows taking the full amount of time in the timeout setting and obviously if a couple of normally quick running workflows ran to timeout that causes issues with the queue.

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