Alteryx Server Ideas

As a large company we have many controls we have to adhere to. One of those being Python libraries we are allowed to use internally. We are requesting that Alteryx document all Python libraries within the tool as well as if they are fundamental to running Alteryx Server (Or Designer as most time these are same) and even what functionality they may play in the tool. This way, we would be able to remove these unallowed libraries from our Server if needed or at least know functionality and if it is needed.

As an Alteryx Admin, we have too many users to maintain the Data Connections for every connection that every user has. A nice add to the collections ability is to create and share Data Connections among users of only that Collection. Managed by the Collection Admin(s), they would be able to manage their own credentials and connection strings for their team and project.

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.

As Alteryx Admin, we want to understand what our users are doing in their workflows as much as possible to ensure best user experience. In order to do this we would like to scan through User workflow XML in order to breakdown everything going on. We understand that their are many posts on workflows already doing a lot of this but:

Our Ask:  is to release XML DTD or similar documentation that can help us breakdown workflows at individual tool levels (as well as differences between tool versions)

This would allow us to further build out solutions to admin visibility of user workflows.

Currently, only Gallery administrators can create credentials on the Gallery.  But this doesn't seem to make sense because publishing users may need to embed their credentials in workflows.  And they would benefit from managing these on server so that password changes don't require re-publishing large numbers of workflows.   Please allow any user to create and manage credentials on the Gallery.  

It would be great if you could overwrite an existing workflow when saving to the gallery from designer. It could be a simple popup with a yes/no option to overwrite/save a new copy. Currently, you would have to

1) Save your workflow to the Gallery.

2) Click on ok and be taken to that workflow.

3) Go back to your private studio.

4) Search for the app you want to replace.

5) Realize you have 7 copies of the same workflow with the same name and try to determine which one you want to replace. (this could just be a "me" problem)

6) Select that app

7) Click on replace workflow.

😎 type the name of the workflow in the box.

9) Look through your list of 7 workflows and choose the one that was just uploaded. Usually the first in the list I think.

10) Lament that it took way too many steps.

I recognize that you can open workflows from the gallery in designer which does allow overwriting, but I've run into issues with 1) external dependencies not working as expected (ie packaged assets don't quite work the way I want) and 2) about half the time it will simply give you root errors and then your only option is to save to a folder and then go through the process above.

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

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  

Hello all,

This may be a little controversial. As of today, when you buy an Alteryx Server, the basic package covers up to 4 cores :
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/How-Alteryx-defines-cores-for-licensi...

I have always known that. But these last years, the technology, the world has evolved. Especially the number of cores in a server. As an example, AMD Epyc CPU for server begin at 8 cores :
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-7002-series

So the idea is to update the number of cores in initial package for 8 or even 16 cores. It would :
-make Alteryx more competitive
-cost only very few money
-end some user frustration

Moreover, Alteryx Server Additional Capacity license should be 4 cores.

Best regards,

Simon

I am in the process of migrating apps from the old gallery to the new. I have screen captures of the results from the same app in both. In the older gallery version, if there is only a single file type available, it defaults to that file type and you click the icon for the type. In the new gallery version, you must select a file type before you can download the file, even if there is only a single type available. The dropdown makes sense for one that you have multiple types (like pcxml), but it makes no sense to require the user to go through an extra step to select a type before downloading when that's the only type they can download. Please see all the screen captures. The blue-ish background is from the new gallery.

I’m facing issues with scheduling workflow in Europe/London timing. I’m trying to schedule jobs to run at 10pm UK hours everyday (except Fri and Sat) starting from today i.e. 26th Jan (as per UK timing)
However since I’m in India and my local desktop is showing India time (which is 00:15hrs on 27th Jan), the Alteryx Gallery scheduler is picking India hours but not as per the region we selected. The 26th Jan date is greyed out and unable to select.
The workaround for this to change local time on desktop which is not in our control in our case.
Could you please bring a change in this behavior. If I am am scheduling on x date a workflow for a timezone which is x-1 the scheduler should allow me to set up the schedule.

In prior versions, Gallery Admins could easily and quickly reactivate users that were deactivated (e.g., and employee leaves the company so we inactivate their Gallery account, but then they come back to the company in a few months with the same name and email).  

Now, the only way to do this is to edit the Mongo page.

We need a way via the UI to reactivate users, like we did in the old UI.

I suggest adding an option in the current User List/Grid to be able to filter for Inactive users.

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.

Hello, 

We have been building a solution for a client that involved chaining apps. When we uploaded the workflow to the server, we got the below error: Workflow exceeded maximum runtime of 30 seconds and was cancelled. We were able to rectify this by having the client implement the change here. While I understand the need for the limit, is there any plan to have this fix be more obvious to the average user to implement or avoid needing to reimplement following a server upgrade?

Thanks, 

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.

I Would Like a new Email added under [ Admin -> Notifications -> Emails ] where it would send an Email when a Schedule reaches the status "Complete" 

This can serve a couple of use cases;

1. You have many things going on and this email can let you know "This schedule has now been completed"  
   1. From my experience we usually schedule things indefinitely, however if an end was put in place this can be a reminder of whether or not to continue scheduling the workflow
2. It can also notify when a schedule inadvertently reaches "Complete" status, in the backend this could be because it has status "Corrupt: AlteryxService_RetrieveSecureData Failed."
   1. This has caused issues multiple times of schedules that are supposed to be indefinite reach "Complete" Status without our knowing. With many workflows and schedules this is not something we can babysit.
   2. brief research suggests this error could be due to restarting the Alteryx Service during a schedule, which we do weekly for our backup. And trying to coordinate a time when no schedules are running is difficult when something runs every 10 minutes.

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.

It would be good to have a new field with the owner of the data connection, when users asks to be part of a data connection, we should know who is the identified owner to contact and ask for approval.

Thanks.

Regards

Joana Santos