Alteryx Server Ideas

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!
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.

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. 

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 

Hello, Alteryx users,

My idea is simple but would make things way easier for the analytical app users on the Gallery.

Currently, the order is ascending and we can see all the files from all the applications we have run before.

It would help a million to see the most recent files first and only see the files related to this workflow.

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

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.

Currently, DCM credentials appear to only be used in combination with a DCM Data Source.  

For ease of use for my end users (non-Designers), I would like my end users to be able to save a user ID and password as a standalone DCM credential.  Then, I want the user to have the option to select that credential for use in two places:

1.  Run-As - when running a workflow on demand, the user should be able to choose their saved DCM credential.
2. Credential injection into Input Data or other relevant tools in Analytic Apps - I want to use the DCM Connection tool to build Analytic Apps that prompt my users to select their DCM Credential (NOT a full DCM Connection with data source - I don't want my users to have to set that up.)  When the user selects their Credential, their user ID and password should be securely encrypted and inserted into the existing connection set up by the App designer.

Having this functionality would remove administrative burden from both our Designers and the end users they support.

Currently when we need to disable/enable schedule on API,we need to update all the schedule info,could you provide only one attribute to disable.

Can we just update on parameter

"enabled": true, --> "enabled": false

current update example,we need update all

{
"workflowId": "string",
"ownerId": "string",
"iteration": {
"iterationType": "Once",
"startTime": "2022-09-06T08:01:52.717Z",
"endTime": "2022-09-06T08:01:52.717Z",
"hourlyContract": {
"hours": 0,
"minutes": 0
},
"dailyContract": {
"runOnlyWorkWeek": true
},
"weeklyContract": {
"daysOfWeek": [
"Sunday"
]
},
"monthlyContract": {
"simpleDayOfMonth": true,
"dayOfMonth": 0,
"occurrence": 0,
"dayOfWeek": "Sunday"
},
"customContract": {
"daysOfMonth": [
0
],
"months": [
0
]
}
},
"name": "string",
"comment": "string",
"priority": "Default",
"workerTag": "string",
"enabled": true,
"credentialId": "string"
}

Hi all,

Currently, it is very challenging, nearly impossible, to distribute your workload between worker nodes as the image below. Curators should be able to manage this in multiple ways since the end-user doesn`t have a full understanding of the server architecture or strategy behind the idea.

It would be helpful to have the worker tags working similarly to the credentials pyramid where we can have levels of permissions. That way, we can have collections, user groups or even single users with worker tags configured.

This is an addition to the idea suggested by @ivane_meimban 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Enable-Curators-to-assign-default-worker-tag-a...

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

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.

The gallery shouldn't allow to create data connections with already existing names.

For example, in designer it's difficult to choose which data connection we want to work with if they have the same name, please verify the images in attachment.

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

Hi all,

I've found, i guess, a bug on the Gallery. It's not really an issue as we've found a workaround for it. 

Whenever you're in need to delete a workflow that is owned by your co-worker, the Gallery doesn't let you instantly delete it (yes, we're in the same private studio) (screenshot 1).

To work around this issue, you just have to replace the specific workflow by a random workflow you own (basically i just upload a workflow with a browse tool in it, screenshot 2). 

When replaced, you get the god power to delete the workflow and thus also deleting the workflow of your co-worker. 

It would be convenient if i could just delete the workflow without this workaround tough :-)!.

Screenshot 1 - Not being able to delete a workflow owned by a co-worker.

Screenshot 2 - After replacing the workflow by a random workflow....

Greetings,

Seb

Hello Alteryx team, 

I would like to propose idea that was mentioned on the community but there is no solution either.

It was mentioned at https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Data-Cleansing-tool-suddenly-stopped-w...

The issue is related to Qlik Analytics Samples and error that it is causing with wrong path error for default macros like eg.CountRecords.

I would like to see some functionality in the Alteryx Gallery in which you can select multiple schedule workflows to disable/enable. Currently as an admin if I have many schedules I need to enable/disable I need to go into each schedule manually to disable or enable. This is okay for one or two, but I have about 20-30, it is very time consuming. I would like to see maybe some checkbox functionality next to the workflow to select and then an option to either disable all selected or enable all selected.

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.

As a Gallery Admin I would like to be able to add and remove a user from local groups on the User page.

I realise that this would only work for local groups and that AD groups would need to be excluded (and indicated as unavailable for editing)