Alteryx Server Ideas

The more I'm digging into the Private Gallery (on our own Server, not gallery.alteryx.com), the more I'm feeling that the UI and functionality is very non-user-friendly.  

I would like to do something that I think is very basic (I am the Admin of the Gallery):

1.  Create Apps and put them in various Collections.

2.  Grant people access to certain Collections.

3.  Have those people, when they log in, only see the Collections to which they have access to (that I granted them).  And then run the apps in those collections.  Nothing      more, regardless of who they are.

4.  Given all three of the above, but I do not want to see them listed as an Artisan, nor do I want to see them have their own studio

Currenlty, no matter what I do, they have Studios, and some are listed as Artisans (and as mentioned in a prior post, you can't delete their Studios).  I've tried using Windows Authentication, but I get errors so that's not an option.  It would be nice if the above were options regardless of the Authentication type.

Hi,

It would be nice if scheduled workflow credentials could be linked to the workflow and not the individual versions of the workflow.

It is problematic for the user that they need to remember to reschedule the workflow, whenever they publish a new version of the workflow.

Best,

Daniel

I have been looking at the content in Alteryx Public Gallery for some time and I have had some concerns about the safety and usability of the macros/workflows in the gallery. 

I think there should be an option to rate, review and provide feedback on stuff that is out there on the public gallery. This will be helpful in many different way.

1. It will generate trust about the workflow/app. If I see that something is rated higher and has been used and commented by a lot of users I am more inclined to use it
2. It will provide a lot of ideas on how a particular workflow/macro can be used in different ways 
3. Review/Feedback will help the author to make changes as required or suggested by users.
4. The macro's will probably show up in google search based on key words provided by users in their reviews.

......

I had initiated a thread some time ago related to this, there is some useful information in there if someone has same concerns.

 https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Can-Apps-and-Macros-in-Alteryx-public-Galle...

Thanks,

Ashish

At some point we would like Alteryx Gallery to support SSO via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. The way I want is to have Authentication via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. For instance one of our apps Tableau: It does authentication via SAML (SSO) and for authorization, we import AD groups into Tableau thrice a day(stores the groups in a .xml file), once the groups are in the Tableau, we secure the objects within Tableau using that LDAP groups (which kind of become local groups after import). Basically the userid after the successful authentication step is used by the app for authorization.

I just stated Tableau as one of the ways to implement Authentication and Authorization for an enterprise app. If Alteryx Gallery needs to be an enterprise app, you will need to look into this idea. 

Thanks
Raj

With Alteryx Server 2019.4, new users cannot create Collections by default. 

As Alteryx Server admin this causes much manual effort on my side, because I need to configure new users manually. 

Alteryx claims to be a tool for automatization and I do not see how this new feature fits into Alteryx's vision.

I wish that there were tools, which allow me to automatize the management of users on the Alteryx Server. 

With a growing number of users on the Alteryx Gallery, manual user management is not an option!

I wish there was a way to create custom roles on the Gallery and assign them to AD groups, similar to "Permissions".

Those custom roles could include the privilege to create Collections, schedule Jobs, etc.

I would also love, if there was a way to give granular access to the Data Connection menu to users. 

I have already addressed this topic to the Alteryx product manager in Q1 2019 and I hope this feature will be implemented in the future. 

When a workflow is run manually in the gallery the user is able to enter input parameters. However when using the schedule functionality this option is not available and a separate workflow needs to be developed to dynamically derive input parameters. Effectively two separate versions of the workflow need to be created and maintained.

If this functionality could be built into a future version of Alteryx this would be of significant benefit.

Currently there are certain locations on server that are paginating content results:

• /gallery/#!apps/studio
• /gallery/admin/#!apps
• /gallery/admin/#!subscriptions
• /gallery/admin/#!users

Each of these pages require users to either know exactly what they want to find by using keyword filtering or know exactly what page they want to go to and use the bottom arrows/page numbers to navigate to that page. Ditching pagination for something more intuitive helps users that may not be as acclimated with the depth of content when there are a lot of results, and also saves users multiple click interactions to find what they want.

There are tons of solutions for this, but infinite scroll is the most user-friendly & least taxing server & client side.

https://infinite-scroll.com/ has code & examples, and jquery seems to be the most widely used implementation.

Currently when I log into the Gallery, I can see all of the users who are using license keys assigned to me.  I would love to be able to run some reports on usage and activation date as well as export the list of users to excel/csv.

-Dan

My company, a very large organization, is in the early implementation phase of Alteryx right now. My company requires frequent password changes and we plan on making heavy use of Shared Connections since there are also many shared data sources. Unfortunately, this would mean that every time a credential has changed that affects a workflow, the credential holder would have to contact Server Administration (me), and I would have to update any Shared Connections or other assets that use those credentials. This problem is exacerbated by also having to manage user permissions and which users belong in each Subscription Right now, that is not much of a big deal, but as the number of users begins to scale, this could become a very daunting task.

My current solution is to create Subscriptions for each Department, Group, or Team and give one person from that Subscription Curator permissions. This enables each Department to work more autonomously and reduces the load for Server Admin. The issue is that there is no permission level between the publishing rights of an Artisan and the ubiquitous acces of a Curator. So, with my solution, any one of the Subsription Curators can start using connections they're not supposed to have access to or deleting/stopping scheduled flows, intentionally or otherwise.

I propose that we find a middle ground between Curator and Artisan, a (Studio) Moderator. This person can be assigned one or more subscriptions by a full Curator and will have Curator-like permission, but only to the assigned Subscriptions. This means that they will be able to add/modify Credentials, Connections, and/or Scheduled under the envelope of their Subscriptions, but they won't have access to any others. I believe that this solution will mitigate the possible overflow of tedium to the true Curators while allowing the powerful communal features of Alteryx be used to their full potential.

In Gallery, I'd like to see the execution log in the workflow results, i.e. what you get if you run the workflow from Designer.  I'd like to see this whatever the status of the workflow completion.  Would be useful to assess warnings and the performance of components within the workflow.  Also would give me useful stats about records loaded etc.

I would like the ability to add a workflow description on Alteryx server.  This step would be done after the workflow is published, this way future edits can be made without having to republish the workflow.  A checkbox to allow HTML content would also be appreciated.

In the gallery you have the ability to replace a workflow with another, however when doing so the version history only indicates "Package Replaced" (see image below)

Would it be possible to change the default text and input something more meaningful, since in my case I use this field for version control/auditing so it would be good to know what changes came with the replaced version.

Second ask, but maybe not as important as the first.

Sometimes the package we are replacing with itself might have several versions, but these are completely lost when the files are combined.

Would it be possible to keep that version history when the package is replaced.

Eg. Original File is at Version 10. This will be replaced by a package that is at Version 3.

Possible solution would be to have the new version be Version 13 which includes the 10 versions from the original file and the 3 from the new. 

Thanks!

Hey Alteryx Dev Gurus - 

I've got a situation wherein the user runs something in Gallery, and complains.  I have to log in as that user to view the output files that came back out.  As a super user, I should be able to have all seeing ability!  Thanks!

brian

We've confirmed with @KevinP that the Alteryx Gallery / Server API does not currently support downloading canvasses in unzipped data-stream format. (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Server-API-Download-packages-for-surveil...)

Please can we add an API end-point that allows the following:

• Connect to the gallery and download a canvas; along with all of its sub-canvasses and helper macros. 
• Format required:
  • Plain XML (not zipped)
  • Provided in a data stream so that we can perform analytics and surveillance on this data
  • Fields required
    
    • Canvas filename
    • Application ID
    • Some unique ID per macro / sub-macro
    • XML for the canvas
    • Last run date
    • Last changed date
    • Environment (this is important once Server actually allows a Dev; UAT; Prod progression cycle - so we can see which environment people are in)
    • User details who uploaded
    • User details who are marked as the owners
    • Any other meta-tags on the canvas (important once server allows for meta-tagging of canvasses for categorisation)

Current API only allows this to be downloaded to a zipped file; which then needs to be unzipped; and then loaded back into a data stream.

Thank you

S

CC: @revathi @AshwiniChezhiyan @LizaNemchynova 

In order for us to manage the large number of canvasses on our server - we need to add the ability for Admin teams to require additional attributes on every canvas:

For us, these mandatory attributes would be:

- Which team do you belong to (dropdown)

- What business process does this serve (dropdown - multiselect)

- Primary & secondary canvas owner (validated kerberos)

For the ones that have dropdown lists - we can provide the master data into a drop location or into a manually configured list on the server.

Alteryx Server Security is So Complex and it's not easy to understand, Our IT/ Information Security feel that the security is not up to the standard and it's confusing. Also as an Alteryx Gallery Administrator, it's not easy to add users or delete users, Manage Groups and Studios.

The Security structure for any tool is like User-->group--Capability/Functionality. 

All we are requesting is keep up to enterprise standards.

It would be nice having the ability to alter the timeout of the file upload on Alteryx Analytic Apps uploading to the Gallery.  Having it restrained by time and not file size makes it so that users with poorer internet speeds will not even be able to upload moderate sized files.  

Hi

It will be great to make visibility of workflow execution results to other users in same subscription.

As of now, only schedules are visible to all users in a subscription, but not the workflow execution results executed by a user to other users in same subscription. 

This will avoid duplicate execution of same workflow by multiple user in a team as it will provide option to cross check the execution results by other users, if executed already, before execution of same workflow.

Regards

Haribabu Muppaneni

Hey there,

Below you can see few of my suggestion to improve Alteryx Server. 

Idea for Alteryx Server monitoring:

• Increase data what could be seen on workflow results.
• Possibly create a report with filter option (to filter by user, gallery, workflow and etc.), which would at least contain data like:
  • Successfully ran workflows, count, percentage.
  • Failure rates, counts and etc.
  • Live data for monitoring purposes.
  • etc.
• Possibility to connect to workflow results data (live data) with other tools like Tableau or Power BI to create dashboards and etc. to monitor and act on the error as soon as possible.
• Give a chance for other users to check on the workflow statuses and etc same like workflow owner.

Give server more functionality with:

• Ability for server automatically retry workflow based on configurations: in example:
  • retry flow in specific time (for example in 30 minutes)
  • number of possible retries
  • based on specific workflow (other) results ability to trigger to run another workflow
  • (Maybe there is a better way) ability to run macros which would for example open MS Excel, and run macro inside it. I have some of the workflows where workflow opens excel, runs macro inside, that macro triggers special Add In which connects to Essbase, it pulls the data, saves excel file, and then alteryx continues working with the file. So if such or similar workflows could be run on Server that would be awesome.
  • This is extremely exiting one: possibility to create environment for self-service users, which it would not be something like gallery (because gallery is more suitable for Alteryx Designers/users).
    • in that one environment admin could grant access for user and tick what specific user could see and run.
    • so for admin it would be one environment, and user would see only what is needed for him/her.
    • in that environment user would also be able to schedule self-service workflows to be received in example by email, or BOX drive or any other way. Scheduled workflow would have to be approved by an admin before it would be actually scheduled. 
  • I have not tried this one myself, but that would also be great if all alteryx server environment could be accessed by mobile devices (of course, some features would be limited).

 Hopefully you will find these suggestions interesting and useful. 

Regards,

Aurimas