Alteryx Server Ideas

When a process is running in foreground, the GUI does an excellent job of giving feedback to the user as to which "step" the job is running and how much data is processing through the active tools.  When that same job is scheduled, the amount of information is limited to when the job began execution.

If a tool was able to give checkpoint status out to the user, we could better monitor the progress of scheduled jobs.  The visibility to the job is most important for long running jobs.  We've unfortunately had instances where we have had to cancel jobs and to restart them not knowing how close or how far from finishing they were.

Thanks for your consideration,

Mark

For scheduled jobs, there should be an option to include performance profiling in output logs globally.  Basically we are looking at how we can understand which custom macros are in use, and in which workflows, and one way to do this would be to get the output logs into another tool (i.e., splunk), and then set up some queries there.  It would work, but I would have to tell N developers to go set performance profiling on, re-upload their workflows, ect.  

But why not have a switch on server / gallery that just turns this feature on globally for every scheduled workflow?  

Thank you for attending my TED talk on why performance profiling should have an option to be set globally. 

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.

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

Improve Gallery scheduling to allow the end user to specify company denoted Holidays when scheduling a workflow. If the workflow is scheduled on a Holiday the schedule would not run. This should be configurable per workflow schedule. Example: A daily report Monday through Friday would be able to skip Holidays based off a Holiday exclusion list. 

Hi,

The schedules page on server needs an overhaul.  Sorry to be so blunt but it is awful.  It is by far the worst aspect of Alteryx and one of the most important at the same time.

Here are a few points about it...

1.) Sorting needs to be fixed as it doesn't work correctly (sorting on the first column, "Workflow", returns items that start with 'L', 'S' and a zero as the first three on the list), so looking for 1 scheduled item across 10+ pages of schedules becomes a "needle in a haystack" endeavor.

2.) There are no search and/or filter capabilities which would help alleviate the pain-point mentioned above.

3.) [Missing] items automatically removed from schedule when the workflow is removed from the server.  It just jumbles up the screen with useless information.

4.) The 'Schedule' column doesn't need to reflect the name again like the 'Workflow' column. is a hyperlink and the other isnt.  I cant tell you how many times I have clicked on the wrong hyperlink only to have to go back and deal with point #1 all over again.  Can't it just be a simple calendar icon or something like that next to the Workflow name?

5.) While not as critical, but more of a 'nice to have' function.  An ability to export the list of schedules would be helpful.  If we ever need to divy up work for an employee that leaves the company it would be a good way to see all of the work they have out there and mark up the list to distribute info for reassignment purposes, etc. 

I am sure there are other aspects I am missing, but here are the most important ones to me as an end-user (Not an Admin)

Thanks for listening.  🙂

Hi,

We have more clients that would like to prioritize their scheduled jobs based on run time and importance. 

It could be a simple priority number, that decides which job that need to run next. Further it could be nice to be able to allocate certain workers to certain jobs. 

I am looking forward to your feedback.

Daniel

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 AlteryxService addtoqueue command is great, but it leaves me wanting more.  My simple use case is to run WorkflowB via the addtoqueue command in an after run event from WorkflowA, which is run daily.  The result is that i end up with a cluttered scheduler with many instances of WorkflowB that i need to manually clean up, since addtoqueue creates a new record in AS_Applications each time it runs

It would be useful if there was an AlteryxService command for each of the subroutines already built in to the scheduler front end app: schedule workflow, update workflow, add workflow, remove workflow, edit schedule, etc

MongoDB objects could be identified by oid which the user can get from querying the AlteryxService database

I don't want to rebuild what you've already built, just need a little more control over it 🙂

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. 

With Version 2018.3, you removed the Autodetect SMTP button, and with it, have rendered the Email Tool virtually useless for many people, which is a shame because it is a critical tool for some of us to share reports produced in Alteryx.

In requiring an SMTP path, there are a host of authentication issues that need to be addressed, and we can't seem to figure out how to configure the path and From emails properly to allow the tool to work without errors. 

My only solution at this point is to rollback to 2018.2 so I can continue to use the Email tool. 

Please address this so we can use the tool as before, or provide the necessary configuration options to allow for proper authentication with popular email services (Gmail, etc.)

So you've created your workflow with variable inputs and saved it to the server.  Would love to schedule the workflow to run on a recurring basis with saved input values.  I.e. single workflow with multiple schedules with different saved values.

I think this may be covered here, is there an update?

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Schedule-Gallery-App-with-ability-to-insert-va...

Hey Alteryx,

I'm liking the new ability to change the permission for users to schedule, prioritize and assign their work.

I would also like the Permissions to not show if I've turned it off. For most users this feature will not be available and showing a feature they won't be able to use will cause more problems then answers.

Just like in the notification tab, I would like the features that are off not show up in the end users profile tab

It would also be nice if we could assign this to a workflow and not just a person. A more likely scenario is that an App that needs a user input shouldn't be scheduled since it won't work. 

To have the ability to turn off the scheduling for just that workflow is more likely then to turn off that feature for an entire person.

Thank you

I wish Alteryx would allow more control over user access to scheduling workflows. Currently there is only a radio button that globally allows users to access the scheduler. I wish we had another layer where we could limit access by Permissions. For example, we would like all Artisans and Curators to have access to the scheduler, but not viewers.

Without a doubt, Schedule Forecast is a great feature. I feel Schedule Forecast feature should be enabled for Artisans as well who usually create new schedules on Alteryx Server. Artisans can look up the existing schedule details at a specific time and decide if it is best time for their workflow to run. It will be counter productive otherwise in my opinion as curators have to inform the artisan to move their schedule to some other time as there are several other workflows running at the exact time and impact execution time. 

Hi Alteryx, 

Now, under the Job Tab, it is only show the status of running job.

Suggest to add one new page for showing the run history of each workflow/job.

1. Workflow name

2. Priority 

3. Assigned Worker

4. Start time

5. End time

6. Duration

7. State

8. Job Type (schedule or manual tracker)

9. Owner

10. Message ( e.g. error log)

Best regards,

Samuel