Alteryx Server Ideas

When you add a workflow you have to add its schedule to share the results in collection menber's.
A workflow can be in several collections and therefore different users can schedule it. (why not)
This results in multiple schedules for the same workflow. There is no reason why a workflow cannot have multiple schedules.(mandatory in some cases)

Automatically adding schedules to the collection would allow users to see that there is already a schedule on the workflows in question and not to recreate one!

it should also be possible to create a schedule from the collection.

Hello all,

Right now, we can choose either MongoDb or Microsoft SQL Server as a backend. I would suggest to add Postgresql. Why ?

-it's open-source
-it's reliable
-it's free
-it works well on many environments
-it's popular
-it's already used as backend for Tableau or Qlik and many others
-it respects SQL norm and doesn't have a lot of specificity

Best regards,

Simon

When scheduling an analytical app on Gallery, there is no UI for submitting app values. This significantly limits the value of scheduling workflows and using analytical apps. With this feature, it would allow our users to have more flexible scheduling while also simply maintaining one workflow. Because this feature doesn't exist, we have had to build workarounds by either creating multiple workflows or utilizing APIs. 

Since this feature is already available for manual runs and APIS (shown below), it shouldn't be a reach to also have this feature when scheduling a run.

Manual Method:

API Method: GET /workflows/{appId}/questions

Scheduling Method (no app questions): 

Commas save lives! With large numbers, it's difficult to see what number was actually entered without commas present, and the wrong number can easily be entered as a result:

Is this number

• 100,000
• 1,000,000
• 10,000,000

It's hard to say without taking a really close look!

I would like to see the enhancement of being able to schedule a start and stop time for specific jobs that need to run multiple times per day, so they don't run during the nightly backup periods of the Alteryx server. This can cause the daily backups of the Alteryx Gallery to fail. Currently SQL Server Management Studio/SQL Server has the function to able to schedule start and stop times for specific job. Currently Scheduler page on Alteryx Gallery/Server lacks this feature.

SQL Server Management Studio

Schedules on Alteryx Gallery/Server

We want to share direct links to analytics apps with our users.  However this does not work with our current SAML login.   This the use case.  

1. User clicks on direct link URL for the app  

2. User  is required to click log-in button

3. After login user is taking to the gallery home page not to the app

The end effect is that we cannot share links to apps with our casual users, instead we have to instruct them to go to the gallery log in and then search all public workflows for the specific app they are looking for.   Not a great user experience, especially because we did not have this issue before single sign on support. 

personally I think this is bug more than a feature request, but was asked to create it as a request by support 

Currently, failed job results stay in the Mongo DB forever.  Please either make it adhere to the same coding in the Server Settings for "Delete queue and results after (days)" setting, or make it a separate option for failed jobs. 

When I create a DCM Entry in Gallery, it would be great if the users I share it with would also be able to reference the credentials in their desktop designer when they sync their connections to the Gallery. 

I just underwent an exercise of recovering my controller in the event of a catastrophic failure. One of the steps is to recover the DCME keys (DCM Encryption keys) - which is documented here: https://help.alteryx.com/20221/en/server/install/server-host-recovery-guide/dcme-keys-to-backup.html...

This DCME recovery needs to be revisited. This document assumes that the previous controller is running. In a disaster recovery situation, this is not possible. What, if any, can be done to recover the DCME keys if the host has is completely irrecoverable?

For context, having an irrecoverable host has happened. Complete hard drive failure (showing my age), nuked virtual machine and its backups (no one paid attention to the notices that the data center was shutting down), and fire.

Situation:

As your analytics work grows - you find yourself using the power of Alteryx to create shared macros.    These act as an accelerator for a team because one team member can us a reusable solution created by another team member.   For example - many teams need to get data out of JIRA (or some other system) so you create a connector that everyone can use.

That's going well - and now you have 20 teams all publishing canvasses to your server (possibly 100s of canvasses running in production) which make use of your JIRA connector - all good so-far!

Problem:

BUT THEN - you discover an issue with the JIRA connector and you need to fix it and publish a new version!

It's at this point that you realise that the canvasses on your server which use your JIRA connector are NOT pointing to it, but they have made a copy and included this inside their canvas.   So when you fix the problem with the JIRA connector - no-one gets the fix!

This is because every application uploaded to the server is a yxzp file, which zips up a COPY of all the shared macros and uses this in an isolated way.

So - in order to get the new JIRA connector (with the defect repaired) used instead of the old one you now need to:

- Download EVERY canvas on your server

- Unpack them all to expose the sub-macros being used

- Inspect them to see if they are actually an instance of the JIRA Macro

- Make a list of the owner and application IDs

- reach out by e-mail or phone to every one of these folk to ask them to republish their Alteryx workflow with your new version of the JIRA connector.

Proposal:

Please can we revisit this - we really do need the power of shared macros - and we also need the ability to fix and manage these like a product over time.   This will have an impact on the engine (hence copying @AdamR_AYX ) 

Desired end-state:

- When you build a canvas using a shared macro - it doesn't store the macro itself, but rather a reference to the version on the server - unless you explicitly decide to break the connection and take a copy.

- When you check this canvas into the server - your application / yxzp does NOT include a copy of the shared macro - instead it has a reference link

- this means that Alteryx Server can now track which canvasses use this shared macro very simply

- When I fix this shared macro - I can then do an in-place update; or if the interface is not the same (i.e. different inputs or outputs) then this has to be a new version and the users will stay pointing to version 1.

This is how shared assets are managed in a micro-service world, which is the way that all of our architecture is going - and it seems important that we build this thinking into the Alteryx infrastructure too.

@AdamR_AYX ; @Treyson ; @SteveA @DerekK ; @BlytheE 

I would like to be able to view all schedule results from all users in my Gallery.  Currently, I can see the "Workflow Results" for any schedules I create.  But I cannot see them for users unless they share them.  As admin, I want an option on the Gallery Admin screen just like there is on the Gallery user screen to see "Workflow Results" for every schedule that is in the Scheduler Database, regardless of who the user shared it with.

Currently, the only way to accomplish this is to go to Designer, View Schedules, connect to the Controller, and go to the Results tab.  This should be built into the Admin screen in the Gallery.

I'd like to request the ability for the Curators to change the priority on Apps in the Gallery.

Today we have a system where users are not allowed to set the priority on workflows. The Curators change the priority of scheduled workflows based on workflow runtime/ business need by going to Gallery Admin> Jobs> Scheduled Workflows, and then editing the schedule priority.

The problem that that we have a numbers of Gallery Members/ Viewers that run Apps through the day that are very fast to run, but depending on how big is the queue they can several minutes/ hour until a spot is free to run.

If would be very helpful to get a better UX if the curator can choose which apps should have a higher priority to run.

Thanks,

Mauricio Estevez

Currently, we see the Districts and Collections now compressed into a list view. 

Previously, the Server had the widgets feature which really showcased the self-service nature of the Sever. Losing that just made decreased the emphasis on user experience. 

It would be great to allow Server Admins to decide whether they want lists or widgets to be available toggles as a design feature for both districts and collections will be of great help.

In addition, regardless of the option, the image size and wording size should be much larger - easier for people to see. Right now, we have to zoom to 150% to make it easier for ourselves to see. Having the ability to control font size, font control with bolds, italtics, etc. will be very helpful as well.

currently, there isn't any way to fully delete (safely) a user from the gallery. So if there is a previous client or previous employee in gallery, we cannot clean up the gallery settings - only "disable". It would be great to have a "trash can" symbol next to the users where we can remove them from the server and keep all of the users clean. 

After a job is run on Alteryx Server, Gallery lists Job Results with a Status column containing with one of 2 values:

• Error (represented by a red exclamation point icon); and
• Success (represented by a green checkmark icon).
  See attached screenshot for illustration.

If any WARNING messages are generated by the workflow, the operator/user is unaware unless they take the time to expand the message log details, then scroll through the long list of messages that typically appear in the log.

Because the Success Icon appears whether there are Warnings or not, the user must dutifully spend extra time scrolling through the list looking for Warnings even if there are none to be found.

My Idea: provide additional information under the Status column in one or more of these ways:

1. add a 3rd status option with a yellow/orange icon that indicates if/when 1 or more warnings are present
   • This should be a quick/easy enhancement that would provide immediate value
     
     
2. append one or more numbers after the Icon to indicate counts (see mock-up example)
   • There seems to be ample space for this type of info
   • This could be done at a later date as a subsequent enhancement

I think that the user would benefit from a filter where they could focus on errors, warnings, or other types of messages in the same spirit as the Designer interface, but I recognize that would be a lot of work and I am not asking for that now.

We leverage Active Directory groups to manage user permissions to most of our company's resources like databases, file shares, applications, etc.  This idea is for the ability to manage a Gallery Data Connection via an Active Directory group.  In many cases, our AD group membership actually dictates what permissions a gallery connection should have, but we must manually add/remove users to the Alteryx connection to keep it synched with AD.

I think there are several ways Alteryx could be enhanced to support this; i.e. the AD group could be specified on the connection itself or it could be inherited from a Studio where the subscription is enhanced to support assigning AD groups to it (which could benefit other areas of Alteryx).

I'm told by Alteryx support that this functionality is unsupported but to post the idea here.  If anyone knows of workarounds to this limitation I'd certainly be interested!

Alteryx DCM has been an incredibly useful addition that supports key security concerns from companies. Currently, only three external key vaults are supported:

• Hashicorp Vault (KV secrets engine) - supported for Designer 22.3 and later.

• CyberArk Conjur - supported for Designer 22.3 and later.

• AWS Secrets Manager

https://help.alteryx.com/current/en/designer/tools/dcm---designer/dcm-external-vaults.html## 

I propose that we also include Delinea Secret Server.

Thank you and hopefully we can start to add more to make this feature widely useable and support security compliance.

This idea has been touted in different flavours over the years (but not implemented), but I'd like to push it a little further:

1. Create the ability to collaboratively edit an Alteryx workflow - e.g. like you can edit Microsoft documents collaboratively. If the front-end is primarily an XML interface, this should in theory be possible?

2. Version control (not version tracking) - i.e. automatically state the differences in scripts between versions and allow for checking in and checking out of code

3. Power BI & Tableau Prep have the ability to see exactly what changes were made and to reverse steps to get back to a specific stage of development: it would be great to have a panel that tracks all the edits you've made since you started editing the workflow

In simple terms, a modern, interactive way for multiple developers to work together, but also to encourage the use of Server to "check in" your application and to avoid developers saving the same file over & over again locally.

It would be beneficial to be able to add a description to collections to explain the purpose of the collection, i.e. the types of content contained within or even a waiver stating "use of the contents in this collection is at your own risk, please ensure you validate the results are accurate" sort of thing.