alteryx server Ideas

*This is an idea from @cneivam  from the Portuguese Community*

• Being able to control the workload in Alteryx Server (for example, making sure that a workflow can run only when another set of workflows finish running)

It would be very useful to have a standardized method to set up notifications to the server admins and to the job owner themselves if an alteryx canvas fails (error).

My understanding is that currently the only way to do notifications on failure for every canvas is for every canvas to individually set up events.   On a large implementation, this becomes very difficult to manage.

Currently the e-mail settings for the server are set up using a wizard and are not available within the admin UI.

Please could you add an explicit section to the Admin UI to allow the admin team to set up approved SMTP settings, allowing this all to be managed in one admin console.

Further: Can you allow the admins to push these settings down to the desktop users.   This would allow the admin team to control the SMTP usage and prevent data leakage.   It would also reduce complexity for the user since the SMTP settings are all pre-set making eMail tools; and Events easier to set up.

Currently the server diagnostics (http://localhost/gallery/admin/#!diagnostics) covers a narrow time window (from what I can see - only the last few hours)

.... and if you attempt to zoom out or pan to see a broader time window - the graph gets smaller, but the data does not grow to fill the remaining space

Please could we request 2 changes:

a) add a time axis on the bottom of this chart so that the user can understand the time dimension 

b) Increase the time available for analytics to an arbitrarily broad set of data (which the admin can configure as a server setup parameter - retention period).   For us - we'd want to keep at least 3 months of data, and be able to view this analytically.

Thank you 

Sean

See following article for background reference: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/workflow-exceeded-maximum-runtime-of-30-...

I have a support case (#00278355) advising unsupported changes to the alteryx.config file, involving an undocumented setting for chainedTimeout, as in:

<engine enableAutoLicensing="true" useServiceLayerComposer="true" chainedTimeout="10800"

This setting should be documented, supported, and made user-configurable through the System Settings GUI. 

We have several clients that operate in a Multi-Forest environment due to mergers and acquisitions.  Currently with Alteryx Server the only option we can offer them is to use Built-In authentication.  A lot of corporate and particularly finance institutions prefer a single sign on approach and utilise Windows authentication to do this.

Would it be possible to add support for Multi-Forest organisations into Server to support organisations going through mergers and acquisitions?

This would really benefit us in selling Server in to organisations with complex structures and reduce friction in publishing or preparing workflows.

I work at a large organization where Security and Privacy are of utmost importance. The ideology that we need to follow is Least Privilege and Need to Know.

We (Curators) do not want all the Artisans to publish workflows to Home Page, either knowingly or unknowingly. We however do want to allow a few power users to publish their work in Home Page, but currently the Gallery does not provide the ability to pick and choose who can share workflows publicly. We are educating users to not share any contents publicly, but as we scale up, it will be difficult to manage and govern this.

I'm suggesting to implement a global Yes/No feature that will Enable/Disable Artisans to publish contents in Home Page (just like the way we have for Jobs/Scheduling feature). Further, in Users section, Edit User setting needs to have a Yes/No button that will allow Curators to let certain Artisans place workflows in My Company's Gallery.

Organizations that never want any workflow to be shared publicly can disable this feature using global Yes/No button. Organizations (like the one I work at) that want to enable this only for certain Artisans, can set the Global Yes/No to No, and then in Users tab, they can pick and choose the Users that need this functionality (which will override the global default). Finally Organizations that do not really care about this functionality can just set the global setting to Yes.

Hoping other organizations find value in this functionality as well. Thanks.

Would like to see a Notification hierarchy implemented to Gallery. Currently, the settings that control notifications are at the Gallery-level....where only the admin can control, for example, notifying users if a new workflow was added to a collection they belong too. Could this setting be inherited, but then, for example, a Collection owner can implement their own notification settings that overrides the Gallery default? Using the same example as before, perhaps the Collection owner could disable notifying their Users if a new workflow is loaded to the collection.

Nick

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

We're looking to use the worker setting that cancels jobs that run over a certain amount of time. However, In testing we noticed when the server kills the job it does not trigger the workflow event for 'after run with errors'. That said, it does trigger the 'after run without errors' event, but there is no detail in the email as to what happened. This behavior seems counter-intuitive. We primarily use 'after run with errors', so our users could potentially have their workflows cancelled and never hear about it. 

is it possible to do one of the following:

• Trigger the 'after run with errors' workflow event if the server cancels a job
• Have a server notification that emails users when a job is cancelled due to run length

We're currently running server 2019.1, so please ignore this idea if this issue has been resolved in later releases. 

Here is the server setting I am referring to

It would be great if each user could persist their gallery UI sorting/view changes and leave them as default. When I log in I nearly always immediately switch to list view and sort by most recent modified. This means everytime I access a set of workflows there are at least 3 click actions before I can even start working.

Please keep in mind that this is a suggestion from a container novice! 🙂

However, our situation is such that our release upgrade deployments are taking significant time to install, test and sign-off from DEV through PROD for the four main life-cycles involved in our server environment. Even if we script the deployment to save time, there's still manual configuration needed to confirm the new version works in the next server environment.

Similar to how Promote can deploy from DEV through PROD using images/containers, my suggestion is to package the Server components into images/containers that can be similarly deployed through the life-cycles. While the container with mongoDB doesn't need to move to the next life-cycle, the containers with the web server, load balancer, and engine nodes could move with the click of a button. And if needed, reverted to prior version with similar ease.

I forgot to ask about this idea at the UX lab during Inspire, but would be very happy to hear if it's already in the pipeline!

Thank you for your consideration!

Today in managing Alteryx server, we manually configure new connections using the front end.  However, this has some potential drawbacks as it makes it hard to easily track change history, or make bulk updates to multiple strings, and it also leaves room for user error on configuration.

In this case I'm pretty specifically looking to modify aliases on the server itself.  I'm not particularly concerned with distribution to a wider audience, and the usernames/passwords associated in this case should not be available for use locally by users.  As a part of this, I am trying to identify a method to reduce or eliminate the need for anyone (including the data connection manager) to need to know the password for the specified accounts.  As some of these accounts may be used by multiple systems, it would be significantly simpler to integrate this maintenance into existing automated processes, rather than have a manual step to update the Alteryx connection values on the Gallery.

This is specifically a challenge today with regards to specific usernames or passwords which need to be stored.  Alteryx saves these values using machine-level encryption, but that is difficult to generate automatically.  Having a supported method that would easily allow creation of this file with password-level information would greatly improve maintenance of the Alteryx Server, particularly from an IT automation perspective.

Currently if there is a password change, I have to download my workflows, update the password in the Tableau connector, and reupload the files. 

This would enable groups with a single sign on to ensure scheduled workflows are not interrupted. 

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'd love the ability to have one schedule for a workflow at specific times. 

Currently you have to create 4 different schedules if you'd like a workflow to run at 10 am, 3 pm, 5:30 pm and 11:30 pm and doing this makes the "Scheduled Workflow" section of the server not only cluttered, but a lot more difficult to manage.  (like spotting accidentally duplicated schedules- which also happens more often than i'd like 🙂

Thanks!

The admin (aka curator) needs to be given more control. The admin should have greater control than the users of the system.

My organization is in the Healthcare industry and we have HIPAA laws to abide by when it comes to data. Not all users should be able to see all data. Developers should not have complete control over the data they publish.

Private studio

• admin should be able to control if users can publish to Alteryx gallery (compliant issues occur when our organization's data is shared to outside users)
• admin should be able to control if user can publish to public gallery (compliant issues occur when all users can all see and run workflows)
• admin should be able to delete subscriptions and users

Collections

• admin should be able to create collections so they can manage the collections and what users have access to (devs should not be able to give any user access to their workflows)
• admin should be able to control if users can create new collections (again, compliance issues)
• admin should be able to grant and remove download of workflow rights
• admin should be able to delete connections

Get tips from Tableau as they have admin controls down with their permissions process.

When saving a workflow to the gallery, none of the options I could choose from Set workflow credentials validates a workflow successfully when using database connections due to missing permission on the server (No specific Run As is configured on the Server). Apparently the server validates the workflow as following:

User is not required to specify credentials:No possibility to add credentials when running the workflow on the server. In that case, the workflow validates database connections with errors due to missing permission on the server. This error was expected.

User must specify their own credentials: This option is the most appropriate in case of working with database connections with regard to our use cases and security policies. Unfortunately this option is only enabled when the workflow is saved on the server already and run from the gallery. In case of the validation step when saving the workflow to the gallery, the server evaluates with the system user of the server. As a result, the validation fails. In that case, I expected the server to run the validation with the user from the Alteryx Designer.

Always run this workflow with these credentials: This option is not appropriate in terms of our security policy, since the workflow is permanently set with the users credentials.

So my suggestion would be to:

• Prompt dialog to enter my credentials for validation once or
• The server runs the validation with the User from Designer, where the workflow is going to be saved from.

Otherwise is see no benefit of the validation feature (with respect to our use cases and security policies)

Dearest colleageues and comrades (Romans, countrymen?):

Have you ever queued up your jobs only to have them block your regularly scheduled programming? Imagine a world where, assuming you had multiple worker nodes, you can direct and prioritise your jobs on your terms.

This is what I am suggesting.

I've recently worked with Alteryx support, and they turned me on to a QoS setting in Alteryx Server settings. Peep this like a marshmallow chick in hot pink: 

After learning from the great Server Master Kevin Powney (blessed be his name), I learnt that there are currently 3 'channels' that this QoS variable governs. 0 is the highest priority used for workflows. 4 is used for chained apps. 6 is used for gallery service requests.

This will not do.

Why? Well, for one: hello arcane/memorisation.

Secondly, where is my control? I'm a millenial dammit! Service me!

So, my idea, that I want you to vote so highly on as to save yourself any myself a lot of hassle, is to allow a custom QoS variable to be a traffic variable. And here's how it works:

• For each workflow/app, you can assign it whatever QoS/traffic variable you choose. 
• This allows the user the power to control which 'lane' is clogged in the queue.

Example time! [cheers, candy thrown]

In my current situation, we have some jobs that are network-intensive (database calls), and jobs that are processing-intensive (CPU hogs doing hard-core maths). 

The network-intensive jobs run on the weekends so that we have the data in the morning on Monday. The processing-intensive jobs need to finish, but suck up all the CPU power. For the last couple of weeks, we've unsuccessfully run these jobs over the weekend. The downside is that since we cannot control how traffic flows (and we only have the 0/4/6 options in QoS, of which these only fit in the 0 lane [breath, sorry]) the CPU-heavy jobs have blocked more critical network jobs.

If we had two paths, we could assign the CPU jobs to lane 1 and the network jobs to lane 0 and they can run in parallel. And then my boss is happy. We like happy bosses, right?

Vote this up! My boss is awesome!

Thanks for your ear,

Hail Caesar or something.

-Cedric