Alteryx Server Ideas

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. 

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

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!

I would like to have the ability to configure my company's Gallery to display more than five applications/workflows to a page.  This is a waste of screen space and creates unnecessary clicks for browsing.

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

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)

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. 

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.

Hello,

Currently we are working on an issue where we are seeing an "inbound pipe" error during a scheduled workflow, terminating at the error.

However, the workflow doesn't officially complete; it simply terminates.

For the majority of workflows, when a workflow runs with errors, completing with errors, even if the workflow was unsuccessful, you can send an email via the events for that workflow, if the workflow completes with errors, to use as an alert or trigger, etc...

However this doesn't work when a workflow suddenly terminates with errors.

I'd like to see functionality added to all ow for an email event when a workflow terminates unexpectedly, without completing.

This way, I could set up a job to re-trigger the workflow if this happens.

This can occur when memory is swamped during the initial workflow.

This functionality would be a huge positive.

Thanks

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'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!

When installing and configuring Alteryx, the wizard allows the administrator to select the Gallery authentication to be used among:

Built-in

Integrated Windows authentication

Integrated Windows authentication with Kerberos

SAML authentication

The note states:

Once an authentication type has been selected, it should not be changed. Changing it may cause technical problems.

The gallery manual states "Once an authentication type has been selected it should not be changed or Gallery functionality may be compromised." 

https://help.alteryx.com/server/current/admin/Configuration/SystemSettings/Gallery.htm?Highlight=%22...

If you are reading this idea suggestion, I hope it is not too late for you. Why allow the user to change the authentication method once the install is completed? What are the options to solve this?

One option would be to grey-out the "Authentication Type" section in the  "Gallery Authentication" screen, so the user is not able to change authentication methods once after the first configuration is set. This would still allow the user to change SAML settings.

Another option, if somehow there is a reason why a user would want to change authentication types even though it is not supported, what about changing the layout to make it more difficult to change the authentication type.

What are your other suggested changes?

This is not relevant if this idea is implemented https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Allow-changing-of-Gallery-Authentication-witho...

However, I would imagine that a UI change would be a lot easier to implement that supporting overhauling the user management in the MongoDB.

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

While working with Alteryx Server, I noticed that there is no way for an Premium Artisan to organize the workflow results. With processes that are running hourly, each day, the workflow results gets very cluttered with the same things, and it takes some time to clean up. It would be nice to add a search bar that would filter out workflow results dependent on what you are entering in the textbar. Below is a very lo fi mock up. The spot where I entered "dispositionReport" at the top is the text bar that filters the workflow results below it. The red lines are simulating the removal of said records. Then offer a select all option to then delete all of the workflow results records. 

As part of the Persistence Expiration processes, within Designer we have the ability to set a retention threshold of the results tab.   i.e. 30 days.

After enabling this - all completed results are purged  but all the "error" results remain.  And this depending on the original count can run into the thousands, such as in my environment.   Id like to see the "Error" results become part of the clean up processing because of the following reasons:

1.  We do not have dedicated admins that have time to manually or by group delete these error result items.

2.  Most if not all - errors are resolved immediately.   if there were to be kept as a reference, a screen shot of the results are normally taken and filed away.

Support says this is intentional for resolution tracking purposes - but to counter - as I stated in item 2 - most errors are immediately looked at and worked on. So there is no reason to keep errored results. Especially when they are time-stamped dates greater than the expiration values selected.

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