Alteryx Server Ideas

Currently, DCM credentials appear to only be used in combination with a DCM Data Source.  

For ease of use for my end users (non-Designers), I would like my end users to be able to save a user ID and password as a standalone DCM credential.  Then, I want the user to have the option to select that credential for use in two places:

1.  Run-As - when running a workflow on demand, the user should be able to choose their saved DCM credential.
2. Credential injection into Input Data or other relevant tools in Analytic Apps - I want to use the DCM Connection tool to build Analytic Apps that prompt my users to select their DCM Credential (NOT a full DCM Connection with data source - I don't want my users to have to set that up.)  When the user selects their Credential, their user ID and password should be securely encrypted and inserted into the existing connection set up by the App designer.

Having this functionality would remove administrative burden from both our Designers and the end users they support.

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)

I'm not sure if this is too similar to this server idea

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Using-Microsoft-Flow-to-trigger-workflows/idi-...

but I'd love to see the ability to add webhooks to Alteryx Server to launch a workflow.  I believe that is how Flow (now PowerAutomate) can run an event.  I had to spend hours figuring out how to build a "Flow" workflow which would have taken me minutes in Designer.  For example, when I receive a new MS Forms Survey submission, I can shape the data and build a sharepoint list, rather than waiting for whatever interval I set in the scheduler.

When saving to our company's gallery, we must deselect dozens of assets for our numerous workflows every time they need to be resaved, which is very frequent.

I would like to suggest a select/deselect all button under manage workflow assets. This would save a considerable amount of time.

Thank you,
Daniel

I would like to be able to open a user from the gallery - and see which collection(s) that user is in

If my collection is broken - I cant see users at all

Hey Team,

With 2020.3, the new Groups feature came into light, which is great, but seems like it was only half-thought.

It would have been nicely complemented with some API endpoints that would allow managing the groups' members - add, remove, list members, etc.

Seems like the API on Alteryx is like 100 steps behind and seems like the new developments are not considering adding APIs for the new released features. I feel this is a product roadmap issue.

As an admin, I would like far more ways to automate managing the Server/Gallery than the ones currently provided by Alteryx.

Integration with AD would be nice as well, we use SAML, and would like to have the option to import AD groups that would sync automatically in Alteryx - same way Tableau has those groups that are imported directly from AD.

Thanks,

Alex

Hello!
Currently when administrating the Alteryx Server, within the 'users' page, I can see that new users will be setup as 'default'. 

This will display as 'default', which can be confusing, as I need to navigate to the configuration page to remind myself what the default role is. Additionally, they may be part of a group, either in AD or within the server, that upgrades their default rank, for instance if they are part of a group set to be curators. They will still always display as 'default'.

I would like to suggest the following:

This would allow me to see much more clearly who is set as what rank on the Server, but also which users are set to different ranks as part of an AD group.

Currently , once a user have SetPriority access ,he can select from Low, Medium, High or Critical priority levels to ensure certain jobs always take priority over others.  

This feature can be misused as users can upgrade their priority levels to jump up the queue and later downgrade the levels. It's difficult to justify and ask each others when you have 1000+ jobs running in a day and it makes administration tough and gives unbiased Gallery to all end users.

It would be nice to have on Admin console, global option to set max priority level so that no user can jump up level beyond this.

I think for business purposes it would be great to be able to update the apply for an exemption page that displays when you have a flow that is blocked in safe mode so you could provide accurate documentation to your users about their companies go through an approval process and allowing you to link out to external sites like JIRA to submit a ticket

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. 

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

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

I would like the ability to add Groups to a collection as well as individual users. This would make things a lot easier for situations where large sets of users needed to be added to a collection at once, or removed at once.

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!

Hi!

It would be very useful if Alteryx would allow users to create folders under their Private Gallery. My private gallery is now 3+ pages long & it would be super helpful to be able to organize the workflows into different folders (Archive/Retail/Linear/Fin/etc), allowing for easier housekeeping & tracking. I realize their is collections but I'm not trying to share anything here, just organize my content for easier viewing.

Thank you!

In some organizations, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for permissions to be applied or exemptions made to enable wide ranges of users the “Logon as batch job” permission needed to run workflows in a Server with the current run-as credential capability.

If possible, could the Alteryx process still run as the server admin or "Run As" account, but enable the workflow to access the various different data sources (windows authentication) using specific credentials entered when running the workflow. So while the whole process runs as Service Account A, the access to databases, file systems, etc. may be done using their own specified credentials.

Some of this can be accomplished today by embedding credentials in database connections, but this isn’t an ideal scenario, and a more holistic solution that covers a wider array (or all supported) data sources would be preferred.

Would it be possible to specify whether a worker handles scheduled jobs, ad-hoc jobs or both?  Right now it seems that the workers treat both types of jobs the same, meaning that a slew of ad-hoc jobs initiated from the Gallery could slow down jobs that are scheduled to run on a regular cadence.  It'd be great if those scheduled jobs could have a dedicated worker (or workers) and have any ad-hoc jobs handled by a separate worker (or workers) so that the scheduled jobs (which might be more important) are not held up by one-off jobs.

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!

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.