Alteryx Server Ideas

In the Alteryx Gallery UI, it's possible to set up workflow credentials so that a workflow published to the gallery runs as a specific user.  

Unfortunately when that workflow is run from the Alteryx Gallery API, it appears to only ever run as the Alteryx Server Run-As account. 

Our developers in working with this figured out that if they called the (undocumented) API that runs the actual Alteryx Gallery directly, they can achieve what they want, but it seems a risky strategy.

The idea would be:

-Either unify the APIs so that the Gallery itself uses the same API to run workflows as what you present as the "Gallery API" (the eat your own dogfood way)

-Alter the Gallery API to enable us to run as a different workflow credential

Without this, we're forced to permission the run-as account to access anything that uses this method, which in turn then becomes a bit of a security hole (any workflow run will have access to everything that the run-as account uses) 

Hi,

@patrick_digan pointed out to me today that in my ignorance I thought that the "On Success - Show Results to User" option in Interface Designer did something on Alteryx Gallery, like it does when run locally.  I tried to prove him wrong (I've been manually checking off what outputs I want since day 1! How could it not have been doing anything?!) and failed miserably.  As far as we can tell, this functionality is simply non-existent within Gallery.

Please add this functionality so that we can suppress files (without reverting to hacky tricks like changing the output location so the Gallery can't see the output) with a simple check box.

Link to my shame, where I very openly explained exactly how I thought I had been solving this problem the whole time, and how after testing and review, it looks like I hadn't done anything with this configuration.

All these check boxes... and they don't change anything!

In regulated environments, like banks, there is a requirement to fully segment Alteryx Jobs so that people on either side of a Regulatory Wall cannot access each other's canvasses or results.

As an example:

- Public vs. private side in Broker/Dealer banks

- Compliance or HR or Finance need to be segmented from all other areas in most banks

What is needed here is for any canvasses belonging to each of these walled-off areas to be controlled so that they cannot be shared across the wall, and results cannot be viewed across these areas.   This also means that the Gallery Environment needs to be capable of being segmented fully within 1 installed environment.

CC: @rijuthav @jithinmony @HengHe @RajK @ydmuley @revathi @Deeksha @MPistone @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller @JoshKushner @samnelson @avinashbonu @Sunder_Sriram @Rahul_Thakur @Rahul_Singh

As we have more and more users onboarded to the Server, and many users share similar names, it is getting more and more complicated to manage. 

It will be great if we have a management console that allows us to create User Groups, Tags, set User Departments, and more controls alongside their curator, designer, etc status on Server.

Groups like User Groups gives a group of people access into certain workflows, districts, collections, etc. It will also be helpful as it can also be an audit trail of who ran what - with a feature that allows users or groups of users to run certain tasks or schedules. 

Apparently I click too fast sometimes when saving a project, but there are a number of times where the workflow name hasn't populated when saving to the gallery and it ends up saving a blank file name. This is a pain because I can't do anything with the one in the gallery because there is nowhere to click on it, so I can't use the replace function and have to re-save it and re-add it back into any collections that it was in.

I realize that I just need to slow down, but I do this frequently enough where it absolutely drives me crazy. Being able to change file names in the gallery would be a big plus instead of just using the replace option.

When saving a workflow to the Gallery, I would like an option on the Save window to save directly to a collection. This can be an existing collection, or would have the ability to create a new collection. The current process requires you to log into the Gallery after saving the workflow and move it to the appropriate collection.

Currently, this is completely manual with whoever is assuming the schedule creating it under their profile and then the old schedule being deleted.

This can happen often in organization where a user leaves the company or assumes a new role requiring some else to maintain those schedules. It would be convenient if there was an option to reassign the owner of a schedule to simply this process.

Hey Alteryx Dev Gurus - 

I've got a situation wherein the user runs something in Gallery, and complains.  I have to log in as that user to view the output files that came back out.  As a super user, I should be able to have all seeing ability!  Thanks!

brian

We have several workflows that call other workflows (i.e. via the Conditional Runner macro) but are running into some versioning challenges since we moved to storing all of our workflows in our gallery.  When I publish a workflow that references another workflow, I can bundle it up with the workflow when I save it, but then Alteryx places that workflow into the /externals directory, which is obvioulsy not the same as the workflow that we've saved to our gallery.  An example:

I have two workflows in our gallery...one that generates a TDE and one that calls that one if certain file availability and time conditions are met.  The "master" version of each is in the gallery, which is what we want...

...but when I load or save the Sales Analytics workflow in Designer, I have to bundle the TDE workflow with the main workflow in order for it to run from Gallery.  But now I've created a disconnected version of the TDE workflow and if I forget to update it when I update the version in the Gallery, I'll be running the wrong version.  I know I could store these workflows in a network directory, but that seems to defeat the purpose of the Gallery.

If I'm not missing something insanely obvious, I think this would be a very important feature enhancement, namely the ability to pull in a Gallery workflow into another workflow.

My company uses R Shiny and maybe in the future Python Dash to create multiple analytic apps, dashboards, etc for multiple people to run across our company. One thing that would be nice to to have these R Shiny workflows run off of the Alteryx Server as that would allow us to use Alteryx Server to keep permissions and ease of use.

I propose an update to the Alteryx Server that would allow for R Shiny apps to be run in the Alteryx Server with all functionality of custom R interactive plots, etc etc just like what you'd see in one hosted on a R Shiny Server.

The benefits of this would allow for my company to only have to manage one server instance (Alteryx) to run all of this. Since R/Python is allowed/used in Alteryx workflows already, can you add the ability to visualize R Shiny code/plots/interactions/etc within Alteryx Server itself?

When opening a canvas - it is possible to open from the gallery, which is important in a team environment.

However - as you work on this canvas - if you hit save, it does not save a new version to the server and increment the original (as would happen on sharepoint) - instead it asks you to create a new file.    

Please can you change this behaviour as follows:

- If I open from the gallery then when I save I'm updating the same Gallery asset and incrementing the version ID by 1.

- The only time I would save in a new file is if I use Save As; and explicitly pick a new file.

 cc: @jalvarezv

There are two key APIs that we use for extracting canvasses for governance & surveillance:

- the Workflows API which lists all canvasses on the server;

-  and the API call which returns a packaged version of the application by AppID

Unfortunately - when we query for all workflows to get the first list - there is no flag to indicate that a subset of these are actually deleted.   The result is that you need to make the second call to find this out which is wasteful.

Please add a "deleted" flag to the Workflows API so that we can identify which applications have been deleted without having to call the specific App ID post.

CC: @jalvarezv

We are taking an incremental feed of all server canvasses in order to look for patterns - however there is no option on the server admin APIs (the Workflow API specifically) that allow you to filter by date.

Please can you add to this API to allow API users to specify an upload/updated date filter and only take items after this date.

cc: @jalvarezv

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

At the moment when you give the "assign job" permission the user can choose any worker, it would be great if there was a way to assign workers to users or groups.

Example 1 (worker 3 is assigned to one group):

Worker1 - Assigned to ALL

Worker2 - Assigned to ALL

Worker3 - Assigned to ArtisansGroup1

In this scenario, all Gallery users have access to Worker 1 and Worker 2 and the ArtisansGroup1 has access to Worker1, Worker2 and Worker3.

@SteveA did an article about server logging a few years ago which was very helpful.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works-Blog/A-deeper-dive-into-Server-logging/ba-p/22389

... and in the training events at Inspire this year there was a session on how to find and interpret server logs.

it would be very useful for large server environments to move away from discrete log files as much as possible, and instead move towards a world where the logs are stored in a data format, and one logging infra is used for all so that an admin team can see these all in one place.

Granted - the initial boot-up of a server, where it needs to connect to the logging DB is going to be a challenge - but after this initial primary boot sequence it would be great if all server logs and logging events were stored in a database of some kind so that we can analyze and collect events.     That way, server admins can have a great UI experience; as well as a great analytical experience without having to regex through multiple different .LOG files.

Currently when running an Alteryx Workflow from the gallery via the API, it doesn't get logged in the user interface in the same way that running it interactively in the gallery GUI does - a shame as it then becomes harder to know the traffic and performance of a workflow run in this way.  

While in a workspace or collection, it would be great to be able to select multiple workflows and perform a bulk action on them (e.g. delete). This would help cleaning up unused workflows quicker.

Thank you