Alteryx Server Ideas

We have situations where some workflows that are scheduled end up having intermittent connection issues to other databases that result in the workflow running to timeout. The timeout settings are set in the server, but it would be nice if you could set an override value for a lesser timeout in the runtime settings for individual workflows and basically use the server setting as a not to exceed value. We have a multi-node environment with multiple worker nodes and about 250 artisans. We have some regularly scheduled workflows taking the full amount of time in the timeout setting and obviously if a couple of normally quick running workflows ran to timeout that causes issues with the queue.

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 a very pleasing user experience if we could enjoy the Server usage with a true dark mode. The customization in the Theme-Panel isn't advanced enough to do it ourselves - unless we deep dive into the css-files. The CSS already has a good structure and the dark mode could be enable with just a few changes. 

Here is a comparison of my server in light and dark mode.

It's probably noticeable that I haven't studied Design, but it should give a rough suggestion how it could look.

Obviously not everyone wants a dark mode, therefore every user should have toggle in the user settings to switch between light and dark mode.

I Would Like a new Email added under [ Admin -> Notifications -> Emails ] where it would send an Email when a Schedule reaches the status "Complete" 

This can serve a couple of use cases;

1. You have many things going on and this email can let you know "This schedule has now been completed"  
   1. From my experience we usually schedule things indefinitely, however if an end was put in place this can be a reminder of whether or not to continue scheduling the workflow
2. It can also notify when a schedule inadvertently reaches "Complete" status, in the backend this could be because it has status "Corrupt: AlteryxService_RetrieveSecureData Failed."
   1. This has caused issues multiple times of schedules that are supposed to be indefinite reach "Complete" Status without our knowing. With many workflows and schedules this is not something we can babysit.
   2. brief research suggests this error could be due to restarting the Alteryx Service during a schedule, which we do weekly for our backup. And trying to coordinate a time when no schedules are running is difficult when something runs every 10 minutes.

My team utilizes the Gallery API extensively and have found that we have processes that the API has listed as actively running, but cannot be found via the Controller's GUI.  As a gallery artisan, I can call flows via API, but cannot cancel these executions unless I reach out to the administrator group to kill them manually. 

It would be extremely helpful to add an endpoint with the ability to submit a specific job GUID and have the server/controller kill the execution of that flow and clear up the server capacity.  This could then be scheduled on a regular basis as a maintenance  task to keep the server clean.

Thanks

Issue: When Workflow names have similar beginnings on server a user cannot distinguish between them because the columns on this GUI are not expandable as would be expected. A user has to make their browser larger and all columns open proportionately.

Solution: Change column settings so users can drag column widths to make changes. A bonus would be to allow a user to set a default along with an option to always auto expand all.

It would be good to have a new field with the owner of the data connection, when users asks to be part of a data connection, we should know who is the identified owner to contact and ask for approval.

Thanks.

Regards

Joana Santos

I am an Artisan but not the Owner of the studio - I uploaded the workflow and would like to see all the jobs (including manually triggered) that run for my workflow so I can track any issues i.e. when workflow fails. I checked with the Owner of the studio and he also can see only the runs he triggered. 

I understand from the Support team in my company that option to see all the jobs that run is currently available only for the Curator role but would be extremely helpful if you would make it available to all the users that have access to the Private Studio.

When I publish a workflow, I want it to have different behaviour based on the collection from which it was executed or scheduled. Let us suppose that I create a DEV collection and a PROD collection. The workflow is shared in both. If the workflow is executed from DEV, then I will have some logic to do X (output to specific folders, etc). If from PROD, the logic will do Y. The logic will be up to me. If the collection information is captured in the MongoDB layer, then I can pull it out on the fly by joining the collections, appInfos, and AS_Queue or AS_schedules collections. Querying the DB on the fly during execution and pulling that value is trivial. Once I have it, I can use it for any sort of logic as an environment sensing variable. Can you please store the info in MongoDB?

Is there a way to check the version of the CASS data packs or other data packs on a server without logging into the server? It would be nice to have the option to check current data packs from the gallery within your profile. Today we can check the Client and Server version when logged in as a user. 

Thank you,

Berger

When we download from the gallery, please return both the altered gallery code and the original unaltered code so user can choose the base to build next version on.

Most everyone learns the hard way that saving to the gallery alters their code in ways that it may no longer work as it did before when running on desktop. After figuring out what has happened and laboriously un-doing the alterations that happen when saving to the gallery, we develop schemes to keep separate desktop versions of gallery apps in sync. These schemes should not be necessary. 

It would be a nice feature for users on the 'keys' tab in gallery to provide code examples in python (maybe pre-configured in python tool) or javascript (maybe pre-configured in js tool) or even offer download of @patrick_digan 's API macro with the key/secret already placed in the macro with the end game being able to not have users stumble through building a block of code that they know or don't know should work! 

I would like to see ability to limit the number of versions a user can save of a workflow. As a server environment ages we start to see the database become unnecessarily larger because the number of version of workflows. For servers related to DEV and QA environments as an Admin I would like to be able to say users can keep their 10-25 most recent versions of their workflows. Then anything over that will start to auto-delete just like the auto save feature in Designer. 

The publishing endpoint, a POST to api/admin/v1/workflows/, is useless whenever workflows, apps, or macros contain Gallery Data Connections.  The workflow will get published but valid Gallery Data Connections are ignored and the apps will not run.

Please add the same dependency checks against Gallery Data Connections as is performed when a workflow or app is manually published from Designer.

This might be considered a subset of the Idea Server API to extract / submit workflows.

Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

David

Alteryx saves log files in UTF-16 please change the format to UTF-8 as the logs can be streamed using applications like New Relic to track the performance as they only support UTF-8 format.

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

The Schedules tab of the Gallery currently lists all schedules, 20 to a page, with no option to filter.  I am currently managing 183 active schedules.  In order to find a single schedule, I have to sort by Workflow name, then page through 10 pages of schedules to find the schedule I'm looking for.

Please add an option to filter this list. 

Ideally, I would like to be able to filter on multiple fields at once (example:  Priority = High, Status = Active, Owner = Bob Smith, Times Run > 20).  Barring that, a simple search option on workflow name, similar to the search option on the Collections tab, would be enough.

Sorry if this idea has already been addressed, but I would love an enhancement that would allow users to upload multiple files to the Gallery to be processed and ran by a published app. 

Currently, the only way to accomplish this is by adding multiple File Browse tools to the published app. But if you have a workflow that needs to upload more than a couple files, this becomes a problem.