Alteryx Server Ideas

As we continue to build Alteryx Workflows for the business, there is a continued need for an organizational structure for saving and storing Alteryx Workflows within the Alteryx Gallery. Organizing the workflow repository through a "folder hierarchy" will allow users to quickly navigate and find the appropriate workflow. Currently, the workflows are listed in alphabetical order and requires the user to remember the Alteryx Workflow name and click to the proper page. 

Any enhancements to the Alteryx Gallery organization structure would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you, 

KK

Idea:

Using a few designers and registering to the Alteryx Gallery are good fits for micro and small enterprises, from investment vs capability stantd point.

Alteryx Server is suitable for medium to large enterprises with at least 45K USD budget yearly and many alteryx users possibly more than 20...

Don't you think there is a need for something in between? I propose Alteryx mini-server (well we can find a better name hopefully :)

Rationale:

Many Alteryx clients seem to utilize Alteryx designer for ETL,

then some of them further enrich data and model forecasting or predictive modelling.

Before even considering a server they output to a BI server like

• Qlik server or
• Tabelau server or
• PowerBI

If there is a need for automation Alteryx designer + Scheduler does all the trick needed.

Once you update everything in a repetitive fachion 100s to 1000s of Qlik or Tableau users can reach to the most uptodate content and discover dashboards...

I believe we can do a similar thing with a mini server...

What to do:

Currently, many of our most useful apps in the gallery utilises blocked tools (download tool, R tool etc). Every deployment or even minor updates to these apps require emailing the Alteryx Curator account for exception requests. This process is quite cumbersome, although the need for it is understandable. However, given that not a single app from us was ever rejected (and we submitted dozens of requests) , it would be great to have a process in place to apply for a permanent whitelisted status. This would give trusted app authors the ability to deploy apps with blocked tools without emailing the Curator. 

We've purchased a server license and several designer licenses to publish analytics apps to customers via our internal/company gallery. Whether a user signs in or not, users should not be subjected to corporate Alteryx ads. This is a terrible user experience and detracts from our ability to deploy self-serve solutions.

It would be great if we can set the priority of a job when scheduling a workflow through either the Designer UI or through AlteryxService addtoqueue command

In my organization we primarily schedule jobs through these avenues and this would bring them up to par with the scheduling capabilities of Gallery

For example:

AlteryxService https://help.alteryx.com/current/server/alteryxservice-commands

addtoqueue=path,host[:port],secret[,true]

^ add an optional parameter that takes enum value {Low, Medium, High, Critical}

Designer UI

Add a dropdown that takes an enum {Low, Medium, High, Critical}

Hello,

Looks like the user inputs (check boxes, free text fields, drop downs, file uploads etc., ) to the app are "temporarily" stored during the course of the app "Run" time. These - especially the "uploaded files" get deleted from  the temporary folder after the successful run of the workflow.

Ex: user uploads 2 files to the app as inputs. see attached interface.

It is important that the user selections are persisted on the alteryx server for debugging, investigation, audit trail purposes.

Of-course - there are workarounds by some extra code/logic within the app. But - in-order for the "server" tool to be considered as robust/industrialized - it is critical to "log" the user interactions on the server side.

Is it something already looked into?

Regards,

Sandeep.

Alteryx Server API should be allowed to publish the workflow in the gallery. 

The search for replacing a workflow is poor (and I get that it is probably challenging to write on the back end) but as a result even if I type in the exact title of the workflow (aka copy and paste) Alteryx replace can't find it. Not only does this mean I have multiple workflows with the same name running around (loads of fun with lack of version control) but it also makes this entire thing more frustrating every time I update a workflow (as normally this also means the scheduling of said workflow breaks).

It would be awesome if instead of having to search by title for your workflow that you wish to replace with if you could instead use the URL where Alteryx Gallery put the workflow and then there wouldn't be any confusions about which workflow and you wouldn't have to type.

Hi,

I have an existing app in my company's gallery. I updated the app in the gallery to not allow others to download. I just made changes to the desktop version of the app and saved it to the gallery, then went thru the steps of replacing my existing gallery app with the new version (this part I like). BUT, after updating the app, when I went back into the app settings, the option for others to download was checked again. To me, the app should inherit anything that was manually done to it in the gallery, like making it not downloadable. Is it possible to have this changed in a future release?

Thanks!

Aliases are a really powerful tool, particularly when you have multiple environments (EG Test, Prod) and need a published workflow to work without any code changes (In particular in an IT or Release/Change Control model).  By configuring a system alias on your Test and Prod servers, code will dynamically point to the correct server.

However, aliases can be somewhat cumbersome if you have a lot of databases on a server, and those database names change by environment.  Effectively, you end up needing an alias for each Database, which runs into naming convention and standardization issues.

Having the ability to configure a "database value" or a "database alias" would do a lot to help this.  This could either be a file that would be attached (allowing for easy config changes without risk of modifying the underlying code structure) or a secondary tier of aliases, so that a connection string might go from:

aka:SQLSERVER (contains sqlserver and database information)

to:

aka:SQLSERVER||aka:database - so that at runtime Alteryx would evaluate the SQLSERVER alias and the database alias to create the correct connection string for that environment.

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

- Gallery in all supported languages

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

• Can’t use CReW macros in Server

Hello Alteryx Devs - 

So, I'm poking around the Atlerxy Gallery API stuff with an eye toward building a set of classes that can interact with workflows without exposing Gallery proper to the community at large.  That being said, I was a little dismayed to find that all interactions require inclusion of *user specific* API Keys and Secrets.  It can be dealt with, but ultimately it means that configuring a middleware tier between the real world and Alteryx server requires an additional hierarchical level; i.e., understanding which of the developers came up with workflow X and having *their* API Key / Secret attached at configuration time.  

Anyways, it might be easier to just have a global trusted key / (super) secret.  If you get that, you can execute a workflow.  

Maybe we have a special studio that people could clone to, and in this way, you'd only have to track a single key/secret outside.  

I mean, the existing system works OK for one offs, but if you wanted to have a (semi) modular system in place, dependence on understanding publishing entity specifics seems to muck things up for no discernible benefit.  Of course, maybe in some places there is benefit to this scheme (?), but it is causing me to craft some weird work arounds early in development, which gives me a sinking feeling.

Or am I doing it wrong? 

Thanks for listening. 

brian

Hi,

I have missing this functionality in alteryx gallery where we can see the runtime status of running app.

In Workflow result option we can view only post completion of app run.

Is Alteryx looking at implementing some kind of feature to provide a preview of impacted objects (lineage view) & understand dataconnections' changes impact before it's implemented ?

Benefits:

• Help users understand the ramifications of any changes they make on other cards, DataFlows, or DataFusions.
• Search and explore data lineage.
• Easily find broken dataflows.
• Quickly determine the impact of dataconnection changes on the rest of your Site, Collections, Application etc.

DOMO has this well done in their platform, check it out rather than me explaining here..

Search for Data Lineage & Impact Analysis.

https://knowledge.domo.com/Connect/Managing_DataSets/Viewing_the_Impact_of_Changes_to_DataSets_-_BET...

It would be GREAT if we could have an optional notes field in the gallery. When many tools are uploaded to a collection, the titles alone are not descriptive enough for end users. I have to publish a separate "menu" for reports that are available in the gallery. In some cases I have to number them. I wish users could just browse for themselves to find the application that is suitable for their use case. 

I think it would be good to arranged the Workflow results into tabbed pages by completion status, e.g. a tab for failures, warnings, success, all.  We run about 200 jobs in the morning and have to page through all the workflow results to find failures.  

Also would be useful to search workflow results by completion status, e.g. find all workflows that have failed.

I know that the documentation shows that you can setup a worker to a specific QoS so that it will only pick up work for a particular workflow or app, but there could be a greater use for it.

For example if the Admin could control what QoS means for each definition.

I.E. Application, vs a workflow that runs over an hour, vs in-database tools. Then it will allow the admins to self guide where the work is going.

Right now there is only three levels

• Normal workflow execution: QOS = 0
• Chained application execution: QOS = 4 (all apps in the chain aside from the last)
• Workflow validation requests: QOS = 6

This was great for Alteryx public, but for private Galleries we need to distribute the work better than FIFO.