Alteryx Server Ideas

I might be missing something here but as far as I know there is no feature (user or admin) providing a list of data connections being used by a specific workflow. And conversely, which workflows use a given data connection. This should work for both 'Standard' Data Connections as well as the DCM. 

In prior versions, Gallery Admins could easily and quickly reactivate users that were deactivated (e.g., and employee leaves the company so we inactivate their Gallery account, but then they come back to the company in a few months with the same name and email).  

Now, the only way to do this is to edit the Mongo page.

We need a way via the UI to reactivate users, like we did in the old UI.

I suggest adding an option in the current User List/Grid to be able to filter for Inactive users.

I have three team members all in the same private studio. We can see each others' workflows. However, when looking at a workflow that another team member has published to the gallery, it looks like:

1. The workflow has never been run
2. The workflow is not scheduled to run

This is a massive impediment to collaboration because my team handles ETL for most of the company. If a user complains that their data isn't up to date, whoever receives that support ticket needs to be able to see if the workflow is actually running and whether it was successful or had an error during the last run.

Preventing a team from seeing this for each others' workflow schedules and results means that the only person who can deal with an issue is the person who originally made the workflow. Which makes the idea of a shared private studio wholly pointless as we may as well be operating in different universes.

Please create a studio-level setting where all members of a studio can see all schedules and results of all workflows in that studio.

Wanted to grab some attention here regarding the Alteryx gallery search engine (which also bleeds over into searching for schedules and jobs when troubleshooting). 

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm pasting two pictures (one attachment) of searching our gallery for the word "Contour" and the word "Signal". Both of these words are in the title of a single workflow - when I search for the word "Contour", the workflow pops up. When I use the first word in the workflow, which is "Signal", it doesn't pop up. 

I appreciate all that Alteryx does, but I wouldn't think this should be a difficult issue to fix, and I would imagine there are other frustrations with the functionality here. 

Sometimes, a workflow posted to the Server is calling from a source data that has dimensions which are specific to certain users based on departments, divisions, countries, regions, states, or etc. depending on the level of granularity. 

Although Alteryx developers can create Analytical Apps that have the option for end users to select these dimensions, a more seamless experience for end users (and better for security as well) is to have the ability to configure such filters for existing users on the Alteryx Server itself.

So, if Person A belongs to State 1 and Person B belongs to State 2, by default when both Person A & B enter the Server to that specific workflow in a collection or district, they will automatically be filtered for State 1 and 2 respectively. 

This is similar to Section Access configuration - whereby users have already been pre-filtered the moment they enter.

The current workaround is to create multiple workflows and store them in different collections or districts specific to end users, and to make any changes will require a change to the workflow itself. 

It will be great to have a dashboard that allows for Alteryx Server admins to configure on their own without hassle.

I would suggest a service split to simplify maintenance actions in the Alteryx Server.

Split Alteryx Service into 5 services:

 Alteryx controller

• Dependencies: Alteryx Database
• Purpose: Controls job submissions
• Meaning: The Alteryx controller Service stopped means neither the users or the scheduler can submit new jobs

Alteryx Database

• Dependencies: N/A
• Purpose: Database
• Meaning: The Alteryx Database Service stopped means all the platform is down

Alteryx Gallery

• Dependencies: Alteryx Database
• Purpose: Controls the Web UI
• Meaning: Alteryx Gallery Service stopped means the gallery web page is down

Alteryx Scheduler

• Dependencies: Alteryx controller, Alteryx Database
• Purpose: Controls the scheduled jobs
• Meaning: The Alteryx Scheduler Service stopped means the users can still submit jobs manually but scheduled jobs wont be submited

Alteryx Worker

• Dependencies: Alteryx controller, Alteryx Database (only applicable if the server where the Alteryx Worker Service is running the Alteryx controller)
• Purpose: Executes the jobs
• Meaning: The Alteryx Worker Service stopped means no job will be executed on the node

This service split will help perform some maintenance tasks and enables the Platform Administrators to shutdown the platform correctly shutting down the services in the correct order.

Usage Example 1 (Cold Backup):

• Stop the controller so no more jobs can be submitted
• Stop all the workers
• After all the workers have stopped the Alteryx Database Service and the rest of the remaining services can be shutdown
• Preform the Cold Backup
• Start the services

Usage Example 2 (Changes in the worker configuration - By doing this the users will still have access to the gallery and their jobs):

• Make changes in the worker configuration
• Restart only the worker service

Usage Example 3 (Changes in the Gallery Page or Configurations):

• Stop the Gallery Service
• Make the changes
• Start the Gallery Service

As the Server Admin I'd like to have the ability to view ALL "Workflow Results" for all Subscriptions.This will give the highest level admin the ability to monitor all schedules (on the entire server instance) and monitor if they are unable to complete successfully (example- unable to allocate memory) and any other errors are occurring. 

Knowing this information will help the server administrator understand if there are issues with the server itself (e.g. if we need more workers or to simply adjust actual server system settings..etc..)

A nice to have is a connector for Microsoft Flow to trigger workflows.  With Microsoft Flow, users can automate processes, or set conditions that can trigger services across many different providers.  

Having the ability to use a Microsoft Flow can enable alteryx users to run workflows and feed in data that could be used by Microsoft Flow to feed into other processes. 

This would be a game changer for many users.

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.

Hi all,

For a user to know if a schedule was successful or not, they need to go schedule by schedule to check each of them.

I suggest adding one additional column to show the status of the last run. 

Something like this:

Thank you,

Fernando Vizcaino

2019.4+ Server now prompts users to select an Encoding Type when downloading a csv on the gallery. Unfortunately there is no way to disable the prompt of which encoding option to utilize or an ability to select a system default. Please provide these server options as this is causing confusion across departments. 

.csv output

.yxdb output, csv format

(many users like the preview provided by yxdb but want excel download)

During development in Designer, when the workflow is configured to output to csv it already has the encoding configured, please provide the option to at least default this at output on the gallery:

.csv config

The only alternative at this time is to republish all workbooks configured to output .csv or .yxdb to be .xlsx. This is not ideal.

Note: Scheduled jobs are not affected - I tested a scheduled run and csv files were successfully written out to a file share on the server. Content format appears to not be impacted. 

Thanks!

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

Given the need for administrators to be able to perform analysis and monitoring on server performance; user usage etc - it is necessary to provide full documentation for both the API and the database underlying the server so that admins can use this to good effect.

Ref: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Server-API-Download-packages-for-surveil...

Although very limited documentation is available on the server API (https://gallery.alteryx.com/api-docs) what we're looking for is a much more fully formed and navigable experience like some of the examples below.

• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/data_dictionary.html
• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/help.htm#REST/rest_api.htm%3FTocPath%3D___...
• https://community.lithium.com/t5/Developer-Documentation/bd-p/dev-doc-portal?section=commv2

This will make building helper processes substantially easier; as well as allow admins to fully manage their environment.

Many thanks

S

cc: @HeatherMHarris @revathi @AshwiniChezhiyan @LizaNemchynova

When an artisan moves positions (within or external) away from their current responsibilities, their collections and workflows should be able to be transferred via an administrator to another user.

Currently, in order to run an app via the API, you have to have uploaded the app to your private studio. Frankly, I don't find this function useful because you have to download then re-upload an app in order to gain access to the API. The API would be more useful if when an app is shared with you (or a collection is shared with you), then it would also allow for that app to be run via API by the user it was shared with. Right now, the only person who can run the app via API is the user who originally uploaded said app. 

I would like to be able to see which collection(s) a Workflow is in since in future users will access the majority of workflows via a Collection - so if a user asks me about access to a certain workflow I can find out how they would get access to it i.e. which Collection(s) it was available in and who owns those.

It would be nice if the Gallery Admin could download the workflow from the workflow page within the UI, without having to run API calls or having to add himself temporarily to someone else's studio. 

Currently, Alteryx Server lacks rich job scheduling functionality to other products like Control-M and Informatica's Scheduler

Feature Requests:

1) Ability to configure job retries on failure without having to rerun the workflow based on a  event trigger: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/How-to-run-a-workflow-from-an-event...

There are common occurrences where a workflow may fail to connect to Input sources and a retry would normally resolve the issue. 

2) More user friendly way to setup dependencies between scheduled workflows.  For example, if workflow A fails it triggers workflow B to run.  If workflow B runs without errors, it triggers workflow C to run.  Currently, we would need to configure this based upon events.  A complex chain of scheduled workflows becomes difficult to manage and scale.