Alteryx Server Ideas

Use case: I need to schedule a workflow to run every 2 hours each day, with the first run at 7am and the last run at 7pm

Current solution: I need to create seven daily schedules for each hour that i need the workflow to run

Idea: Add an intraday "Start Time" and "Stop Time", or "Between" to the "Minutes / Hours" schedule type, so i can create one schedule that meets the use case requirements

Example schedule with new parameters that meets use case requirements:

Start Time = 7:00 AM

Stop Time = 7:00 PM

Repeat Every = 2 hours

 

Start Time could default to 12:00 AM

Stop Time could default to 11:59 PM

 

It would be helpful to have a central Logging tool for large & complex environments.

 

This would be useful to allow teams to have a central way of logging data transformation errors by error-type; severity; alteryx Canvas; etc.

Right now, there's a message tool, but this doesn't provide a way to create well structured central logging across a team; especially once deployed to a server environment.

 

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

Today, if I want to save a job onto the Alteryx Gallery, I need full permissions to do so and it is a manual process.  For some organizations, this level of access is deemed excessive, which can make properly leveraging the Alteryx Gallery difficult.  Having the ability to write a "deployment" script that could publish a workflow to the Gallery, and potentially add a new workflow to a Collection would be incredibly helpful in these cases.

Hello all,

 

It appears that every time we have a talk about the gallery organization, people bugs around the difference between district and collection. Adopting a new semantic with less confusion would lead to

: -a more intuitive product for everyday life

-less question and less confusion during pre-sales/POC/Training.

 

Best regards,

Simon

Allow to create custom user security groups server .

Sales
User1
User2
Studio1


Supply chain
User3
User 4
Studio3
Studio1
......

Big time user of the Gallery API. In fact, I wrote an R package for it (shameless plug: https://cran.r-project.org/package=alterryx).

 

It is great that you can queue a job for an application using the Gallery API but it would be great if I could also cancel a running job.

Hello,

 

We recently upgraded our on-prem instance of Alteryx Server/Gallery to version: -

 

• Client: 2020.1.0
• Server: 2021.3.3.63061
• Server Binaries: 2021.3.3.63061
• Service Layer
• Master: 2021.3.3.63061

 

We have noticed that the search functionality in various areas (top and right-side) no longer return results using a "contains" but rather it is doing an "exact" or "starts with" keyword search. This is very frustrating to many users as we can't easily find our workflows quickly compared to previous versions.

 

Please improve search functionality.

Hi everyone,

 

Since the Home page has been replaced by the My Workspace page as the main page on the Gallery, end-users are getting confused or at least uncomfortable with this transition.

 

It would be amazing to change the default main page to the Public tab or even remove/deactivate the My Files tab for these users. 

 

Removing /deactivating the My Files tab will also correct an issue generated when an Artisan is downgraded to an end-user. Currently, these users can see their workflows in the My Files tab but can't access them.

 

 

Idea based on @phottovy 's question: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Change-quot-Public-quot-to-default-view-...

 

When posting an app to the Gallery, if the app has, say, one PCXML output for the user to see, and one Excel file for the user to download, it would be helpful for to be able to specify which shows first to the user.  For example, I have a PCXML that gives the user summary tables, and instructions on how to go to the drop down above and select the second report, click on the Excel icon, and download it.  But if the Excel report shows up first, then there is no ability to give them instructions and many simply won't be savy enough to go find the PCXML in the drop down.

Alteryx Designer is an amazing data tool but it’s partner, "the Scheduler" needs some much needed upgrades. The Scheduler interface that pops up from Alteryx Designer does need a complete make over. I’m not going to address this but rather focus on the functionality that if delivered makes the Scheduler much more useful. 

 

Today I’m reading our Mongo db scheduler data using an Alteryx workflow and Tableau to show what’s happening on the Scheduler. This dashboard is what we refer to frequently to see the health of our companies data pipeline.  I’ll share both files soon. 

 

Here are the top 5 features for the Scheduler.

 

1. Workflow priority ranking. When two or more workflows are scheduled to run at the same time, ‘priority’ sets the order of execution. Priority is set at the time of scheduling the workflow. Values range from 1 to 100. If a priority is not set the default is 50. The ‘priority’ field can be read from Mongo db. 

 

Why: At midnight we set off several workflows. We want to centrally manage which runs first based on a common ‘priority’ field. 

 

2. Restrict which controller and workers a specific workflow can run on. Default is to run on all servers. At the time of scheduling a workflow can designated to restrict which server to execute on. This creates a field called ‘restrict’ which server it cannot execute on. 

 

Why: Some workflows only run on the main controller due to file system references. Also a worker can be tuned for CPU or Disk I/O and workflows that can benefit from this tuning.  Selecting a disk I/O intensive workflow to run on a server tuned for Disk I/O would speed up our workflows. 

 

3. Set sequence of successfully completed workflows. 

FYI: We used the Runner tool for a short time to resolve this issue but learned quickly that the Runner tool is like a bull in a china shop and brought our server down. The runner tool as it is today is not an option for production work.

 

Why: This would allow you to run several workflows one after another. For example the first would read from a data source, the second would do calculations on the data and the third workflow would publish the data. All workflows are given a ‘workflow-number’ which can be seen in the scheduler list and read from Mongo db. 

 

4. If a workflow fails you can set the number of attempts to run successfully. Report attempts greater than 1 in a new field called ‘attempts’ that can be read from the Mongo db. 

 

Why: Some workflows fail and if attempted to run again may work. This includes issues with locked files and workflows dependent on processes outside of Alteryx. 

 

5. If a workflow runs more than X minutes the scheduler kills the workflow and reports a workflow error with a unique code called ‘execution-limit’.  This code can be read in the mongo db. The defaut is 90 minutes and can be set to any number of minutes. Each workflow can have it’s own limit. 

 

Why: Some workflows start to hog resources and need to be killed. If a new workflow is added this is a good way to protect the overall scheduled workflows. 

It should be possible to schedule chained apps. Particularly useful when the first workflow in a chain runs a check and if the check returns true then the next workflows run and if the check returns false then the next workflow should not run. 

 

Possibly related to:
Schedule Configured Analytic Apps - Alteryx Community

I have tables that I need to run ETL jobs on every 5 mins. But, a batch job runs every day for an hour at the same hour. During that time I can't query the source.
With the current scheduler setup; it appears that my only option would be set up multiple schedules. Each running once a day, and a separate schedule for every 5 minute increment of the day with the exception of the one hour my source can't be touched.
Rather than that degree of hassle, doesn't it make more sense to set up a scheduled with and/or/not criteria?
Example:
Run every X minutes on Y days
Except: during %t am - %t am on Z days

I've seen some applications that have a visual scheduler for setting the exception times. That would be pretty cool too.
Bonus points if you can make an admin console for the server which allows the admin to set blackout date/time by table or DSN for all users (override their schedules).

In order to migrate workflows from our UAT environment to a Production server environment, we are looking for an API capability to work with the server:

- Query canvasses by name or ID (to get a list of canvasses)

- Extract Canvas to a particular location (by ID)

- Upload canvas including dependancies (with parameters for team; collection; etc)

 

This would assist with automating the UAT to Prod process until Alteryx Promote can step into this gap.

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

I would like to collaborate with my team, but also maintain my own personal private studio.

 

Is that on the road map?

 

-Dan

 

 

At some point we would like Alteryx Gallery to support SSO via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. The way I want is to have Authentication via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. For instance one of our apps Tableau: It does authentication via SAML (SSO) and for authorization, we import AD groups into Tableau thrice a day(stores the groups in a .xml file), once the groups are in the Tableau, we secure the objects within Tableau using that LDAP groups (which kind of become local groups after import). Basically the userid after the successful authentication step is used by the app for authorization.

I just stated Tableau as one of the ways to implement Authentication and Authorization for an enterprise app. If Alteryx Gallery needs to be an enterprise app, you will need to look into this idea. 

 

Thanks
Raj

Currently Alteryx has a timeout setting at a worker level which applies to all of the workflows/schedules that run on that node. 

It'd be great and very useful is that setting is made available at a granular level like at the Collection/User Group or workflow level. 

I've been told by Alteryx support that this is not a feature that is currently available. Hence proposing an Idea on the community requesting for such an ability!

Good Day.

 

We would like a built-in process that would search or, and resolve, workflows that are stuck in the "initializing" state. These seem to happen for various reasons but communication problems between the controller and workers .. usually a socket timeout.. which appears  to be most problematic. It seems  that these type of errors should be expected in all but the most stable environments,

 

Currently, the only tool that we have to solve this problem is to restart the Alteryx Service on the controller and while this works there tendency to cause some collateral damage in workflows ...erroring or restarting from their beginning.

 

There may be a way to solve this without restarting the service by editing Mongo using a tool like Robo 3T but that is unproven and has its own risk.

 

After dealing with this issue and struggling for quiet some time we think that the best option is to implement a "clean up" DB process that will run every 5 min or so, capture a list of workflows in the "initializing" state , then compare that list to one in the next 5 min cycle and fix any workflows that appear in both lists. We think that returning  any stuck workflows to the queued state would be the best Fix  option.

 

We just don't want to continue to use Restart the Service process to solve this issue and accept the collateral damage.

 

Thank you for your consideration

 

Tom D  

 

 

 

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

 

• Being able to control the workload in Alteryx Server (for example, making sure that a workflow can run only when another set of workflows finish running)

The workflow result window shows the Name/workflow, AMP, Priority, Assigned worker, Run as, Completed at, Runlenght, and Runtyp of the workflow. The following feature would also be useful on the page.

1. Showing the creation date of the workflow without taking queue time into consideration
2. The option to change the time zone would make it easier to analyze the logs
3. Detailed insight about the particular workflow results, such as average execution time, failure count, and success count with date filtering.