Alteryx Server Ideas

Hi all, Per this thread, it would be helpful if we could have finer control of scheduled jobs in Alteryx Server: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Publishing-Gallery/Resource-control-on-scheduled-jobs/m-p/61016/hig...

Specifically:

- Dependancies (one job should run after another in a chain)

- lower priority (some jobs should go down the priority queue to allow for others so that high priority jobs are not blocked by other less important ones)

Thank you Sean

I'm really loving the new data connections for 11.0. We have deployed them in a private gallery for our users and it's great. The only drawback is that the server itself cannot easily be configured to use these same credentials. I would like some way for the service account running our jobs on our server to use the data connections from the gallery. I can assign the credentials to that service account just fine, but it never picks them up since it never open up the Alteryx GUI when it's running jobs. This would allow us to have one spot with all of the credentials. Currently, we're going to have 2 locations with all of our credentials that we'll have to make sure stays in sync: 1 in the gallery for the users, and 1 on the sever box for the server.

Thanks!

Would it be possible to specify whether a worker handles scheduled jobs, ad-hoc jobs or both?  Right now it seems that the workers treat both types of jobs the same, meaning that a slew of ad-hoc jobs initiated from the Gallery could slow down jobs that are scheduled to run on a regular cadence.  It'd be great if those scheduled jobs could have a dedicated worker (or workers) and have any ad-hoc jobs handled by a separate worker (or workers) so that the scheduled jobs (which might be more important) are not held up by one-off jobs.

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.

Currently any workflows/apps published to the gallery can be found via the search function - even when the particular user has no permission to this workflow/app. While this only allows for the non-permisssioned user to see the title, this could still leak information as it allows anyone to find apps published in someone's private gallery.

Both the Alteryx Public Gallery and the Private Gallery product are impacted by this. Additionally this is not just limited to logged in users, but also public viewers of the gallery.

My proposed idea:

1. Force the search function to be permission aware, and only show a user workflows they have permission to see/execute.
2. Allow for option 1 to be enabled/disabled if there are use cases where anyone should be able to search and find any app/workflow on the server.

Best regards,

Ryan

Hi

My idea is to facilitate scheduling through Gallery vs the separate scheduler built into Designer. The reasons for this:

1. The current scheduler authentication with Alteryx server via token is a big security concern. This allows all users to see all schedules, workflows, output logs, etc. for the entire server.  
2. It will better interact with the Alteryx 10 version contol. Current scheduler shows all prior versions in the workflow list.
3. Allow the server/gallery admin to setup scheduling rules. Ex: No scheduling during certain windows (for maintance downtimes), max frequency of scheduling, prevent users from scheduling too many jobs at the same time, user level rules.
4. Allow scheduled workflow output to be retrieved from the "Workflow Results" section by the user who scheduled the workflow. Ex: I schedule a workflow that takes 2 hours to run at 6AM each day, then by the time I arrive at the office at 8AM, I can login to the gallery and download the output. 

Thanks,

Ryan

The SDKs are great and allow the community to expand Alteryx in many ways. I think it would be great to have some way to package these so we could easily share them and provide updates and fixes.

Not sure how many people use the SDKs but being able to easily share and install the output would help up take I think.

It would be really useful to be able to obtain the user name of some one running an app in the Gallery. This could be used for instance in row level security for people running an app that produces a report and that data is considered sensitive

I'm really enjoying the new Save As functionality to push to the gallery, but had a request that would make it even more useful for me. 

I saw that you can open workflows directly from the Gallery and edit them with version control, but it would be nice if it was possible to do a Save As on a local workflow and point it at an existing copy on the server.  I need to maintain a local copy of my workflow for dev/prod separation, but currently my way to push to prod is to do a Save As to my Private Gallery, remove the existing copy from the company gallery, and then share my newly created workflow into the company gallery.  This causes some headaches like no version control, switching out icons everytime, and overall just a messy way to push to prod.  

It would be helpful if there was a way to overwrite an existing workflow in the gallery rather than editing it directly.  

In larger organizations or organizations with global coverage, it is possible for users to be in different time zones from each other and the Alteryx server. 

WIth our implementation of Alteryx server, we have the server time zone set to that of our data warehouse, but this time zone is different than my own by -2 hours. In the case of scheduling a workflow in the future, I normally correct for this by setting the scheule in the time zone of the server and things work alright. 

Problem 1:

It falls apart is when I want to schedule something in the future, but it is within the timespan between my time zone and the server time zone. For example: It is 6PM my time, and 4PM server time. I want to schedule a workflow to run at 5PM server time (7PM my time). When I try to set this up with the Version 10 scheduler built into Alteryx desktop, it overides the date field upon saving to run the following day instead of today as it thinks im trying to schedule the run at a time that has already passed (which it has in my timezone, but not in the server time zone). Upon trying to edit this schedule to reset the date to today, it again reverts upon saving.  

The only way I have found to get around this is to reset the time zone of my computer to match the server time zone, then set the schedule, then reset the time zone of my machine back to local time again. This is not the best experience, and will likely be required more frequently for users as their time zone difference increases. 

Problem 2:

When wanting to run something server side immediately (I do this in cases where the runtime will be long, or im mobile and on a machine with a lower amount of processing resources) the "Once" option can be used in scheduler to push something to server and run it. In my case, due to the timezone difference, the default time set when trying to do this is the current time in my time zone, but 2 hours ahead of the current server time.

I have two proposed resolutions:

1) Transmit Server time zone information to the local scheduler to have everything involving scheduling in Server time. Also for any timestamp fields, include the time zone designation so its clear to the user.

2) Use information from the user's machine and information from the server to do timezone conversions behind the scenes so whenever scheduling or viewing schedules, all timestamps are in local time to the user. I feel this is the prefered solution for the best user experience, but would also be the more complex to implement. 

Thanks,

Ryan

In Gallery 10, List Boxes (that are within a Radio Button) have their contents sorted horizontally.  Previously (Gallery 9.5) the contents of List Boxes was sorted vertically.  This new orientation makes it very difficult to find specific items within the list.  The problem is particularly severe for long lists, when it becomes common for the check box and associated text to become separated on two different lines.

It would be great if i as a developer could create a DB alias connection and for it then to be available to other developers and distributed via the server.

Collaborative working like the above does seem rather limited at the moment.

It might be helpful to be able to use an API to call and pass parameters to/from an Alteryx App or Workflow on an Alteryx Server.  Then a user could use a  browser or another application to call an Alteryx app/workflow.