Alteryx Server Ideas

Currently the default 'Rows Per Page' is set to 10 when within various pages on the Gallery. 

As we add more and more Apps to our Gallery it would help to be able to increase the default so it is higher than 10.

This will help ensure users do not forget about or miss tools that are available to them which are hidden on other pages. Additionally, they will not need to remember what page to jump to if the App does not pull through to the first 10 rows, or prevent the need for them having to increase the number of 'Rows Per Page' themselves.

The V3 jobs API endpoint woefully lacks any usefulness. The current endpoint only has a get jobs/{jobid} method that is not useful because a database admin must query the database to get a list of all job IDs. To add insult to injury, this method is only limited to the user whose job is running or queued.

These are new features that I am proposing

1. GET jobs/list—This method must be callable by all users. Parameters such as none (default—full list), running, or queued will display jobs with the appropriate status. The job ID of the running or queued job and the worker it is running on must be included in the resultset.

2. GET jobs/{ownerid} — This method must be callable by all users. Like the GET jobs/list above, the resultset must include the job ID of the running or queued job and the worker it is running on.

3. DELETE jobs/{jobid} — This method must be callable by the person who scheduled the job, the owner of the workflow, or the curator. This method is the equivalent of cancelling a job on the Server Admin page - #!/admin/jobs by a curator. All three mentioned people have a vested interest in the running or queued jobs on the server and must be able to cancel those jobs.

4. POST jobs/reassign/{jobid}/{new_job_tag} — This method is restricted to the curator and applies to any job in a queued state. It allows a curator to reassign a job to another job tag or the first available worker for reasons determined by the curator.

This is an enhancement that I am proposing
1. GET jobs/{jobid} — This method must be callable by all users. This will allow any user to get the details of any running or queued job.

Logging requirements

All DELETE or POST methods must be logged and purged based on the Persistence Option > Delete queue and results after (days).

I would like the ability to "favorite" Public flows that are on the server and then have a separate "Favorites" section.  As the volume of Public flows on the server increases, It would allow for users to be able to navigate to frequently used flows much faster.

Hi Alteryx experts!

There were some ideas similar to this one but none like it and really really old ones, so I`m revamping the idea due to recent struggles and the many questions we got on the server discussion board!

Workflow events are nice and helpful but they require the user to add it to every single workflow.

The Gallery admin also struggles to know when a schedule fails. 

There was the Server Usage Report before, but now most server admins have no idea when a schedule fails.

There are many ways of managing schedules and failed jobs (MongoDB, logs, events), but it would be nice to add a simple option to notify a user on each schedule. It would be even better if we added another option to enable this option in all schedules globally!

This idea could be combined with this one from @fjablo 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/Notification-from-the-Alteryx-Server-when-a-sc...

Let me know what you all think!

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

Commas save lives! With large numbers, it's difficult to see what number was actually entered without commas present, and the wrong number can easily be entered as a result:

Is this number

• 100,000
• 1,000,000
• 10,000,000

It's hard to say without taking a really close look!

Current State:

Currently, all workflows and applications are in list-form within "My Workspace" (formerly Private Studio) and Collections.  In My Workspace, I might have workflows and applications that support a broad range of domain spaces and audiences.  As the developer (or Artisan), they're all in My Workspace, but shown as an exhaustive list with no categorization unless I name them to represent not only the function of the workflow/application but also the domain. 

Once those same workflows/applications are moved to collections, there can exist confusion over whether the workflow/application is intended for a schedule, manual run, or application.  Separating by naming convention gets messy and degrades clarity for non-developer roles.

Proposed Solution:

I would like to see folders, only one or two levels deep, be added to My Workspace and to Collections.  This proposed solution would not alter permissions, as those would be common for the parent collection and any assigned roles would function the same for that entire collection.  The solution is simply adding organization to enhance the user experience.

For example:  I might have a Collection that is intended for my Finance team....

Finance_Collection / Scheduled_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Scheduled_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_ReceivablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_PayablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Manual_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Manual_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / etc...

All persons who have been assigned the role connected to the "Finance Collection" will still see everything in all of the folders but would have a better sense of what "workflows/applications" are intended for their use according to the folders the workflows/applications are organized into.

Value Added (Why This Matters):

• Enhanced user experience (easier to find the correct workflows
• The volume of roles and collections can be reduced, thus reducing Admin strain
• The solution does not impact roles and permissions
• Overall management of workflows and applications is enhanced for the Artisans

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I welcome input and feedback from the community and would appreciate your support if you find this suggestion useful for your Alteryx experience!

Hello all,

Right now, we can choose either MongoDb or Microsoft SQL Server as a backend. I would suggest to add Postgresql. Why ?

-it's open-source
-it's reliable
-it's free
-it works well on many environments
-it's popular
-it's already used as backend for Tableau or Qlik and many others
-it respects SQL norm and doesn't have a lot of specificity

Best regards,

Simon

After a job is run on Alteryx Server, Gallery lists Job Results with a Status column containing with one of 2 values:

• Error (represented by a red exclamation point icon); and
• Success (represented by a green checkmark icon).
  See attached screenshot for illustration.

If any WARNING messages are generated by the workflow, the operator/user is unaware unless they take the time to expand the message log details, then scroll through the long list of messages that typically appear in the log.

Because the Success Icon appears whether there are Warnings or not, the user must dutifully spend extra time scrolling through the list looking for Warnings even if there are none to be found.

My Idea: provide additional information under the Status column in one or more of these ways:

1. add a 3rd status option with a yellow/orange icon that indicates if/when 1 or more warnings are present
   • This should be a quick/easy enhancement that would provide immediate value
     
     
2. append one or more numbers after the Icon to indicate counts (see mock-up example)
   • There seems to be ample space for this type of info
   • This could be done at a later date as a subsequent enhancement

I think that the user would benefit from a filter where they could focus on errors, warnings, or other types of messages in the same spirit as the Designer interface, but I recognize that would be a lot of work and I am not asking for that now.

I just underwent an exercise of recovering my controller in the event of a catastrophic failure. One of the steps is to recover the DCME keys (DCM Encryption keys) - which is documented here: https://help.alteryx.com/20221/en/server/install/server-host-recovery-guide/dcme-keys-to-backup.html...

This DCME recovery needs to be revisited. This document assumes that the previous controller is running. In a disaster recovery situation, this is not possible. What, if any, can be done to recover the DCME keys if the host has is completely irrecoverable?

For context, having an irrecoverable host has happened. Complete hard drive failure (showing my age), nuked virtual machine and its backups (no one paid attention to the notices that the data center was shutting down), and fire.

Add entered parameter into the result panel. It helps to debug process and audit.
sometime users save file in different way, and it not directly related to the interactive question
(e.g. Question: "SAP FBL5N Data" Input: "EXPORT (2).XLSX")
when error happen, I need the source file and the parameter.
if this idea is implemented, i just need the screenshot, which faster, without user to re-run the workflow to screenshot and share the parameter setup.

When I create a DCM Entry in Gallery, it would be great if the users I share it with would also be able to reference the credentials in their desktop designer when they sync their connections to the Gallery. 

Hello all,


Alteryx Designer Cloud is quite young, somehow incomplete, not compatible with Alteryx Desktop etc... but I'm very optimistic than in a few years it will become a killing app !

That said, I'm more skeptical on this race to the cloud : from my experience, Cloud should just be one way of selling a product, not the only one. It has a lot of cons and a lot of pros and customers should have the possibility to choose between "on-premise" and "cloud"  product, and change from one to the other very easily.

My main customer on Alteryx is a government agency that deals with highly confidential, personal data. They won't go to cloud. Not in the next ten years. But they would love to have the Alteryx Designer Cloud on their own server.

Best regards,

Simon

Alteryx DCM has been an incredibly useful addition that supports key security concerns from companies. Currently, only three external key vaults are supported:

• Hashicorp Vault (KV secrets engine) - supported for Designer 22.3 and later.

• CyberArk Conjur - supported for Designer 22.3 and later.

• AWS Secrets Manager

https://help.alteryx.com/current/en/designer/tools/dcm---designer/dcm-external-vaults.html## 

I propose that we also include Delinea Secret Server.

Thank you and hopefully we can start to add more to make this feature widely useable and support security compliance.

In an enterprise multi-node Alteryx Server deployment that has existed for many years and many upgrades, there are artifacts within the MongoDB that are unknown to Gallery Administrators. I envision a workflow or app that is developed by Alteryx that queries the MongoDB and looks for orphaned documents in the MongoDB across all collections. With 2022.3 there is a pre-upgrade check, however, it does not find all unexpected items within the MongoDB. Regular ongoing MongoDB health helps with overall management of the environment and could prompt for support cases before it becomes a problem during pre-upgrade activities.

Hi all,

In an enterprise environment - DB connections need to be set up from the server and pushed down to your users; and they need to be managed across the various servers in your software lifecycle.

In other words - you may have a sandpit / dev server env; a UAT env; a pre-prod; and a prod env - and each of these need to have the same DCM credential IDs so that users can access these.     

(before you say "you can do this from the desktop) - that is true, however that's not a workable solution in an enterprise env because that means that users can change the password from their desktop into a prod env which is a breach of IT General Controls)

The solution here is to break DCM out in to a separate service - where

- all your servers (dev; UAT; Pre-Prod; Prod) can all point to one instance of DCM

- users can maintain their own connections and credentials

        - Each needs to have up to 2 owners so that you can deal with people moving jobs / leaving the firm

- users can also entitle these connections and credentials to their team members so that when the team member logs in, it shows a popup saying "you've just been given access to new credentials / connections"

- A particular connection may have multiple different variants - depending on the environment.

        - HR Data may point to a UAT version of HR data if you're on the UAT server; and to Prod if you're on the Prod server

        - if a connection is environment specific - then it also needs to have segregated credentials (since the login to your UAT HR Data may not be the same as prod).

Thank you all

sean

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

Hello

Imagine the dream : Alteryx Designer Cloud with in database tools.

Well, that would be so great I won't write more....

Best regards,

Simon

Currently, we see the Districts and Collections now compressed into a list view. 

Previously, the Server had the widgets feature which really showcased the self-service nature of the Sever. Losing that just made decreased the emphasis on user experience. 

It would be great to allow Server Admins to decide whether they want lists or widgets to be available toggles as a design feature for both districts and collections will be of great help.

In addition, regardless of the option, the image size and wording size should be much larger - easier for people to see. Right now, we have to zoom to 150% to make it easier for ourselves to see. Having the ability to control font size, font control with bolds, italtics, etc. will be very helpful as well.

Hello,


There are some tools that helps to monitor what happens on a website. Some are even open source (like matomo and open web analytics). Why not including one of those tools on Alteryx Server ?

There are of course a lot of feature but I like this one, an heatmap to show where a user click

Best regards,

Simon

Improve Gallery scheduling to allow the end user to specify company denoted Holidays when scheduling a workflow. If the workflow is scheduled on a Holiday the schedule would not run. This should be configurable per workflow schedule. Example: A daily report Monday through Friday would be able to skip Holidays based off a Holiday exclusion list.