Alteryx Server Ideas

Greetings Server friends!

I was talking with @KevinP in the Solutions Center at Inspire and we talked a lot about how Server has been evolving over the last several versions. I'd like to request that end users be able to select workflows or applications shared with them as "Favorites." It would be great for ServerUI to offer a separate section for these selected "favorites" so that the end users can have a single go-to place to access their most frequently used apps.

 @JohnPelletier 

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  

In the gallery you have the ability to replace a workflow with another, however when doing so the version history only indicates "Package Replaced" (see image below)

Would it be possible to change the default text and input something more meaningful, since in my case I use this field for version control/auditing so it would be good to know what changes came with the replaced version.

Second ask, but maybe not as important as the first.

Sometimes the package we are replacing with itself might have several versions, but these are completely lost when the files are combined.

Would it be possible to keep that version history when the package is replaced.

Eg. Original File is at Version 10. This will be replaced by a package that is at Version 3.

Possible solution would be to have the new version be Version 13 which includes the 10 versions from the original file and the 3 from the new. 

Thanks!

Today in managing Alteryx server, we manually configure new connections using the front end.  However, this has some potential drawbacks as it makes it hard to easily track change history, or make bulk updates to multiple strings, and it also leaves room for user error on configuration.

In this case I'm pretty specifically looking to modify aliases on the server itself.  I'm not particularly concerned with distribution to a wider audience, and the usernames/passwords associated in this case should not be available for use locally by users.  As a part of this, I am trying to identify a method to reduce or eliminate the need for anyone (including the data connection manager) to need to know the password for the specified accounts.  As some of these accounts may be used by multiple systems, it would be significantly simpler to integrate this maintenance into existing automated processes, rather than have a manual step to update the Alteryx connection values on the Gallery.

This is specifically a challenge today with regards to specific usernames or passwords which need to be stored.  Alteryx saves these values using machine-level encryption, but that is difficult to generate automatically.  Having a supported method that would easily allow creation of this file with password-level information would greatly improve maintenance of the Alteryx Server, particularly from an IT automation perspective.

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

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. 

Hi Server users,

It is amazing to know the permissions we have when accessing our own profile, but sometimes that is not enough. Knowing your server role is needed to perform a few tasks and it would be fantastic to have something simple like the example below.

It would be nice having the ability to alter the timeout of the file upload on Alteryx Analytic Apps uploading to the Gallery.  Having it restrained by time and not file size makes it so that users with poorer internet speeds will not even be able to upload moderate sized files.  

Hey there,

Below you can see few of my suggestion to improve Alteryx Server. 

Idea for Alteryx Server monitoring:

• Increase data what could be seen on workflow results.
• Possibly create a report with filter option (to filter by user, gallery, workflow and etc.), which would at least contain data like:
  • Successfully ran workflows, count, percentage.
  • Failure rates, counts and etc.
  • Live data for monitoring purposes.
  • etc.
• Possibility to connect to workflow results data (live data) with other tools like Tableau or Power BI to create dashboards and etc. to monitor and act on the error as soon as possible.
• Give a chance for other users to check on the workflow statuses and etc same like workflow owner.

Give server more functionality with:

• Ability for server automatically retry workflow based on configurations: in example:
  • retry flow in specific time (for example in 30 minutes)
  • number of possible retries
  • based on specific workflow (other) results ability to trigger to run another workflow
  • (Maybe there is a better way) ability to run macros which would for example open MS Excel, and run macro inside it. I have some of the workflows where workflow opens excel, runs macro inside, that macro triggers special Add In which connects to Essbase, it pulls the data, saves excel file, and then alteryx continues working with the file. So if such or similar workflows could be run on Server that would be awesome.
  • This is extremely exiting one: possibility to create environment for self-service users, which it would not be something like gallery (because gallery is more suitable for Alteryx Designers/users).
    • in that one environment admin could grant access for user and tick what specific user could see and run.
    • so for admin it would be one environment, and user would see only what is needed for him/her.
    • in that environment user would also be able to schedule self-service workflows to be received in example by email, or BOX drive or any other way. Scheduled workflow would have to be approved by an admin before it would be actually scheduled. 
  • I have not tried this one myself, but that would also be great if all alteryx server environment could be accessed by mobile devices (of course, some features would be limited).

 Hopefully you will find these suggestions interesting and useful. 

Regards,

Aurimas

A better process Needed for Alteryx Backup and restore.

1. Why do we have to stop the service to do a backup,? We cannot stop a service in Enterprise platform just to do a backup.  we are not able to take backups because our jobs will be running 24X7 We Run jobs on Alteryx Server,
2. All of a Sudden our Windows server crashed and we lost all the data, The backup we have of Mongo DB was not perfectly restored on the new server which breaks the workflow, connections etc  due to encryption....
3. what is the purpose of backup if we cannot restore on a new server in case of DR

Please fix it ASAP,

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).

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!

When adding jobs to the queue via API call, you currently cannot specify the name of the job.

Running the job directly from gallery allows this as in the picture below, but there is no setting to do so in the API.

When a workflow is used in many different situations, being able to specify a name for the individual run will make tracking and troubleshooting easier.

Hi all,

Having all the schedules/results centralized in the same place would be neat!

Option 1: Have all on the same page and have an additional column to describe the shared source.

Option 2: Have a separation between my own schedules and the ones shared with me.

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

In the Alteryx Gallery Collections the Workflow Upload Date doesn't sort properly. Instead of sorting chronologically (ex: Jan first Dec last) it sorts by number (Dec goes before April because Dec starts with a 1 while April starts with a 4), see attached for an example. 

 it flips back and forth between 2022 and 2021

In the example November and December are first because the month starts with a 1. Then April follows because it starts with a 4.  Then it starts to get messy because it does this:

• 12/16/2021
• 4/04/2022
• 4/26/2021
• 5/02/2021

That 2022 is in the middle purely because 4 < 5, that's not right.

I tried exploring the settings to see if I could change this but I didn't find an option to do so.

Two potential solutions:

• Change the format of the date to YYYYMMDD, then if it sorts numerically it will still work
• Don't sort numerically and instead sort chronologically, ex: April goes before December

As collections get big sorting for the most recent workflow becomes a nightmare with the current improper sorting mechanism.

If I'm mistaken and this option already exists please let me know.

Thanks!

Chris

Hi,

The schedules page on server needs an overhaul.  Sorry to be so blunt but it is awful.  It is by far the worst aspect of Alteryx and one of the most important at the same time.

Here are a few points about it...

1.) Sorting needs to be fixed as it doesn't work correctly (sorting on the first column, "Workflow", returns items that start with 'L', 'S' and a zero as the first three on the list), so looking for 1 scheduled item across 10+ pages of schedules becomes a "needle in a haystack" endeavor.

2.) There are no search and/or filter capabilities which would help alleviate the pain-point mentioned above.

3.) [Missing] items automatically removed from schedule when the workflow is removed from the server.  It just jumbles up the screen with useless information.

4.) The 'Schedule' column doesn't need to reflect the name again like the 'Workflow' column. is a hyperlink and the other isnt.  I cant tell you how many times I have clicked on the wrong hyperlink only to have to go back and deal with point #1 all over again.  Can't it just be a simple calendar icon or something like that next to the Workflow name?

5.) While not as critical, but more of a 'nice to have' function.  An ability to export the list of schedules would be helpful.  If we ever need to divy up work for an employee that leaves the company it would be a good way to see all of the work they have out there and mark up the list to distribute info for reassignment purposes, etc. 

I am sure there are other aspects I am missing, but here are the most important ones to me as an end-user (Not an Admin)

Thanks for listening.  🙂

Apparently I click too fast sometimes when saving a project, but there are a number of times where the workflow name hasn't populated when saving to the gallery and it ends up saving a blank file name. This is a pain because I can't do anything with the one in the gallery because there is nowhere to click on it, so I can't use the replace function and have to re-save it and re-add it back into any collections that it was in.

I realize that I just need to slow down, but I do this frequently enough where it absolutely drives me crazy. Being able to change file names in the gallery would be a big plus instead of just using the replace option.

We have a lot of Alteryx users that generate their workflows in Private Studios and set them up as scheduled Workflows, but the assigned Workers/job tags in Private Studio aren't carrying over to the scheduled workflow, which has to be updated by someone with higher access.  This is creating a time consuming task for our administrator who have to update these scheduled workflows to make sure our unassigned Worker node isn't overloaded.

My company uses R Shiny and maybe in the future Python Dash to create multiple analytic apps, dashboards, etc for multiple people to run across our company. One thing that would be nice to to have these R Shiny workflows run off of the Alteryx Server as that would allow us to use Alteryx Server to keep permissions and ease of use.

I propose an update to the Alteryx Server that would allow for R Shiny apps to be run in the Alteryx Server with all functionality of custom R interactive plots, etc etc just like what you'd see in one hosted on a R Shiny Server.

The benefits of this would allow for my company to only have to manage one server instance (Alteryx) to run all of this. Since R/Python is allowed/used in Alteryx workflows already, can you add the ability to visualize R Shiny code/plots/interactions/etc within Alteryx Server itself?