Alteryx Server Ideas

Currently, if you want to change from Built-in to Windows Authentication, you have to:

 

To switch authentication types, you'll need to start from scratch.


1. Stop the AlteryxService
2. Open a Windows Folder Explorer and go to the directory you have MongoDB loaded (System Settings->Controller->Persistence->Data Folder
3. Rename or delete that folder (a simple backup would be to rename the folder, you can move it to another directory as well)
4. Open the Alteryx Server System Settings and click next to Gallery->General.
5. Select the new Authentication process you would like to use.
6. Finish the System Settings and the new database will be created.

 

The Gallery and Scheduler databases are closely tied.  Workflows that are uploaded, results created, and schedules created from the Gallery are stored in the Scheduler database.  So you will need to start from scratch on both the Gallery and in the Scheduler.

 

This is a non-starter for any company that has any amount of time invested in establishing the use of the Gallery.   Starting over is not an option, but improving security, streamlining access protocols as a part of overall data governance is a must.  Please consider fixing the authentication protocol to make it so we don't have to start over.

 

Thank you,

 

 

So, .YXI files are great, they allow a much simpler installation process of macros from the Gallery to your local machine and server. 

 

However one problem; they are not supported to be hosted on the Alteryx Gallery. This means that in order to share .yxi files they have to be hosted on some other drive and then you have to have a workflow in the alteryx gallery which provides users with the download link.

 

This makes that clean process a bit less clean, and it also causes problems with big customers who cannot whitelist these share drives for which the .yxi files are hosted. I myself have had about 20 emails from one global consulting firm in the US requesting access to a macro, I can't link them to the content as they are blocked, and therefor I have to email them individually. 

 

It's a tad tedious and ruins the 'install experience'.

 

If you don't know what I'm talking about you can follow my colleagues (Peter Gamble-Beresfords) blog here:

 

https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2017/10/05/create-share-alteryx-tool-installer-yxi-file/

 

What I'm asking for is simple, support for .yxi files in the Alteryx gallery, in the same way you do with macros.

 

Ben

Right now, if you are using Windows Authentication, you can map AD group and users on the Permissions and Collections tab.  But for some reason, you can't use AD groups on the Data Connections tab.  Most of our databases are already secured by in-house AD groups in which you have to be a member in order to access that database.  Instead of managing a 2nd, most likely duplicate, list of users in the Data Connections tab I would like to be able to map the pre-existing AD group to that data connection.  That also means I don't have to service access requests.  If someone wants access to a database, they talk to the database owners, get added to the group and then they automatically can pull that data into Alteryx.

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.

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.

As Alteryx leans more into the Data Science space - it becomes more important to be able to keep rich documentation of the project along with the Alteryx Asset.    This does also require the concept of a "project" on the alteryx server, which would allow for meta-tags; and various different documents to be added with the project.

 

This would include things like Requirement documents; test evidence; test data sets etc.

 

This would extend Alteryx from a data prep engine to more of a data-science workbench as different user groups can participate in a specific project.

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).

It would be nice to have an inbuilt function(s) that return an identifier (NTLogin for instance when the gallery is setup with windows auth) of the user running the app on the gallery.

Functions like - USERNAME(), DOMAINNAME() etc., helps.

 

I know that it can be achieved via the "__cloud:UserId" call , which is not officially supported by alteryx. It adds value if it is inbuilt within the product itself.

 

Regards,

Sandeep.

Hi,

 

I have described my issue in the Community post here:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Version-Management-in-Gallery/m-p/120319#M3...

 

Is there a way to retrieve an exact date when new version of a workflow was uploaded to Gallery? I know it works when it is today, yesterday or couple days ago but after that you can only see "2 months ago" etc. in Creation Date, which is not sufficient for any version management.

 

Thank you

The Alteryx Server Usage Monitoring & Reporting  reports are very useful. In order to automate the distribution and leverage our Tableau Server we have modified one of the macros within to publish the TDE to the Server and reworked the workbook to point to it. This is a fairly time consuming process to do, so the idea is to introduce a version of the workflow which pushes the datasource, producing a version of the workbook pointing to it.

As an enhancement to the gallery, I'd like to be able to save my application parameters in the gallery in a similar fashion to when I run an app locally.  Users can view the results of an application run, but can't save the parameters that created the run.  I'll go a step further than this and ask for another enhancement.  I'd like to be able to access the questions & responses within the execution of the app to display them during reporting.t

 

Use case:

 

For a list generation application, I need to present to the user the criteria applied during the selection process.

 

Input Address: 49015

Type of Vehicle: Chevy

Minimum Year: 2010

Maximum Year: 2015

 

I've got a working solution that is okay, but not very "Alteryx-easy".  I need to have a second update attached to the interface tool to update the user response.

 

Thanks for your consideration,

 

Mark

On the workflow results window, I'd like to see a column for "Start Time". If I have a workflow that is running, I'd like to know what time it started running so I have an idea on when it might finish.

Although the connectivity to the eMail infrastructure is set up on the controller and worker nodes - there is no ability to set up automated alerting for errors on workflows from the server.

 

We would like to be able to set up the gallery as follows:

- Every job is owned by a user or a distribution list

- If that workflow throws an error or warning (this should be configurable on the server, whether warnings are included), then the author should be e-mailed with a link to the specific workflow and the error log.

 

This can be done in a round-about way, by running an error-reporting alteryx job after the fact - but this kind of alert needs to go out almost immediately given our dependance on Alteryx for specific SLAs.

 

cc: @avinashbonu ; @Deeksha ; @revathi

Isn't it great that we can toggle between outputs from an app in the Gallery, being able to view and download each one? Yes! However, what if an app produces a lot of outputs...such as 1 per state...or 1 per product type...or 1 per month...etc. What is get is something like this:

Now imagine how long it would take to download all of these...ouch. I recommend Alteryx add a "Download All" button to the page that appears after an app finishes running.

 

Related Community Post here.

On Success --> Do This

On Fail --> Do that

 

The lack of control and flexibility around the scheduler seems to cause people to bury the logid down in runner macros or unnessarily poll custom log tables to see if a status has changed.

 

I am aware of a couple of clients calling for this functionality. This can be performed via command line but it realy needs to be in the scheduler options.

In the interest of information and system security, would it be possible to provide a means to remove social media and email sharing options (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) from the SHARING drop down menus, such as through a configurable setting in the RuntimeSettings.xml file?

 

Currently there is no means (confirmed by Alteryx tech support) to remove these options from the sharing menu.  Sharing within the system can be controlled somewhat by controlling access to the system or specific output locations.Once the info leaves the system, there is no longer any means of control.

 

Providing a configurable option will allow locations to tailor to their specific needs.

Hello Community:

 

I was looking in the notifications part of the Gallery Admin and saw a glaring ommission: The validation email was something about a code, but nothing about a workflow. "What?!" I interrogo-banged.Where is "Email when workflow is complete?"

 

I would like to move that Gallery include an option (at the workflow level and globally within a studio (perhaps beyond, I'm a newb to Gallery)) that a user can subscribe to an email notification if the workflow completes (or errors out). 

Where I'm currently working, we have some workflows that take, literally, in the twenty-plus hour range. Instead of having to check when it is complete, it would be really nice to get an email from Gallery saying: "Hi guys! [Workflow X] is done! YAY!"

 

I realise there's an email tool in the rendering, but that is... shall we say, complicated. In this case, we're using an R-tool, so all the downstream tools are blind to the metadata. Filtering records down to one so that only one email is sent at the end of the chain is... challenging (remember that 20-hour thing? Try developing on a 20+ hour cycle. It's like 1970 up in here!). And totally counterintuitive. I also feel new users will have issues configuring an email tool; it took me 3 months to get ours to work and it only works from our server. Plus, it's a kludgy workaround. 

 

I feel that this would probably be easy to implement and fits the sensibilities of Gallery. 

 

Vote this up, folks!

 

Cheers,

Cedric

 

 

Hi,

@patrick_digan pointed out to me today that in my ignorance I thought that the "On Success - Show Results to User" option in Interface Designer did something on Alteryx Gallery, like it does when run locally.  I tried to prove him wrong (I've been manually checking off what outputs I want since day 1! How could it not have been doing anything?!) and failed miserably.  As far as we can tell, this functionality is simply non-existent within Gallery.

Please add this functionality so that we can suppress files (without reverting to hacky tricks like changing the output location so the Gallery can't see the output) with a simple check box.

 

Link to my shame, where I very openly explained exactly how I thought I had been solving this problem the whole time, and how after testing and review, it looks like I hadn't done anything with this configuration.

 

All these check boxes... and they don't change anything!

While working in the Gallery, I think the file browse tool should allow the user to import a file without selecting a sheet or <list of sheet names> as is does locally.  

 

For example, I have created an app in which the user is able to import a file with multiple sheets, and all sheets are brought into separate input data tools with a single file browse tool (shown below).

 

Since the user does not select a sheet name, the file browse tool only brings in "SelectedFileName.xlsx|". The action tool is then set to replace a specific string "SampleFileName.xlsx|". This allows the input data tools to take this new file name, and add each respective sheet name to the end.

 

However, when working in the Gallery, the user is required to select a sheet name or list of sheet names, meaning a file browse tool is required for each sheet that you would like to import (shown below). This is a huge inconvenience for the application user, as they have to select the same file numerous times to import every sheet. 

 

 

Please let me know if you would like me to provide any more information, I would be happy to do so.

 

Thanks,

Matt