Alteryx Server Ideas

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.

This is a real flaw in the product (almost a bug), you cannot search for a schedule.  We have about 150 jobs scheduled to run daily.  If you want to amend the schedule you have to page next through all the schedules to find it.  If you search for the workflow name, you get the workflow screen which does not contain a link to the schedules.

Also add a link to the schedules for each job on the workflow page.  I.e. search for job ABC, see that it has 3 different schedules associated with it and be able to edit, or delete any of its schedules.

So there are freemium apps in the gallery and

server customers have their own apps published in their private galleries...

What if one want's to sell apps like in iOS app store,

Provide insights from the app as a service either prepetually, annually or monthly so that the locked apps can be used

• on a basis of pay per monthly subscription model or
• pay per transaction model etc.

possibly payments being handled over Alteryx Public Gallery.

Does the Alteryx roadmap include such a business model in the future?

Best

There needs to be a means for Server Admins to delete/clean up subscriptions and users from the system.

Ref: https://help.alteryx.com/server/11.0/admin/index.htm#Administration/Users.htm%3FTocPath%3DAdminister..., “To revoke a user's access to Gallery, deactivate their user account. You cannot delete a Gallery user's account.”

While testing with version 11.0, default permissions set to NO ACCESS, Security using Windows Active Directory, I gave the gallery URL to a random teammate to see what they could access.  While permissions prevented the individual from most activities, the server still created a USER and SUBSCRIPTION for the individual.  Once testing was completed, there was no means possible to clean up these entries., or at least to do more than set them to NO ACCESS.

For most enterprise applications, it is common practice to be able to purge a user account from a system if they are no longer a member of the company.

We have situations where some workflows that are scheduled end up having intermittent connection issues to other databases that result in the workflow running to timeout. The timeout settings are set in the server, but it would be nice if you could set an override value for a lesser timeout in the runtime settings for individual workflows and basically use the server setting as a not to exceed value. We have a multi-node environment with multiple worker nodes and about 250 artisans. We have some regularly scheduled workflows taking the full amount of time in the timeout setting and obviously if a couple of normally quick running workflows ran to timeout that causes issues with the queue.

Hello Alteryx team, 

I would like to propose idea that was mentioned on the community but there is no solution either.

It was mentioned at https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Data-Cleansing-tool-suddenly-stopped-w...

The issue is related to Qlik Analytics Samples and error that it is causing with wrong path error for default macros like eg.CountRecords.

Our corporation has multiple private studios set up (depending on various teams within our infrastructure); when we provide a user access to one private studio, they cannot be part of another private studio (to update/add/remove their workflows); they can view/see them within the collections, but cannot action them.

If possible within the Alteryx Server interface, could users be added to multiple/different private studios (and be authorized for all), and have a toggle that would allow them to switch back and forth? This would alleviate a lot of our issues we have with users reporting/being involved with multiple teams (who are requiring access to different private studios).

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.

Sometimes when using someone else's Gallery App which has a long list of options to select from, I will hit Run before realizing that I haven't set all of the options.  Then, the App fails (obviously).

Rather than just getting a message that my app run failed on the Gallery, it would be nice to have a link then that automatically re-loads the previous options I had set so I would be able to see which option I didn't fill out properly.

Hello everyone,

I created before a post about managing chained workflows using the API.
After reaching out the support, it turns out to be impossible, which is unfortunate.

So I post this idea here, in case anyone is needing it too.

Feels free to ask me details if needed.

Thanks.

When saving a workflow to the gallery, none of the options I could choose from Set workflow credentials validates a workflow successfully when using database connections due to missing permission on the server (No specific Run As is configured on the Server). Apparently the server validates the workflow as following:

User is not required to specify credentials:No possibility to add credentials when running the workflow on the server. In that case, the workflow validates database connections with errors due to missing permission on the server. This error was expected.

User must specify their own credentials: This option is the most appropriate in case of working with database connections with regard to our use cases and security policies. Unfortunately this option is only enabled when the workflow is saved on the server already and run from the gallery. In case of the validation step when saving the workflow to the gallery, the server evaluates with the system user of the server. As a result, the validation fails. In that case, I expected the server to run the validation with the user from the Alteryx Designer.

Always run this workflow with these credentials: This option is not appropriate in terms of our security policy, since the workflow is permanently set with the users credentials.

So my suggestion would be to:

• Prompt dialog to enter my credentials for validation once or
• The server runs the validation with the User from Designer, where the workflow is going to be saved from.

Otherwise is see no benefit of the validation feature (with respect to our use cases and security policies)

Dearest colleageues and comrades (Romans, countrymen?):

Have you ever queued up your jobs only to have them block your regularly scheduled programming? Imagine a world where, assuming you had multiple worker nodes, you can direct and prioritise your jobs on your terms.

This is what I am suggesting.

I've recently worked with Alteryx support, and they turned me on to a QoS setting in Alteryx Server settings. Peep this like a marshmallow chick in hot pink: 

After learning from the great Server Master Kevin Powney (blessed be his name), I learnt that there are currently 3 'channels' that this QoS variable governs. 0 is the highest priority used for workflows. 4 is used for chained apps. 6 is used for gallery service requests.

This will not do.

Why? Well, for one: hello arcane/memorisation.

Secondly, where is my control? I'm a millenial dammit! Service me!

So, my idea, that I want you to vote so highly on as to save yourself any myself a lot of hassle, is to allow a custom QoS variable to be a traffic variable. And here's how it works:

• For each workflow/app, you can assign it whatever QoS/traffic variable you choose. 
• This allows the user the power to control which 'lane' is clogged in the queue.

Example time! [cheers, candy thrown]

In my current situation, we have some jobs that are network-intensive (database calls), and jobs that are processing-intensive (CPU hogs doing hard-core maths). 

The network-intensive jobs run on the weekends so that we have the data in the morning on Monday. The processing-intensive jobs need to finish, but suck up all the CPU power. For the last couple of weeks, we've unsuccessfully run these jobs over the weekend. The downside is that since we cannot control how traffic flows (and we only have the 0/4/6 options in QoS, of which these only fit in the 0 lane [breath, sorry]) the CPU-heavy jobs have blocked more critical network jobs.

If we had two paths, we could assign the CPU jobs to lane 1 and the network jobs to lane 0 and they can run in parallel. And then my boss is happy. We like happy bosses, right?

Vote this up! My boss is awesome!

Thanks for your ear,

Hail Caesar or something.

-Cedric

As an Admin, I would like to be able to see, from the Gallery, a single place where the history of workflows that have been run is displayed.  Right now I can only see workflows running or queued.  I would like to be able to look back at past executions and see status, runtime, errors, etc.

This data is currently available in Designer on our Alteryx Server.  But right now our system is just one environment.  I'm not sure if when we expand to multiple Gallery and Worker machines where I will have to look for workflow history.

Also, Workflow schedules can only be seen in Gallery, and not Designer.  So it would be nice to have everything in one place.

Insights should work like Apps. We should be able to publish insights then grant permission to other people/studios to access the visualizations. I have many clients / users that can benefit from having access to the Insights i'm gathering from Alteryx. 

Rather than schedule to put things on the 5th day or the 14th day of a month, we often want to schedule our flows to run on the 5th business day or the 14th business day. I know that the term 'business day' means different things in different parts of the world, but I think it would be a feature that many reporting-oriented departments would enjoy. Let people specify a formula or have a table to go off of for their definition of 'business day' and it should be easy to implement.

I would add a <scheduler> label to this but there isn't one.

Allow the artisan to turn off the ability of a member to download app results.  Some of the information is highly confidential, and we don't want them to be able to easily print out a list of this information and have that list "floating around".  Or take sensitive client data with them to another job if they leave us and use that to profit their new employer.

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.

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!

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