Alteryx Server Ideas

In regulated environments, like banks, there is a requirement to fully segment Alteryx Jobs so that people on either side of a Regulatory Wall cannot access each other's canvasses or results.

As an example:

- Public vs. private side in Broker/Dealer banks

- Compliance or HR or Finance need to be segmented from all other areas in most banks

What is needed here is for any canvasses belonging to each of these walled-off areas to be controlled so that they cannot be shared across the wall, and results cannot be viewed across these areas.   This also means that the Gallery Environment needs to be capable of being segmented fully within 1 installed environment.

CC: @rijuthav @jithinmony @HengHe @RajK @ydmuley @revathi @Deeksha @MPistone @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller @JoshKushner @samnelson @avinashbonu @Sunder_Sriram @Rahul_Thakur @Rahul_Singh

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

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

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, the API V3 endpoints does not have anything for Data Connection Manager (DCM). Create an endpoint to allow users to add/delete/update and list data sources, credentials, and users of DCM data sources. Also include an "admin" endpoint that can list all of the above for the entire server.

The admin screen of Alteryx gallery does not have an admin function for DCM sources, its users, and credentials. This can cause visibility issues during audits of the gallery. An API endpoint can alleviate this issue until it is added to the UI.

It would be nice if the Gallery Admin could download the workflow from the workflow page within the UI, without having to run API calls or having to add himself temporarily to someone else's studio. 

The current setup of Data Connections, as of v11.3, relies on users to have the same aliases or connection strings available to easily share Workflows and publish them to a Gallery. In order to solve this, I propose that a system be created that allows users to establish "Local" and "Remote" connections. The Local connections will be used anytime the developer is creating a Workflow on his own computer, but will be automatically substituted with the Remote connection information once the Workflow is published. Remote connections may be filled with an Alias to a connection from the Gallery.

The primary benefit of this is that an organization will not need all of their developers to standardize their aliases and/or connections strings per connection. Instead, they will create one connection within the Gallery that will be distributed to developers and applied to the Remote column. This will generally reduce difficulties regarding the expansion of an Alteryx user base within an organization. Below I will outline two possible implementations of this:

1) Add a Remote Connection String field when adding a connection in the Data Connection Manager. This optional field will allow the user to set only one connection to an IO transaction, but maintain the Local-Remote functionality described above. Here is a mockup of how that might look within Alteryx Designer. 

2) Add a Remote Connection String field on each IO action within Alteryx. This will give the developers more flexibility in which connections are used where, but will also require more setup and maintenance time. Below is a mockup of how that might look.

Please provide the ability to bulk add/delete users to a gallery. This would be useful for on-boarding/off-boarding large companies, departments, and external customers. For public-facing galleries, this would provide us the ability to on-board/off-board entire customers of ours. 

*This is an idea from @cneivam  from the Portuguese Community*

• Being able to control the workload in Alteryx Server (for example, making sure that a workflow can run only when another set of workflows finish running)

Currently, this is completely manual with whoever is assuming the schedule creating it under their profile and then the old schedule being deleted.

This can happen often in organization where a user leaves the company or assumes a new role requiring some else to maintain those schedules. It would be convenient if there was an option to reassign the owner of a schedule to simply this process.

It would be great if the admin could change some default settings on the Alteryx Gallery page. For example, where we have the list of apps, show Detail view and sort by App name ascending by default.

 

When scheduling workflows in the gallery that are recurring, it would be beneficial to have  start and end times also. For example, when setting the frequency to hourly, if there is an option to run between 9 AM and 5 PM that would be great. This would prevent us to schedule workflows for all 24 hours and take up systemic resources when other important workflows could run instead

Hi,

I've got an app in my company's gallery that I've updated 11 times, so in the gallery it says "version 11". I noticed when I click on that area, it brings up a window that shows all 11 of the apps I've uploaded over time, with options to make them the published version & to download. This confused me since each time I update the app I get a warning saying the app will be deleted, which is what I want.

So for this app, I have a 800MB file within it, which would mean that on my gallery server I have 11 versions of an app that each contain at a minimum 800MB of data. I've recently been told by support that this is as it's intended, and if I want to get rid of the all the different versions, I should deleted the app entirely and start anew. This of course would change the URL to the app, requiring the updating of documentation and redistribution of that documentation to over 100 users. And I lose the number of times the app has been run, which doesn't work for me.

My idea is to have another option in the window that shows all the different versions with the options to download, but this option would be to delete previous versions...COMPLETELY, knowing that the owner would no longer have the option to download the version or make it the published version. Having this would allow the owner to maintain the original app with the option of dropping previous versions that are really not wanted anymore.

When saving a workflow to the Gallery, I would like an option on the Save window to save directly to a collection. This can be an existing collection, or would have the ability to create a new collection. The current process requires you to log into the Gallery after saving the workflow and move it to the appropriate collection.

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

I would like to propose a number of small enhancements to the Gallery:

1. Time format. The 12-hour time format (

    

   ) is confusing to everybody except Americans. Please add support for a 24-hour format. This could be done either by extending the Locale settings or by a separate check box. Please make sure that this time format is used everywhere in the Gallery (last update, last run, schedule, etc.).
2. Date format. Even though using English as GUI language, I prefer the time format according to ISO 8601-1, namely "YYYY-MM-DD". Please add support for this format, independent of selected language.
3. Number of Rows per Page in My Workspace: Each time I open My Workspace, the number of listed workflows per page is set back to 10. Please add support to set the default number of workflows in the user settings or at least preserve the chosen number within the same session.
4. Fully utilize the screen in My Workspace: Even after switching to more than 10 rows per page, nearly half of my screen stays empty. Please add function to utilize the screen completely.
   

The more I'm digging into the Private Gallery (on our own Server, not gallery.alteryx.com), the more I'm feeling that the UI and functionality is very non-user-friendly.  

I would like to do something that I think is very basic (I am the Admin of the Gallery):

1.  Create Apps and put them in various Collections.

2.  Grant people access to certain Collections.

3.  Have those people, when they log in, only see the Collections to which they have access to (that I granted them).  And then run the apps in those collections.  Nothing      more, regardless of who they are.

4.  Given all three of the above, but I do not want to see them listed as an Artisan, nor do I want to see them have their own studio

Currenlty, no matter what I do, they have Studios, and some are listed as Artisans (and as mentioned in a prior post, you can't delete their Studios).  I've tried using Windows Authentication, but I get errors so that's not an option.  It would be nice if the above were options regardless of the Authentication type.

Hi,

It would be nice if scheduled workflow credentials could be linked to the workflow and not the individual versions of the workflow.

It is problematic for the user that they need to remember to reschedule the workflow, whenever they publish a new version of the workflow.

Best,

Daniel

I have been looking at the content in Alteryx Public Gallery for some time and I have had some concerns about the safety and usability of the macros/workflows in the gallery. 

I think there should be an option to rate, review and provide feedback on stuff that is out there on the public gallery. This will be helpful in many different way.

1. It will generate trust about the workflow/app. If I see that something is rated higher and has been used and commented by a lot of users I am more inclined to use it
2. It will provide a lot of ideas on how a particular workflow/macro can be used in different ways 
3. Review/Feedback will help the author to make changes as required or suggested by users.
4. The macro's will probably show up in google search based on key words provided by users in their reviews.

......

I had initiated a thread some time ago related to this, there is some useful information in there if someone has same concerns.

 https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Can-Apps-and-Macros-in-Alteryx-public-Galle...

Thanks,

Ashish

Organizations using Alteryx Server with an embedded MongoDB can benefit from an option to change the MongoDB User and Admin User passwords.

Current deployments of Alteryx Server allow regeneration of the Controller Token, and for many of the same reasons, the ability to change the MongoDB passwords would be beneficial to customers.

Many organizations rely on a centralized team for daily administration of the Alteryx Server and MongoDB. With the current functionality, when members of this team change positions, they continue to know the MongoDB authentication information indefinitely. Providing organizations with this capability allows them to make the determination of how/when a change is required to mitigate any risk of misuse.