Alteryx Server Ideas

I am noticing what I think it's a big gap in terms of turnover and job changes.  Even though you can add workflows to a Collection for development and update purposes. Only the original owner/publisher can see the version history for a workflow. At least that appears to be the case in 2020.1

Is there any discussion for the road map to include a way to transfer the ownership of a workflow from one user to another? this would alleviate the need to publish a brand new version and then reset all the scheduling. 

There is no good way to get server user credentials into a workflow without asking them for it in an App interface.  It would be great if we could have a built in Constant that could be used to silently pass user credentials into a workflow for things like API's or logging user information.

It would be great if you could overwrite an existing workflow when saving to the gallery from designer. It could be a simple popup with a yes/no option to overwrite/save a new copy. Currently, you would have to

1) Save your workflow to the Gallery.

2) Click on ok and be taken to that workflow.

3) Go back to your private studio.

4) Search for the app you want to replace.

5) Realize you have 7 copies of the same workflow with the same name and try to determine which one you want to replace. (this could just be a "me" problem)

6) Select that app

7) Click on replace workflow.

😎 type the name of the workflow in the box.

9) Look through your list of 7 workflows and choose the one that was just uploaded. Usually the first in the list I think.

10) Lament that it took way too many steps.

I recognize that you can open workflows from the gallery in designer which does allow overwriting, but I've run into issues with 1) external dependencies not working as expected (ie packaged assets don't quite work the way I want) and 2) about half the time it will simply give you root errors and then your only option is to save to a folder and then go through the process above.

I've seen various solutions/workarounds but this seems to be a table-stakes ask?  When scheduling a workflow I should be able to specify which parameter values to run with.  Just two of many use case examples - 

Use case #1 - a single analytic app could be scheduled multiple times, each schedule specifying a different line of business

Use case #2 - credentials, allow the user to schedule a workflow with their saved credentials.  When their credentials change all they would have to do is update the schedule parameters

(If you know a better way I'm all ears, not the API thought that isn't a bad way to do it, just not super Easy)

Hello all,

This may be a little controversial. As of today, when you buy an Alteryx Server, the basic package covers up to 4 cores :
https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/How-Alteryx-defines-cores-for-licensi...

I have always known that. But these last years, the technology, the world has evolved. Especially the number of cores in a server. As an example, AMD Epyc CPU for server begin at 8 cores :
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-7002-series

So the idea is to update the number of cores in initial package for 8 or even 16 cores. It would :
-make Alteryx more competitive
-cost only very few money
-end some user frustration

Moreover, Alteryx Server Additional Capacity license should be 4 cores.

Best regards,

Simon

I would like to see the enhancement of being able to schedule a start and stop time for specific jobs that need to run multiple times per day, so they don't run during the nightly backup periods of the Alteryx server. This can cause the daily backups of the Alteryx Gallery to fail. Currently SQL Server Management Studio/SQL Server has the function to able to schedule start and stop times for specific job. Currently Scheduler page on Alteryx Gallery/Server lacks this feature.

SQL Server Management Studio

Schedules on Alteryx Gallery/Server

Situation:

As your analytics work grows - you find yourself using the power of Alteryx to create shared macros.    These act as an accelerator for a team because one team member can us a reusable solution created by another team member.   For example - many teams need to get data out of JIRA (or some other system) so you create a connector that everyone can use.

That's going well - and now you have 20 teams all publishing canvasses to your server (possibly 100s of canvasses running in production) which make use of your JIRA connector - all good so-far!

Problem:

BUT THEN - you discover an issue with the JIRA connector and you need to fix it and publish a new version!

It's at this point that you realise that the canvasses on your server which use your JIRA connector are NOT pointing to it, but they have made a copy and included this inside their canvas.   So when you fix the problem with the JIRA connector - no-one gets the fix!

This is because every application uploaded to the server is a yxzp file, which zips up a COPY of all the shared macros and uses this in an isolated way.

So - in order to get the new JIRA connector (with the defect repaired) used instead of the old one you now need to:

- Download EVERY canvas on your server

- Unpack them all to expose the sub-macros being used

- Inspect them to see if they are actually an instance of the JIRA Macro

- Make a list of the owner and application IDs

- reach out by e-mail or phone to every one of these folk to ask them to republish their Alteryx workflow with your new version of the JIRA connector.

Proposal:

Please can we revisit this - we really do need the power of shared macros - and we also need the ability to fix and manage these like a product over time.   This will have an impact on the engine (hence copying @AdamR_AYX ) 

Desired end-state:

- When you build a canvas using a shared macro - it doesn't store the macro itself, but rather a reference to the version on the server - unless you explicitly decide to break the connection and take a copy.

- When you check this canvas into the server - your application / yxzp does NOT include a copy of the shared macro - instead it has a reference link

- this means that Alteryx Server can now track which canvasses use this shared macro very simply

- When I fix this shared macro - I can then do an in-place update; or if the interface is not the same (i.e. different inputs or outputs) then this has to be a new version and the users will stay pointing to version 1.

This is how shared assets are managed in a micro-service world, which is the way that all of our architecture is going - and it seems important that we build this thinking into the Alteryx infrastructure too.

@AdamR_AYX ; @Treyson ; @SteveA @DerekK ; @BlytheE 

I have three team members all in the same private studio. We can see each others' workflows. However, when looking at a workflow that another team member has published to the gallery, it looks like:

1. The workflow has never been run
2. The workflow is not scheduled to run

This is a massive impediment to collaboration because my team handles ETL for most of the company. If a user complains that their data isn't up to date, whoever receives that support ticket needs to be able to see if the workflow is actually running and whether it was successful or had an error during the last run.

Preventing a team from seeing this for each others' workflow schedules and results means that the only person who can deal with an issue is the person who originally made the workflow. Which makes the idea of a shared private studio wholly pointless as we may as well be operating in different universes.

Please create a studio-level setting where all members of a studio can see all schedules and results of all workflows in that studio.

Hello,

We would like to have the option to configure the timeout of the manual running jobs, as already exists for the schedule jobs.

Regards

The ability to select a workflow or app within the Gallery web interface and change its name. This would maintain its historical run data, version control revisions, placement in collections, etc. 

Use case: As a workflow or app continues to be developed over time, the name may need a revision to continue reflecting the workflow's function. 

Best regards,

Ryan

When an artisan moves positions (within or external) away from their current responsibilities, their collections and workflows should be able to be transferred via an administrator to another user.

As the Server Admin I'd like to have the ability to view ALL "Workflow Results" for all Subscriptions.This will give the highest level admin the ability to monitor all schedules (on the entire server instance) and monitor if they are unable to complete successfully (example- unable to allocate memory) and any other errors are occurring. 

Knowing this information will help the server administrator understand if there are issues with the server itself (e.g. if we need more workers or to simply adjust actual server system settings..etc..)

Today, when you share a workflow with someone else through the collection, you cannot see the manual run that the person will do, neither the person will see yours. 

This is really annoying as this is not helping collaboration between colleagues. 

Since we use an external scheduler and the server api, only the job owner will see the job execution results within the gallery.

Idea here would be to let the sharing of job execution result as an option in the collection.

Idea: Option to receive an email notification when a schedule gets disabled (could be added in the user settings, see attached picture)

Business Impact: The implementation of this idea would reduce delays that might even have a financial impact because

not receiving any notifications when a schedule was disabled could lead to

• important processes not being executed and users realizing that only at a later point in time (>> potential financial impact and stress)
• the user not being able deliver a report in time (>> potential financial impact)
• huge effort to manually track the workflow results on the server (or email notifications after a successfull run) to avoid the above two bullet points (>> financial impact due to waste of time)

I would be glad if you could implement this idea because I think it would be useful for a lot of people!

It would be very useful to have a standardized method to set up notifications to the server admins and to the job owner themselves if an alteryx canvas fails (error).

My understanding is that currently the only way to do notifications on failure for every canvas is for every canvas to individually set up events.   On a large implementation, this becomes very difficult to manage.

As large enterprises continually strengthen security around their system and data assets, we're seeing adoption of products like CyberArk's Enterprise Password Vault (https://www.cyberark.com/products/privileged-account-security-solution/enterprise-password-vault/ )

The system is essentially a central repository that secures and automatically rotates passwords for privileged accounts- things like a functional account you would use to run workflows against a certain database or set of systems.

It would be great if Alteryx could build both Server (Run As Account) and Designer (for individual database connections) integrations with a tool like that.

Given the need for administrators to be able to perform analysis and monitoring on server performance; user usage etc - it is necessary to provide full documentation for both the API and the database underlying the server so that admins can use this to good effect.

Ref: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Server-API-Download-packages-for-surveil...

Although very limited documentation is available on the server API (https://gallery.alteryx.com/api-docs) what we're looking for is a much more fully formed and navigable experience like some of the examples below.

• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/data_dictionary.html
• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/help.htm#REST/rest_api.htm%3FTocPath%3D___...
• https://community.lithium.com/t5/Developer-Documentation/bd-p/dev-doc-portal?section=commv2

This will make building helper processes substantially easier; as well as allow admins to fully manage their environment.

Many thanks

S

cc: @HeatherMHarris @revathi @AshwiniChezhiyan @LizaNemchynova

It would be useful if the Admin of a Private Gallery (in house server) could delete studios and/or members.  Also, it's confusing that a member who's added also gets a Studio automatically set up.  Members (for my purposes) are only supposed to be able to run apps in collections that I grant them access to.  They should not get their own studio.  Even if they can't use the studio (or even know that they have a studio), it's not very efficient to have all these studios show up on the subscriptions screen.

We have several clients that operate in a Multi-Forest environment due to mergers and acquisitions.  Currently with Alteryx Server the only option we can offer them is to use Built-In authentication.  A lot of corporate and particularly finance institutions prefer a single sign on approach and utilise Windows authentication to do this.

Would it be possible to add support for Multi-Forest organisations into Server to support organisations going through mergers and acquisitions?

This would really benefit us in selling Server in to organisations with complex structures and reduce friction in publishing or preparing workflows.